Democrats seeking the presidency in 2020 are readying for battle with Donald Trump. But at this point they appear to be running against a different Republican: Mitch McConnell.

The Senate majority leader loomed large over Wednesday night’s first Democratic primary debate in Miami — and clearly flummoxed the presidential prospects when his name came up in questions from the debate moderators.

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On several occasions, contenders struggled to articulate a coherent strategy on how they would deal with McConnell if they were to win the presidency and he was still majority leader. Their proposals ranged from persuading senators to kill the filibuster to campaigning in red states.

The McConnell answers “were all over the place,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said Thursday. “I didn’t think they necessarily addressed the question. Because it’s a difficult question.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill said their party’s answer to McConnell must be better — but in many cases conceded that nothing will change unless McConnell is deposed as majority leader. And the McConnell talk exposed another raw nerve: The fact that so many potential Senate candidates and high-profile senators are pursuing the presidency is making the Senate an increasingly uphill battle — and that has some rank-and-file Democrats fuming. Steve Bullock could run in Montana, Beto O’Rourke or Julián Castro could run in Texas and John Hickenlooper could run in Colorado, but all have passed on Senate races to run for president.

“We have a lot of senators who are pursuing quixotic presidential campaigns and leaving it to everybody else to pull their weight in terms of winning the Senate. And we have a lot of potential Senate candidates who are pursuing quixotic presidential campaigns who I guess feel they’re too grand to be United States senators when they could probably win a seat,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “So yeah, I get pretty frustrated.”

For Democrats, it’s something of a nightmare to envision another two-year slog in the minority after failing the take the majority in 2016 and 2018. And presidential candidates are laboring to explain how they can work with or around McConnell, who stonewalled President Barack Obama for years on legislation and blocked him from filling a Supreme Court seat.

To win back the majority and make McConnell minority leader, Democrats need to pick up at least three seats on a limited playing field and protect Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.). It’s possible, but so too is a scenario in which President Donald Trump loses but the GOP holds enough seats in Maine, North Carolina, Arizona, Texas or Georgia to keep the majority.

Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd’s pointed questions about McConnell on Wednesday revealed how the self-proclaimed “grim reaper” of progressivism is already haunting the presidential race. McConnell is running for reelection himself as the primary roadblock to what he deems Democrats’ “socialist” agenda, reveling in the idea of blocking the legislation of a President Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.

Asked whether she had a plan for McConnell, as she did everything else, Warren (D-Mass.) claimed that sheer will could “make this Congress reflect the will of the people.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee suggested trying to get rid of the filibuster when it comes to McConnell. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio offered that the party should campaign in more red states to get his members to turn against him on key issues. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker touted his work on the bipartisan criminal justice reform, a popular bill in both parties which came to the Senate floor after Trump demanded McConnell move it last year.

But those responses left people in both parties befuddled.

“I don’t know what answer they have for it,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a former presidential candidate.

In Thursday night’s debate, former Vice President Joe Biden will take the stage; he’s been leaning into his relationships with Republicans as a selling point. His allies say he can credibly claim to work with McConnell, as he did under Obama. The results, however, were often panned by liberals.

“He is someone who has a gift of working with people both Democrats and Republicans from far left to far right,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.). “We’ll get things done.”

That sentiment earned a stern retort from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio): “There’s no evidence of it.”

McConnell’s “always going to play power politics and he’s always going to do what’s best for his contributors,” Brown said. The solution is “not going to be persuasiveness. Barack Obama, I guess, found that.”

In an interview, Booker insisted his campaign of political persuasion will only be stronger as president than it’s been as a senator.

“No. 1, if I’m president of the United States we’re playing to take back the Senate. And No. 2, I think there’s lot of ways to get things to the floor even if Mitch McConnell is still majority leader,” Booker said. “I’ve shown that through my Senate work and I’ll have a lot more leverage as president of the United States.”

McConnell acknowledged Thursday he wouldn’t indefinitely block a Democrat from getting a vote on a Supreme Court nominee. But he was otherwise elated with his name being invoked repeatedly on national television while he was watching the Washington Nationals win on Wednesday night.

“I’ve been stopping left-wing agenda items coming out of the House and confirming strict constructionists to the Supreme Court. If that’s my sin, I plead guilty,” McConnell said Thursday. “I was thrilled to dominate the discussion last night and I think that was a legitimate discussion to have.”

Republicans aren’t ruling out working with a Democratic president. But on the big ideas proposed like the “Green New Deal,” “Medicare for All” or big tax increases, there’s no hope of getting GOP support whether McConnell is majority leader or minority leader, Republicans say.

“There is no way that Republican senators or Republican congresspeople are going to vote for the proposals that came from Sen. Warren or Mayor de Blasio or others,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).

Warren and Inslee are among the group of candidates saying that if Democrats take the majority and McConnell stuffs their priorities, the party should scrap the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and stop settling for the GOP’s opposition to bold ideas. And some legislation can be passed by a simple majority, as Obamacare ultimately was.

But all of those scenarios require beating Republicans in Senate races next year, not finding a way to work with him. That’s why Senate Democrats playing clean-up for their presidential candidates on Thursday had a starkly different message: “It would be silly to make any other plans besides winning,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)

“We Democrats have a really bad habit about getting into the weeds about what we should do when we win and forgetting about the winning part,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). “ If we walk on, hat in hand, [Republicans] view that as weakness. We’re going to have to just win.”

James Arkin contributed to this report.

2020

It passed almost unnoticed, but history suggests we just saw a potent political weapon get pointed at two top candidates, Warren and Bernie Sanders.

On several occasions in Wednesday night’s Democratic debate, the NBC moderators invited candidates to take a shot at Senator Elizabeth Warren, and neither of her fellow senators, Amy Klobuchar or Cory Booker, took the bait. But one candidate may have planted a land mine under her candidacy—and she wasn’t even his target.

The moment came when the 10 participants were asked, by a show of hands, who would dispense entirely with private health insurance. Only New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Warren signaled “yes.” That’s when former Rep. John Delaney, one of the least visible of the 24 announced candidates, weighed in.

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After pushing back on the idea of taking something away from Americans that most are reasonably happy with, Delaney said this:

“Also it’s bad policy. If you go to every hospital in this country and you ask them one question, which is how would it have been for you last year if every one of your bills were paid at the Medicare rate? Every single hospital administrator said they would close. And the Medicare for All bill requires payments to stay at current Medicare rates. So to some extent we’re basically supporting a bill that will have every hospital closed.” And then he finished with a stinger about his electrician father on union health insurance: “He’d look at me, and he’d say ‘Good job, John, for getting health care for every American, but why are you taking my health care away?’”

As an argument inside the Democratic Party, where “Medicare for All” is a rallying cry, this may not resonate. But once there’s a general election, it’s a new landscape, and if Warren—or Bernie Sanders, who shares the “no private insurance” view—makes it to that stage, it could be a much bigger deal. We know from earlier races that moments with little impact inside a primary can have a powerful impact in the final fall.

In April 1988, just before the New York primary, long-shot contender Al Gore went after Gov. Michael Dukakis on the issue of crime. Why, he wanted to know, did Massachusetts have a program of weekend furloughs for convicted criminals? Dukakis more or less conceded that the program hadn’t worked, and that seemed to be the end of that: Within a few days, Dukakis had won the New York primary, Gore dropped out of the race, and the issue disappeared.

Only it didn’t. Over in the campaign of George H.W. Bush, aide James Pinkerton heard the debate and decided to look into the question. And what the campaign found was Willie Horton, the convicted murderer serving a life sentence who, on a weekend furlough, went on a crime spree, including assault, armed robbery and multiple rapes. For Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater, it was a gift from the gods. “I’m going to make Willie Horton [Dukakis’] running mate,” he said.

Sure enough, Bush picked up Al Gore’s ball in the general election, raising the issue in his convention acceptance speech.

“I’m the one who believes it is a scandal to give a weekend furlough to a hardened first-degree killer who hasn’t even served enough time to be eligible for parole,” he said. The campaign put out a TV ad labeled “Revolving Door,” showing convicts literally leaving prison through a revolving door. And an independent political action committee produced a far more incendiary and racially loaded ad, featuring the mugshot of the obviously black Willie Horton.

So what’s the parallel? Delaney might have been talking to the very, very, very long-shot mayor of New York. But the other person who raised her hand to essentially scrap private insurance was the much more plausible Senator Warren. And a Democratic former congressman—not some right-wing think tank or Freedom Caucus Republican—was saying, on TV, that her policy would threaten the survival of just about every hospital in the country, and yank good insurance from working people.

This raises the specter of a serious threat, should Warren or Sanders emerge as the nominee. You can call it the “your own man says so!” rule, named after schoolyard ballgame disputes, where the acknowledgment by a member of one team that his or her teammate was out settles the argument. It’s what happened when almost half the Republican Party refused to support Barry Goldwater because of his “extremist” views, giving his opponents an easy way to torpedo his candidacy. It happened when George McGovern’s opponents in his own party, including former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, accused him of ideas that would cut the muscle out of American defenses.

And a year from now—an eternity in campaign time, but not too long to keep the issue warm in a big oppo file—it wouldn’t be hard at all for Donald Trump, on Twitter and in ads and on a debate stage, to point out that a member of Warren’s own party, sharing the same stage, implied that her health care ideas would be dangerous for America. (The same applies in spades for self-identified socialist Sanders.)

Republicans have spent most of the past 100 years leveling Democratic social programs as “socialist” or “dangerous.” As a general proposition, those attacks have fallen on barren ground. But in suggesting that a major plank of two potential nominees could wreak havoc on the system, John Delaney may have left a ticking time bomb on his party’s hopes for the White House.

The House will vote Thursday on an amended emergency border aid package, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that his chamber won’t consider the new version, teeing up a game of chicken just before the holiday break.

House Democrats unveiled the new package overnight, which adds several Democratic provisions to the Senate’s $4.6 billion bill aimed at addressing the sprawling humanitarian crisis at the border. The additions — many of which come from the House’s competing legislation — would place additional restrictions on how the administration may spend the money and specify basic standards of care for the thousands of migrant children being held at the border, many in reportedly horrific conditions.

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But a Trump administration official said early Thursday that the administration will oppose the House bill over the new policy additions — and without the promise of Trump’s signature it’s unlikely to attract the support of House and Senate Republicans. The official said the bill would lead to the closure of “already overwhelmed border facilities.”

McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday morning his chamber would move to kill the House bill — assuming the House manages to pass it.

The “Senate bill is the only game in town. It’s time to quit playing games. Time to make law,” McConnell said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called McConnell “completely and totally disrespectful” in a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday morning but did not outright dismiss the original Senate bill, attendees said.

“The Senate bill is an OK bill. It is the path of least resistance. But that’s not what these children need,” she said.

“There is no reason why this shouldn’t be signed into law. I hope Congress can move quickly today and get this done,” House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said Thursday, as the panel approved the package.

But it’s unclear if the amended Senate bill will receive GOP support in the House — a key indicator for Senate Republicans, who will be watching the whip count closely. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was noncommittal Wednesday on whether he would work with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reconcile the competing bills.

House Republicans on the Rules panel pushed back on Democrats’ new version on Thursday morning, saying the House should simply take up the initial Senate bill, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate on Wednesday. The original House bill flopped in the Senate via a 37-55 vote.

“You’re going down a path which does not guarantee a presidential signature,” Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, the ranking Republican on the Rules panel, said Thursday. “Why the majority would push provisions that already failed in the Senate and are opposed by the president is beyond my understanding.”

Congress is due to leave town by Friday for the week-long July 4 recess, although leaders in both chambers have said they will not leave until the dispute over humanitarian funding is resolved. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is already struggling to care for tens of thousands of migrant children, has warned it will run out of funds as soon as this month.

Vice President Mike Pence has been deputized to handle negotiations on behalf of President Donald Trump, who is in Japan for the G-20 meeting. Pelosi and Trump chatted on Wednesday before he went overseas, but it’s unclear if the president would sign the amended bill Pelosi is pushing.

Some moderate lawmakers within Pelosi’s own caucus want her to just bring the clean Senate bill up in the House for a vote, arguing that’s the quickest route to getting a bill to Trump’s desk and delivering billions of dollars in aid to address the influx of migrants straining federal resources at the border.

“The Senate Bill is a good, bipartisan bill that passed overwhelmingly in the Senate,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, co-chair of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition. “The House needs to take up the Senate bill and pass it and get money to the border.”

But Pelosi also faces pushback from a vocal coalition of progressives, who don’t want to send Trump any additional federal money without first attaching guardrails to ensure the funds can’t be diverted for other uses, including increasing deportations.

“I doubt that,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said when asked if the House would take up the original Senate bill without changes.

Pelosi “has been very clear with the president on what needs to be in there for children and she’s very committed to making sure that a lot of the standards that we have in our bill — that aren’t in the Senate bill — are included.”