There are two quite different paths toward change in the 2020 elections. One would involve getting rid of President Trump but leaving Washington gridlocked. The other would see a Democratic president elected with a Democratic Congress. For the first time in a decade, progressives, with some help from moderates, would have a chance to govern and begin to push back against the conservative takeover of the federal judiciary.

I have a confession to make. I am one of the five remaining Americans who is uncomfortable with vulgarity, put off by profanity and offended by blasphemy. Swearing is now generally taken as a sign of authenticity; it is more often the expression of anger and aggression. I don’t think political discourse is improved by language more appropriate to a bar fight. I do think the presidency is diminished by public scatology and sacrilege. And I really don’t give a darn if you think this is old fashioned.

Jeffrey Epstein didn’t commit suicide.

After two horrific mass shootings, we come together as a nation to confront an urgent question: How are we going to keep Wayne LaPierre safe?

WASHINGTON — Have we become a shithole country?

Democrats by 2004 had become obsessed with defeating incumbent President George W. Bush.

Back-to-back massacres in El Paso and Dayton kill 31. Cue the thoughts and prayers!

Politicians and pundits are promoting familiar explanations, excuses and demands following the tragic mass murders in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. From more gun laws, to blaming President Trump, conservative talk radio and Fox News, we’ve heard it all before.

“It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.”

The more we learn, the more Jeffrey Epstein resembles an evil comic book character for the developmentally arrested intellectual — the charming-but-lurid mastermind with a plot to take over the world by impregnating scores of women on a remote desert estate.

Joe Biden was good enough. And that, in itself, was a victory.

Going out on a limb here: Donald Trump is a racist. And a sexist. And a xenophobic nationalist. Among other things.

It is astounding that 159 years after the end of the Civil War we are having a full-throated debate about whether the U.S. president is a racist. Or is that surprising?

WASHINGTON — Susan Brooks. Brian Fitzpatrick. Will Hurd. Fred Upton.

WASHINGTON — Don’t breathe a word, but President Trump is up to something.

WASHINGTON — Have Democrats reached the point where they would rather beat each other’s heads in than defeat Donald Trump? Have they forgotten that the opposition’s first task is to build a broad coalition for change?

A number of rich and powerful people are sweaty this morning.

Twenty years ago, as interest began to swell for the 1999 Women’s World Cup, I suggested to an editor that it would be a good idea to cover the late-round games. His response: Nobody cares about women’s soccer.

If California Sen. Kamala Harris is elected president in 2020 and reelected in 2024, by the time she leaves office 114 months from now she might have a coherent answer to the question of whether Americans should be forbidden to have what 217 million of them currently have: private health insurance. Her 22 weeks of contradictory statements, and her Trumpian meretriciousness about her contradictions, reveal a frivolity about upending health care’s complex 18% of America’s economy. And her bumblings illustrate how many of the Democratic presidential aspirants, snug in their intellectual silos, have lost — if they ever had — an aptitude for talking like, and to, normal Americans.