The point is to not make him the point.

In his New York Times opinion column (The Who-Can-Beat Trump Test Leads to Kamala Harris, 8/2/19), Roger Cohen makes a fair case for Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for 2020. And in doing so, he also does a pretty good take-down on Trump and the current (and increasingly inaptly-named) "conservative" movement. But he also unintentionally provides a road map for how Trump could defeat Harris. Harris is a prosecutor. She's a fighter. An attack dog. She will go toe-to-toe with him. She will prosecute him. She will go after him.

And that's the problem: It's still all about him.

It does appear that Harris is the candidate that the Trump campaign fears the most. But I'm not certain how reassuring that is. Trump loves a foil. He needs a foil. Foils are his megaphones. And if he can goad Harris into a debate about his deficits and his failings, then he has once again achieved his goal.

It's still all about him.

The 2020 Democratic candidate needs to be someone who flicks aside such distractions and turns attention back to "Here's what we can do for American families." Someone who won't be baited into wasting their time defensively deflecting Trump's blows. Who treats Trump's tirades as nothing more inconvenient than a jet flying overhead in the middle of an outdoor commencement speech: Yelling at it has no effect, so you just wait for the interruption to die down.

We need a candidate who will not acknowledge Trump for anything other than the noisy, inanimate object that he is.

There are a number of candidates who might do that, including Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or even (ugh!) Gillibrand, De Blasio or Gabbard (assuming she's for real, which is a whole 'nother discussion). But I think the true scrapper in the pack is Elizabeth Warren. And by "scrapper," I don't mean only that she'd hold her own in a brawl with Trump. She would indeed do that, but unlike Harris, she appears to have learned that "brawling" with him is a losing battle, because Trump not only ignores the rules of the road, he does not even acknowledge the road's existence. Roads are confining, inconvenient things meant for sub-human "little people." Trump is an entitled tank, climbing over rocks, ridges and even children in his objective, which is to stay in the limelight. He is not at all concerned that his tweets and tirades have nothing to say to people worried about their health care, their kids' education, their aging parents, the potholes in their street, or the ancient bridge they cross every day to get to that job they'd quit if only they could find a better one. He has nothing to say to them because these problems are no more real to him than the meaning of the word "No." And since he has no grasp of the problems that most people face, let alone any solutions, he'd rather you not hear from someone who does. Distraction is his superpower.

On the other hand, Warren's performance in the debates shows her deftness at deflecting slings and arrows by pivoting back to her ideas. And she does this in a way that is accessible. She's a combination of policy wonk and poet, distilling complex plans into political Haiku, a talent she no doubt honed in her years as a teacher.

I'll vote for whichever of the 2020 Democratic candidates gets the nod. But I'm rooting for Warren. Because nothing gets under a bully's skin faster and deeper than being treated as irrelevant. And that's Warren's superpower.