I can’t over-emphasize how much I loved Sen. Al Franken‘s grilling of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch last Tuesday. Particularly Franken’s dissection of the frozen trucker court case. I’ve watched the whole thing on YouTube three times. Franken revealed to one and all what a flinty, corporate-favoring prick Gorsuch is when it comes to disputes of this nature, which are basically about the gulf between common sense and humanitarian regard for working people vs. the rules and dictates of large companies.

I came away thinking that the 2020 Democratic presidential ticket should be headed by Gavin Newsom and Al Franken. Seriously.

Hell, I’d vote for Franken himself if he were to run for President in a 2020 primary or general election, although I recognize that he’s not really the running-for-President type, and that his natural place is in the U.S. Senate. 

The other concern is that California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom will have a tough time running for California governor in 2018 if everyone believes that his bottom-line aim is to run for President in ’20. 

So if not one of these two, who? Who has the right kind of post-Hillary, new-generation cred? Who’s got the charisma and magnetism to persuade the dumbshits not to vote for Trump? Will Elizabeth Warren run?

Two days after Franken’s Gorsuch grilling the New Republic‘s Jett Heer wrote that the Minnesota Senator should not run for president. “The Democratic Party needs him too much in the Senate,” he explained. “What the DeVos, Sessions and Gorsuch hearings have demonstrated is that Franken has exactly the skill set the party needs in Washington — especially when hearings come around.

“Senate hearings are half-courtroom, half-theater. Like a good trial lawyer, a senator has to know how to ask questions forensically, so that they support an argument. With the possible exception of Elizabeth Warren, no Democrat excels at congressional theater like Franken. He has a true gift for interrogating nominees in a way that gets them to reveal things about themselves that they would rather not.”