![Eric Boehlert](https://www.stephaniemiller.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Eric-Boehlert.jpg)
It started in depressing fashion, but the 2020 election season may have officially begun when a right-wing group aired a vicious attack ad last week against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The spot, which aired on a couple of major-market ABC stations the night of a prime-time Democratic debate, featured Ocasio-Cortez’s image being consumed by fire, followed by a black-and-white image of human skeletons in an apparent reference to Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s.