The 2020 presidential election must be about issues. Daily Kos asks the Democratic field to go there

The pitfalls that plagued the 2016 elections were numerous, including everything from a Russian incursion into our electoral system to the media's Hannibal Lecter-like obsession with Hillary Clinton's emails to the FBI inserting itself into the process a little over a week out from voting. But the most glaring journalistic breakdown, beyond the boundless coverage of a carnival barker spewing a stream of unmitigated lies, was the near-complete lack of substantive reporting on policies. Indeed, a 2017 Columbia Journalism Review article called the lack of policy coverage "incredible" in light of research showing the dearth of front-page articles devoted to policy in the closing two months of the 2016 cycle.

"In light of the stark policy choices facing voters in the 2016 election, it seems incredible that only five out of 150 front-page articles that The New York Times ran over the last, most critical months of the election, attempted to compare the candidate’s policies, while only 10 described the policies of either candidate in any detail," Duncan Watts and David Rothschild wrote in December 2017.

A broader study of campaign coverage among outlets including the Times, theWashington Post, CNN, and the Huffington Post characterized reporting on the Clinton campaign as "defined by negative media coverage," while Watts and Rothschild wrote of the Times specifically, "In just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election." In short, coverage of Clinton’s so-called scandals was pervasive and dominant, while outlets devoted only a sliver of space to the actual policy proposals from the candidates and what they would mean for Americans.

At Daily Kos, one of our greatest fears is that we could watch a repeat of that misguided reporting flood the 2020 election cycle to the great detriment of the American people and our republic. Precisely because of the consequences of those journalistic failures, we have resolved to use our robust platform, along with its highly dedicated liberal readership, to set a different tone in 2020. In the past, we have regularly used that platform to hold mainstream outlets accountable for promoting bias, false equivalencies, and sometimes just plain sloppy and even indefensible reporting. While we will continue to do that this cycle, we also hope to proactively nurture a media ecosystem in which policies are valued, contemplated, and explored, with an eye to what they will mean for voters, their families, and the future of our country. With that in mind, the Daily Kos editorial team formulated its first presidential candidate questionnaire for the wide field of talented Democrats who are just now beginning to stake out their policy positions in pursuit of the nomination.

The questionnaire is not exhaustive or perfect in any way, but it touches on many of the topics that our readers continue to be both interested in and passionate about, including health care, climate change, criminal justice reform, voting rights, education, economic inequality, immigration, LGBTQ equality, women and family issues, and the judicial branch. While we recognized our inability to hit every issue and question worthy of exploration, we also felt that failing to try something new would be like tacitly consenting to letting the same dynamic from 2016 play out all over again in 2020.

In the spirit of inviting a different dynamic with more substantive coverage and debate, we have sent the Daily Kos 2020 Candidate Questionnaire (included below) to the following candidates who have announced their intention to run for the Democratic nomination: Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

Since it's still quite early in the cycle, we have encouraged the candidates to fill in the policy details they have even if they don't yet have answers for every question. This is fine by us, given that we didn't expect people to have fully formed platforms at this juncture. In fact, part of what we hoped to do was help define some of the issues (and the questions related to them) that will be more fully vetted during the 2020 cycle.

Daily Kos will be publishing the candidate responses to our questionnaire over the coming weeks in the order in which we receive them. Indeed, we hope all the candidates take this opportunity to engage with our vast progressive readership. By doing so, together we can help set the tone for a cycle that produces a leader who is truly invested in public service rather than one who uses the federal government for the sole purposes of aggrandizing himself and settling an endless score of petty grievances. America is counting on the media to provide a more vigorous debate and thorough vetting of the policies in 2020, and Daily Kos is dedicated to helping to elevate that discussion.

Daily Kos 2020 Candidate Questionnaire

Economic inequality

Economic inequality in the U.S. has risen since the 1970s, with the top 1 percent of earners now taking in 24 percent of the income, while the bottom 90 percent get just 50 percent. Wealth inequality is even more pronounced, with the top 1 percent having 39 percent of the wealth to just 23 percent for the bottom 90 percent of people. Racial disparities make economic inequality even more pronounced and harmful.

1. What specific policies would you propose to reduce these inequalities?

2. How would they address both income and wealth inequality and alleviate racial disparities? You are free—encouraged, even—to discuss the minimum wage, but please don't stop there.

Wall Street reform

In the aftermath of the 2008 recession, a number of small reforms were enacted in the Dodd-Frank Act, some of which have since been rolled back.

1. What specific regulations would you like to see put in place to ensure Americans are protected in the event of another economic downturn?

Housing

In recent decades, housing costs have risen dramatically while wages have stagnated.

About a third of American households, including both renters and owners, spend more on housing than the 30 percent of their income that's considered affordable.

1. What would you do to address America's affordable housing crisis, including:

• Relief for the 47 percent of renters who are cost-burdened, with half of those paying more than 50 percent of their income for housing?

• Home-buyers who face prices for single-family homes more than four times the median income?

• The ongoing inequities created over decades by segregation, redlining, and discriminatory lending practices?

• The 2.3 million evictions filed in the U.S. in 2016?

Climate change and the environment

While a consensus of scientists find that climate change is happening, is caused by human activity, and represents an existential threat to our nation and our world, public polling often shows it lagging in importance behind other issues.

1. What importance would you place on addressing climate change as president?

Donald Trump has:

• Withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Agreement

• Ended the Clean Power Plan begun under President Obama

• Rolled back fuel economy requirements

• Suspended rules limiting methane emissions

• Increased allowances for logging on public lands

• Rolled back regulation of coal mining and coal-fired power plants

• Relaxed standards on drilling on public lands

• Opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling

• Opened new areas along the coasts for oil and gas drilling

• Reduced the size of national monuments by millions of acres

• Proposed rules that would gut the Endangered Species Act

1. Which of these Trump policies would you commit to repealing immediately, and would you commit to restoring all of the environmental and climate protections that were in effect before Trump took office?

The federal tax on gasoline has been unchanged, holding steady at 18.4 cents per gallon for over 25 years.

1. Would you consider raising this tax both to help address America’s critical need for infrastructure improvement and to promote a transition to electric vehicles?

The Green New Deal includes 13 goals for addressing climate change, including improving power generation, transportation, industry, and agriculture while protecting biodiversity and the environment.

1. Are there specific items in the Green New Deal that you particularly agree with or disagree with? Would you consider endorsing the plan in full?

Immigration

In 2013, the Democratic Senate passed an immigration reform bill that included a path to citizenship and billions for border security. But the GOP-led House refused to bring it up for a vote, even though it had enough support to pass. Since then, Congress has continued to implement part of that bill by allocating billions for more deportation agents, detention beds, and fencing (even as rates of apprehension have dropped to record lows), all while doing nothing to provide relief to immigrants.

1. How will your administration address this?

The Trump administration rescinded Obama guidance that usually, but not always, prioritized the arrest of those who posed a danger to others. As a result, the number of arrests of immigrants with no criminal record more than tripled in the first 14 months of Trump’s presidency. Unshackled immigration agents have targeted DACA recipients, blatantly lied to the public, and spied on political opponents of the administration. Meanwhile, vulnerable kids have languished under cruel detention policies. In December, two migrant kids died in CBP custody. In recent oversight hearings, lawmakers revealed that HHS has received thousands of complaints of sexual abuse against against migrant kids.

1. How do you plan to hold immigration agents and their agencies accountable?

2. How do you plan to address rampant abuses and deaths in detention facilities?

3. What can be done to rehabilitate or reform ICE and CBP?

4. Do you support a truth and reconciliation commission on ICE and CBP abuses?

The administration separated more than 2,500 kids under its policy of “zero tolerance.” Months after a judge’s reunification deadline, some are still in custody. Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said that potentially thousands more families may have been separated prior to the policy. It’s unknown how many children have been returned to their families, or how many remain with sponsors or foster families. Yet not one official has been forced to resign over this disaster.

1. How do you plan to hold former officials of the Trump administration accountable?

2. Do you support recent legislation to put separated families on a path to citizenship? Would you consider allowing other immigrants who were cruelly deported by the Trump administration to return to the U.S.?

The administration has reduced the number of refugees that are welcome in the U.S. to a record low. ABC News reported that President Obama “had initially set a cap of 110,000 refugees, but once in office, Trump banned refugee admissions for 120 days and then set a new cap of 50,000 refugees.” His cap is now 30,000 refugees, but far fewer may actually be admitted.

1. As president, will you commit to returning numbers of refugees admitted to the U.S. to previous levels, or higher?

2. Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your immigration platform?

Criminal Justice Reform

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, with more than two million people incarcerated and five million people on probation or parole. Racial disparities remain endemic in policing, in prosecutions, and in sentencing. Efforts to reform the criminal justice system, including revisions of drug laws, re-enfranchisement of those that have completed their sentences, increased mental health services, and reforms of juvenile detention systems, are now being called for in both parties.

1. What steps would you take as president to move forward on those or other criminal justice reforms?

Voting Rights

1. Do you support statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico (if the commonwealth wants it)?

2. Do you support eliminating the filibuster to enact critical voting rights policies, such as the For the People Act (H.R. 1), and ending the disenfranchisement of American citizens in Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico?

3. Do you support expanding the size of the Supreme Court if the court continues to strike down voting rights protections, invalidate campaign finance regulations, and uphold gerrymandering?

4. Do you support the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would supersede the Electoral College and allow Americans to elect their presidents by a national popular vote?

5. Do you support the Fair Representation Act, which would permanently end gerrymandering by implementing proportional representation in elections for the U.S. House?

6. Are there any other policies you support that would expand voting rights?

Corruption and Accountability

The Trump era has seen numerous corruption scandals, from improper personal use of government planes by Trump Cabinet officials to Trump's unapologetic refusal to divst from his private businesses, profiting as president from payments made by political and industry groups to his various privately owned companies. Multiple members of Donald Trump's staff have been prosecuted for lying to government investigators probing Russian interference in the last presidential election.

Many Americans worry that the precedents set by the Trump administration are irreversible, weakening or nullifying ethical norms that the nation has long relied on as bulwark against those who would seek to use government office for their personal gain.

1. As president, what steps would you have your administration take to ensure accountability for abuses of the public trust by members of the Trump administration?

2. If the investigations into Donald Trump result in the discovery of crimes committed by Trump before or during his presidency, would you support the indictment of the former president for those crimes?

Education

2018 and 2019 have seen a wave of teachers striking for increased education funding to reduce class sizes, increase pay, increase the number of support staff such as nurses and librarians, and fix crumbling school buildings.

1. How would you increase education funding so that all students get the education they deserve?

2. Several of these strikes have called attention to the role of charter schools and other forms of privatization in siphoning funding from public schools. What would you do to maintain public funding of public education?

Student loan debt totals over $1.5 trillion and constitutes a massive drag on the lives and futures of multiple generations of Americans.

1. What would you do both to prevent future college students from leaving school in debt, and to reduce the burden on those who are already affected?

2. For-profit colleges have played an especially problematic role in the student debt crisis, too often using fraudulent and deceptive recruiting practices to persuade students to take on debt for degrees that ultimately prove worthless. How would you regulate the for-profit college industry, and what accommodations would you provide to its past victims?

Abortion

1. Do you unequivocally believe that women should be able to get insurance coverage for abortion no matter where they get her health insurance, including those receiving Medicaid?

2. Do you pledge to make access to a full range of reproductive health services, including abortion, inherent and explicit in any future government-sponsored health plan, such as Medicare for All?

3. Do you support allowing youth to confidentially access reproductive health services, including safe and legal abortion, without the notification or consent of a parent or guardian?

4. Should the government be able to decide if a woman can obtain a legal abortion at any point in her pregnancy? And would you oppose any legislation that aims to restrict doctors from using the abortion method they deem most medically appropriate?

Paid Family Leave

1. Do you support paid family leave?

2. If so, what are the outlines of your plan for paid family leave, and how would you pay for it?

Childcare

1. Do you have a plan to make child care more affordable?

2. How would your plan for affordable child care work, and how would you pay for it?

LGBTQ Issues

1. Do you support allowing transgender service members to serve openly in the military, and would your administration ensure their ability to do so?

2. Federal law provides no explicit nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals. Would you make passing the Equality Act, which would amend existing civil rights law to include sexual orientation and gender identity protections, a top priority for your administration?

3. Do you believe anti-LGBTQ laws should be subject to a standard of constitutional scrutiny similar to that applied to laws targeting people on the basis of race or sex?

4. Using specific examples, please identify how you have professionally and/or personally helped advance the rights of LGBTQ individuals and families.

5. Conservative politicians continually pledge their allegiance to protecting people's “religious liberties,” code for protecting anti-LGBTQ policies and actions. How would you protect the rights of LGBTQ Americans from religious discrimination?

Health care

A recent comparative study of advanced nations in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that in 2016, the U.S. spent nearly 18 percent of its GDP on health care, compared to healthcare spending in other industrialized countries ranging from less than 10 percent (Australia) to 12.4 percent (Switzerland). Life expectancy in the U.S. was the lowest of the 11 countries studied, and infant mortality was the highest. The U.S. is spending more to provide care to fewer people, and with worse outcomes.

1. Do you embrace the goal of universal health care?

2. Do you support Sen. Sanders' and/or Rep. Jayapal's bills for a Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare system? If not, what specific proposals do you have for expanding health care?

3. Do you support the inclusion of dental, vision, and long-term nursing care as essential covered health services in any reform plan?

4. How will you reduce high prescription drug prices?

5. What do you see as the role of employer-based health insurance in healthcare reform?

6. Presuming the transition to a Medicare for All system would take a number of years, what actions would you take to to expand and reform the Affordable Care Act, employer-based insurance, and Medicaid to reverse coverage losses under the Trump administration?

7. Affordability remains an issue for insured Americans both under the ACA and in employer-based plans, with higher and higher premiums, deductibles, and other out-of-pocket costs. How would you address increasing out-of-pocket healthcare costs?

8. How would you address consolidation and monopoly power in the healthcare industry?

Medicare:

1. Will you protect Medicare from cuts planned by some members of Congress?

2. Would you allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices?

3. Would you support adding vision and dental care to Medicare's core coverage?

4. Would you advocate lowering the eligibility age for Medicare?

Medicaid:

1. What do you see as the future of Medicaid?

2. Would you protect Medicaid from efforts by a Republican Congress to reduce funding, convert it to a block grant, or otherwise undercut the program?

3. Would you revoke Trump administration waivers allowing states to impose barriers such as work requirements?

Social Security

Social Security provides nearly two-thirds of seniors with most of their income, and one-third with virtually all of their income, and lifts over 22 million Americans—including more than a million children—out of poverty. We are fast approaching a retirement crisis, in which more and more middle-income workers are seeing costs rising higher and faster than Social Security can keep up, while private retirement funds and other assets lose value.

1. Would you support Social Security expansion by increasing average benefits?

2. Do you support protecting low-income workers by setting minimum benefits above the poverty line and tying them to wage levels to ensure that the minimum benefit does not fall behind the cost of living?

3. Would you supporting changing the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) formula to better reflect the costs incurred by seniors through adopting a CPI-E formula?

4. Would you restore full funding to the Social Security Administration to properly staff the agency and modernize its systems?

Filibuster

Democrats are unlikely to take a 60-vote majority in the Senate in 2020.

1. Given the probable lack of a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate after the next general election, and the urgent need for massive policy programs, such as the Green New Deal and health care reform, that largely cannot be achieved through budget reconciliation, would you support filibuster reform in the Senate?

Judges

Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell have engineered a process to remake the federal judiciary. As many as 40 percent of judges in the federal judiciary could be appointed by Trump by the end of his first term. This is the result of a determined effort by McConnell to subvert the norms and traditions of the Senate.

1. Would you support an effort to increase the number of seats on circuit courts and on the Supreme Court to achieve more balance in the judiciary?

2. Would you support a legislative effort to make the judicial code of ethics applicable to Supreme Court justices?

Big Tech

Serious concerns have arisen in recent years around tech companies, focusing on everything from companies selling users’ personal data, to manipulation by bots and fake news accounts, to questions about the companies’ influence as gatekeepers and monopolists.

1. What specific measures you would propose to regulate, rein in, or break up large tech companies?

Anything else you want to tell voters?

Are there any other signature issues or policies you would like to share with our readership that have not been covered by the questions above? Feel free to go into detail about any that we have left untouched.