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I mentioned in my column this week that Democrats seem to be getting more serious about fighting poverty. The chart above helps make that clear.

It shows the percentage of federal dollars that would go to different income groups in the various economic proposals from Democratic presidential candidates and potential candidates. For comparison, you also see a breakdown of the tax plan that Barack Obama proposed when he ran for president in 2008.

The pattern is quite clear. This year’s candidates are targeting their plans much more at the bottom half of the income distribution. And they’re calling for less spending that would help the top 10 percent of earners. “Reducing poverty and inequality is developing into a central issue in the conversation around the 2020 presidential election,” note the researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.

This approach is consistent with reality: The bottom 90 percent of earners have fared much worse than the top 10 percent in recent decades.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, testifies before Congress today, and it’s sure to be a political spectacle. Will it matter?

On the one hand, many Americans have already made up their minds about Trump, and the testimony of a former aide who’s pleaded guilty to lying under oath isn’t going to change their minds. In National Review, David French makes the case for skepticism about Cohen’s information. “Corroboration is key,” he writes. Cohen’s “credibility increases when he can support his story with documents, with recordings, or even with other witnesses.”

On the other hand, Cohen’s testimony is going to paint Trump in an extremely negative light — as a liar, a racist and a criminal conspirator — and will dominate television and social media today. As the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein points out: “Lots of people will be hearing about this stuff for the first time. And sometimes hearing it from a person testifying is different from learning of it from news reports.”