On the Talking Points Memo post, I don’t have the same read that Charley does here. The problem identified by “JB” was not a lack of anti-plutocratic populism — though I think that has been part of the problem underlying the spinelessness of establishment Democrats. Instead, the problem “JB” identifies is much more pervasive and endemic, reaching beyond DC to progressives all over the country — it’s a lack of partisan chutzpah, driven by a misperception about how politics really works.
We Democrats — especially the most liberal/progressive ones — have an unfortunate tendency to see politics as a logic-based exercise. We believe that if we have the best policy arguments, we ought to win elections and have a chance to enact those policies. We care about whether our presidential candidates are good debaters, as though scoring rhetorical points in some sort of Ivy League competition is the point of a televised debate. We want our candidates to be as intelligent as possible, and we wring our hands and decry the state of the republic when the electorate prefers an affable cipher like George Bush or Ronald Reagan. We shake our heads in disbelief when middle- and working-class red-staters “don’t vote their interests” and vote Republican, and we think they’ve been “suckered” or “duped” by “wedge” or “hot-button” issues like abortion or religion or gay rights. We howl when a conservative group attacks, but whether it was McGovern or Dukakis or Kerry, liberals never want to counterattack lest we “sink to their level.” We see politics as a chess match; they see it as a war. We finally win our most decisive presidential victory in 44 years after conservatives destroyed the economy, and rather than deliver on the decisive changes a solid majority of Americans asked for, THIS is the time we pick to attempt a new era of post-partisanship and big-tent cooperation. The dominant mode of Democratic rhetoric and campaigning and governance for the last 60 years has been what we might call “passive-progressive.”
This isn’t necessarily about moneyed interests. This is about a lack of understanding about politics. Elections aren’t about logic; they’re about emotions and values. The supreme irony here is that educated liberals believe that economic behavior is emotional while political behavior is logical, while conservatives believe that economic behavior is logical while political behavior is emotional. This is why they win elections and then enact laissez-faire trickle-down economic policies that are doomed to failure. We have the more sound economic plan but can’t get it enacted.
The ultimate problem is that, when it comes to politics, we still believe in Enlightenment notions of human rationality — even when we embrace the emerging paradigm shift of behavioral economics. But emotion dominates all human endeavors. It’s how we’re wired, even the smartest of us (remember that Isaac Newton lost his fortune when the South Sea stock bubble burst). How could political opinions and voting behavior be any different?
So back to “JB,” the problem the last 3 years has been a hesitation to be too partisan, to upset anyone, to be aggressive — and to pin the blame for the recession on George Bush and the GOP. People like narratives. They like stories with good guys and bad guys. We give them policy lectures, or a story about “hope” and “progress” that has been stripped of any villains (except maybe the occasional unspecified “fat cat”). We learned the wrong lesson from 2008: we didn’t win because we had a positive message and a good policy platform and had a better ground game of volunteers and get-out-the-vote (i.e. the liberal Platonic ideal of How Elections Are Won); we won because the other side really, really, really screwed everything up, from Iraq to Katrina to Lehman. We didn’t give them a villain, and conservatives filled the narrative vacuum — making Obama the villain. Suddenly it wasn’t the shredding of common-sense financial rules that caused the recession, but deficits and over-regulation; it wasn’t reckless tax cuts or military misadventures that ballooned the debt, but liberal “socialism”; it wasn’t Wall Street debt that tanked the economy, but the government debt that was incurred to prop up the banks. We didn’t give people a narrative, and conservatives swooped in — turning the whole story upside-down.
Perhaps we haven’t wanted to blame conservatives for the economy because of a devotion to factual accuracy, but this is politics, not political science. Accuracy isn’t the point. Winning is. Because you only get to govern if you win.
This is what “JB” meant. And this is a problem not only for Obama and Reid and Pelosi, but for all of us. It has doomed Democrats all the way back to Adlai Stevenson. And again: it’s not necessarily about money, or about fighting moneyed interests (though that’s a huge issue in itself, a story for another time). It’s about being willing to fight — going on offense, telling an affirmative story about why we’re right, rather than a defensive apology about why we’re not wrong (or why we’re marginally more right than they are, according to these charts I have right here . . . you get the point). It’s not about the substance — we’re already really good at substance. It’s about how we present it. And while we are usually tempted to spend a lot of time discussing how awful it is that we have this image-obsessed culture, that TV is a plague, that the web is a cesspool, that talk radio is corrosive, that everything is fake, that all people care about is personality, guess what? This is the world we live in. Our withering cultural critiques will not overturn the zeitgeist in time for the next election. Indeed, they haven’t for the last 60 years.
Conversely, this issue is precisely what makes Liz Warren so exciting: not necessarily that she’s willing to make an aggressive case for progressive economic policy, but that she’s willing to make an aggressive case, period. We’ve seen this revived assertiveness begin to rise up from the netroots in the past decade — and now, just maybe, we’ll begin to see it more among prominent progressive candidates. This is the importance of winning a victory for Warren, making her outspoken, no-apologies progressivism a new template for future candidates and the next generation of Democratic leaders.
Scott Brown eating small children for breakfast or Custer’s latest stand on the heritage question.
You’re right. We’re supposed to disagree about things. Democracy is partisanship. And Democrats don’t fight. My biggest criticism of Obama, even more than his conservatism, is that he never fights. He “compromises,” he capitulates. People want our leaders to stand for things and defend them.
I don’t think there were any Progressive accomplishments that weren’t fought for. Civil rights? Great society legislation? LBJ had to beat the crap out of people to get things through. The New Deal? FDR had to threaten to change the Supreme Court (not saying that it was right) to get his way. The thing is, you can win if you don’t play, and playing means fighting. If the individual mandate is voted down by the Supreme Court or the GOP takes over in the next election cycle, Obama will have accomplished almost nothing. He’ll have put out the financial crisis fire and that’s it.
The complicating problem is that the Republicans are not afraid to blow up democracy to win. They are willing to lie, misinform, and generally prevent the electorate from getting a good look at the facts.
… the problem with the GOP, which has gradually become worse and worse over the past 40 years or so, is they seem to have lost any sense of democratic restraint. It makes our job a bit more difficult because we have to defend our own policies plus the entire system itself — and talking about process is among the most powerful sedatives known to man. Plus their misbehavior reinforces our worst tendencies. When they care more about scoring political points than upholding the national credit rating … when they are actually encouraging their supporters to shoot opposing politicians … it’s easy for us to say with some self-satisfaction that we’re going to take the high road. We trick ourselves into thinking that the other side is so brazen that they’ll be punished by voters or the media, then we get exasperated when no one seems to care. But we spend more time being outraged than we do making our affirmative case.
Self-satisfaction is what progressives are all about, and to do that, you are required to believe that you, and only you, occupy the cosmic, utopian moral high ground. Any logic assault on that belief, therefore, is just dirty political point-scoring, “misbehavior,” and loss of “democratic restraint,” whatever you mean that to be.
Our respective fundamental national hopes and aspirations, I believe, are quite tightly aligned, but progressive are unwilling to admit to this even partially. It disrupts your moral superiority. You can’t have that for it is the foundation of your entire value system. Hence the progressive fall-back to name-calling and demonizing…e.g., the GOP getting “worse and worse over the past 40 years.”
Conservatives are willing to engage in debates how to achieve these common national goals, but progressives are hesitant or even unwilling, perhaps being unable to bear “defending your own policies plus the entire [progressive] system itself.” Admitting that progressive don’t necessarily hold all the keys to knowledge and possess all the righteousness is, well, progressive heresy.
(I use the voter ID issue. Minimizing illegal voting and upholding voting rights are not mutually exclusive. Yet any mention of culling voter lists or requiring some form of ID send progressives into outer space. Come on, there are functional ways of achieving both. For saying this, I have been labeled “despicable” and an “evil troll.”)
You know, sometimes people just want to left alone to live their lives, enjoy a 10-oz. cheeseburger (medium-rare,) buy health insurance if they want, and drink Coke out of Big Gulps.
If one wants to see the antithesis of this, they need only to read this fascinating thread. It’s a self-satisfying, intellectual circle-jerk
And apparently rightness or wrongness of policies have nothing to do with any of this.
There’s no possibility progressives are ever wrong, the voter ID issue, for example. You’re right, everyone else is wrong. And evil for debating with you.
I want voting rights upheld. I also don’t want people who are not allowed to vote to cast a vote.
Note to bostonshepherd: seascraper is not a liberal.
And of course we’re close-minded! We persist in having views with which you disagree. How dare we! How dare we!
I’m all for that, and the spirited resentment-free policy debate that follows, if allowed.
Seascaper, whatever his political stripes, is making my point: for progressives, it’s about the messaging, not the “rightness or wrongness of policies.” (More accurately, I’d say policy outcomes.)
That’s bullshit.
This is a thread on messaging. And by golly, what a surprise, it’s on messaging!
But since BMG is an open forum and opposite viewpoints are bound to be expressed, I would think you would relish the opportunity to defend the progressive point of view. That assumes, of course, that you believe it needs defending.
If it’s Case Closed, then yes, it’s all about the messaging. “The science is settled.”
We’re right and they’re dumb is an effective strategy.
don’t accuse their discursive opponents of participating in a ” a self-satisfying, intellectual circle-jerk.” I mean, why would they? Wouldn’t they just shut up and peddle their fish where the circle was more open?
As KBusch suggests, you fail to see things from our point of view and therefore we are close-minded. Freud called the phenomena projection.
A better example than you (all around) is Don’t Get Cute. Although many dismiss him as a troll, I took his incessant comments on the heritage issue as his trying to reconcile the fact that we see the issue from different perspectives. He thinks he’s right and can’t see how we disagree. I think he’s honest about that. I think he was really trying to reconcile our perspectives.
You, on the other hand, reduce these irreconcilable viewpoints to our character flaws. That’s why, more often than not, you’re not worth talking to.
Being a conservative in Boston requires that I defend my conservative beliefs ALL THE TIME. It challenges my thinking, and forces me to prove to myself why I believe what I do.
I often don’t find that type of engagement here. It’s more like I’m listening to a crossed-line telephone call…”those awful conservatives,” etc. etc., i.e., the way this thread developed. And comments like “That’s why, more often than not, you’re not worth talking to.”
Don’t get me wrong. Some conservative blogs do exactly the same.
in your comment sometime. Then, count the number of times you ignore what the other person is saying.
Then you’ll know why I say, more often than not you’re not worth talking to.
That comment is aimed at you. Not all our conservatives.
… that might just be an immunity to reason…
Siddhartha is a novel by Herman Hesse: it is about a young man who sets out to find the truth about something he thinks he already understands; his failures end up showcasing his early, youthful, arrogance; only then does he learn.
Your path is similar. You already have decided to defend your ideas — not test them, but defend them — against all influences. Your mind is made up.
You’re not willing to be contradicted, and you’re frustrated with our unwillingness to bow down to what you see as obviously superior reasoning.
But it just isn’t superior reasoning. It’s inferior. It’s decidedly sup-par. It simply is bad thinking.
I could tell you why I know this, but you would refuse to accept it. I could explain my education, which I guarantee is broader, deeper and longer than yours, but you would then accuse me of braggadocia… perhaps even with some justification. But you have already refused to change your mind, under any circumstances: even the circumstances in which you are wrong.
I enter every discussion with the possibility that I am wrong. Sometimes this has been proven to a painful degree… but more often, my arguments are strengthened and sharper, not because I’m defending something that I’ve pre-ordained, but because I’m discovering exactly what I think by debate. It’s a process.
Debate involves the possibility of admitting you might be wrong, or adjusting your views, or including some new nuance you hadn’t appreciated before.
Education ought to be a process of appreciating how *little* you know. That’s what drives me nuts about Sarah Palin and Reagan, for instance; they didn’t know much, and because of that, they doesn’t even appreciate why what they didn’t know might be important.
(BTW, there is nothing particularly “conservative” about that mindset, necessarily; I’ve known ignorant liberals who didn’t think they needed to know what they didn’t know. These days it happens to be prominent on the right, but doesn’t have to be.)
Usually bostonshepherd engages in a brand of eloquent insult. Actual arguments are hard to come by, and then when he’s short on- or outright wrong on facts, he likes to change the subject.
He’s not stupid. But I wish there were a higher thesis:ad-hominem ratio.
Sorry to have dragged this discussion off track, I should have written better.
Political beliefs are formed 95% by life experience. Liberals may over-rely on logical or reasonable constructs but that is what has worked in their lives.
Conservatives have a million other problems but are able to call on history and tradition as well.
What succeeds as a political argument at a certain time in history has only to do with the actual conditions on the ground, and the whether the useful experience in the life of the candidate shows up at the right time.
For instance, immigration will work in the USA if the private economy is growing fast enough to provide expanding opportunities for everybody. Anybody who is in favor of expanding immigration, or amnesty now, is going to get squashed by the fact that the economy can’t support it. That won’t change their beliefs of course, but they will just lose the election.
Generally, advice from one’s political opponents about how to improve one’s conduct of politics is uninteresting and unhelpful. Further, a discussion among liberals about how to contend better in the political arena is going to make assumptions about policy. Why? Because this is not a discussion about policy! Who knew? Well, people paying attention knew.
On BMG, by the way, this miffs conservative commentators because such a discussion really leaves them out. Liberals and conservatives can indeed have productive discussions about policy, but no liberal cares what died in the wool conservatives think about Democratic messaging. Such conservatives are not the target of that messaging and they want it to fail anyway.
Lambs do not ask wolves for security advice.
If I may venture into ad hominem, it is also absurdly ironic that bostonshepard who frequently visits us from the land of epistemic closure (“Don’t quote the New York Times to me!”) should be lecturing us about our “self-satisfaction”.
I’m not advising you on anything. Keep doing what you’re doing.
Libertarians and conservatives are more willing to debate policy and its assumptions. But not progressives. Not really. To you, it’s all about the messaging because, well, the policy is settled in the progressive mind.
Settled science. Only the messaging matters, so it boils down to lambs versus wolves, right? Good versus evil.
To apply this to recent events in Wisconsin, I hear progressives give every possible excuse for their debacle…it’s the Kochs, it’s Citizens United, it’s about the money, the messaging let us down, the transit of Venus. But never “hey, maybe the policy was wrong.” Just that it’s the end of democracy.
Keep doing what you’re doing.
That was not born out by the last Republican Administration. Many observers reported that, at the highest levels, the Bush Administration debated politics never policy. Karl Rove was head of domestic policy, wasn’t he? His qualifications for that were precisely what? I’ve even did a comparison once. Read it at http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2010/06/red-v-blue-comparison/ . So no, you’re wrong. Completely, demonstrably, empirically, totally wrong. You guys discuss policy much less than we do.
Anyway, this stupid debate shows up every time a thread on messaging appears on BMG. It should be in a FAQ or something.
I remain an advocate of the past participle.
… is faulty. Plenty of progressives (at least those who understand and care about the process of electoral politics) have been discussing the hard lessons learned in Wisconsin. Two of the most important are:
1. It was a huge error to have started the recall process when they did. Because the election was held in June, the youth vote was way down as compared to 2008 (and I believe 2010, as well), college students having all gone home. Had the election been held in the fall, it would likely have been much closer.
But, that said …
2. 60% of those polled in exit polls stated that they believe that recall elections should only be held if there has been official misconduct.
Now, I guess I’m in the minority, because I think that there are other reasons to hold a recall election, but … based on the polling data, at least, Walker’s recall may very well have been overreach. There, you’ve now heard a progressive say it.
who dislike the governor and everythbing he stands for, adamantly oppose the public sector union moves, but voted for him anyway because they don’t like recall elections?
but a number of sources do indicate that there were indeed voters who objected to the recall effort principally.
Given how elections in this country now seem to take over your television and telephone, dreading elections makes sense.
Exit polling showed that, despite Walking winning the election handily, had Obama vs. Romney been on the ballot, Obama would have won handily. I can’t imagine that too many people who are predisposed to vote for Obama would have voted for Walker because they liked his policies. The two men’s policies and philosophies are nearly diametrically opposed. That being the case, I think it’s reasonable to surmise that there was a small but significant portion of the electorate that disliked Walker’s policies but felt that a recall election was unwarranted on the principle that, while they may disagree with him, he hadn’t engaged in official misconduct.
Can I prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt? Of course not. But the exit polling strongly suggests it.
The exit polling saw very significant error. Very unreliable. I would wait until some analysis is done on the actual vote count.
I bet you a latte it’s tied in Wisconsin.
I’m assuming you mean the Obama vs. Romney race. If so, I’ll take that bet (though I’m not really a latte drinker; I’d much rather make it a pint). Real Clear Politics is currently showing the race as Obama +4.8 and that aggregate includes a Rasmussen Reports poll, which undoubtedly skews things a bit toward Romney.
That’s a lie, unless its among themselves. Can we get Brown to have a town hall event? Can we get Romney to have a free exchange of ideas in an arena where he isn’t surrounded by “like-minded people?” And if you think for one second that all that noise that spills out of the mouths of the Tea Party is debate then you are using the word debate the way an angry mob uses bricks.
I’ll take settled science over settled religion any day.
A political campaign is not debate, and everything you’ve said about Scott Brown and Mitt Romney applies to Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren.
A Tea Party rally is a one sided affair by design. BTW, have you ever been to one?
But I thought BMG was more than an on-line version of a progressive Tea Party rally.
worth discussing, mostly because they can’t seem to move out of campaign mode. They (you) aren’t interested in debate; every time you try it you lose.
I am willing to believe that the Tea Party rallies are one-sided affairs because the Tea Party congress is a one-sided affair. Even Jeb Bush thinks they are nuts. When offered $10 in budget cuts for $1 in revenue all 8 or 9 republican presidential candidates said “no.” Why debate an idea when saying no to any idea is so much more fun. Obama has had a one-sided debate with congress for 4 years that ends in compromises that the righties won’t accept. So give me a nudge when the debatin’ starts.
I have to say I think that’s an unhealthy attitude. Liberals are not immune to cognitive biases. My prescription: liberals at least once a week should read some conservative whom they actually respect. And no, trolling Tea Party sites, Red State, or even Red Mass Group doesn’t count. Part of the assignment is looking for such conservatives.
from this batch of conservatives that is worth entertaining. What-return to the gold standard? Cut taxes on the wealthy to create jobs? Unleash the free market? Mises? They are all about burning the village in the name of saving it. The thing is, all the good conservative ideas were purged with the so-called moderates when they had their little hazing party in 2010. Its to find one that isn’t co-opted by Tea Party media.
I didn’t say this batch of conservatives. I said find some conservative somewhere whom you respect and read him or her regularly. There really are bright, insightful, informed people who are conservative.
If you can’t find such conservatives, you risk letting your thinking descend into a kind of robotic and uninventive liberalism.
No thanks. You debate boston shepherd. That is if he’s not too busy arguing the need for voter suppression.
really.
but not sentences.
far too concerned that there are equal numbers of conservative and progressives angels on the head of that pin.
BTW:did you notice who left the “debate?”
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unpack that.
That’s simply not true.
Take congestion pricing, for example. Many progressives support the idea these days just as many conservatives oppose it. Its first big trial was in London under the famously liberal mayor “Red” Ken Livingston. But it was ogininaly a libertarian idea — charging people based on their use in order to regulate (and fund) something. Just as cap and trade, now supported by progressives, was originally a conservative idea.
As a proud progressive, I don’t agree with all that many libertarian or conservative ideas, but they do have good ones on occasion. If we’re going to be a truth-based community, we should be able to admit that.
I’ve learned something tonight. congestion pricing, eh. Libertarian you say. OK. The PPACA is fundamentally a collection of conservative ideas – many of them good ideas. And now conservatives – all conservatives – oppose it. You and Kbusch may want to discuss the history of conservative ideas. I do not see the relevance.
Alas, it appears that I am the troll. But if you are going to tell me that I speak in phrases, not sentences (oh I get the drift) and I’ve missed the point, then you ought to have the decency to enlighten me. After all, its what you do.
..
There is, I daresay, a vast ocean of difference between such things as ‘standing up’, ‘defending’ and ‘fighting’. But you don’t recognize this difference: You have, in other words, come dangerously close to defining ‘fighting’ as the only way to get your way…
Perhaps it is the only way. You can still count me out.
But I don’t think that it is. The Republican tactic of fighting over EVERYTHING is just a simple and easy way to introduce irrationality and emotionalism into the situation… a way for people to turn off their thinking machines and to feel a certain thrill about it. Once you introduce the sensuous thrill of arching your back, digging in your heels and crying ‘once more into the breach’, no matter the rightness or wrongness of your cause there is something lost.
In addition, I think our journalism has devolved into an inarticulate capitulation to this view: they simply are incapable of a simple description of the matter in any other way but that which acknowledges the most flash and heat and light. Perhaps, to them, there is no other way…
Nor, do I think, that ‘disagreement’ means, automatically, fighting.
Exactly.
But… under any scenario in which one party is willing to ‘blow up democracy to win’, nobody… most especially the bomber… actually wins. I mean, think about it… what’s the end game here? But our journos are caught up in the actual struggle and, frankly, the delight in the tactics used that they fail to ask that simple question: ‘what’s the likely outcome?’
Yes, Democrats still operate, it seems, from some kind of Enlightenment view about Reason, and the want to tell stories without villains, hence very boring stories.
But what you write about narrative and emotion and framing and persuasion, none of that’s news to the world of academic psychology. It’s even kind of standard and ho-hum. But if it’s standard and ho-hum, why isn’t the Democratic machinery making use of it? The implicit explanation your essay seems to offer is that the DNC, most candidates, consultants, and operatives are stupid: they just refuse to operate from a modern understanding of how people make decisions. Could it really be as simple as a willful and not-so-bright attachment to non-working ideas?
*
Two other factors to consider, by the way: (1) Polling shows that Republicans/conservatives hate compromise because it means selling out on principles. It also shows Democrats, moderates, and liberals like compromise because it shows a loyalty to the greater good. (2) The Republican are overwhelmingly conservative by self-identification. The Democratic party is, at best, split between moderates and liberals. Most of the time, polls show more moderates than liberals.
Polling has turned up a fair number of Democratic-leaning voters in Wisconsin who thought the recall stuff had gone too far.
Would that the Democratic-leaning were all pugnacious liberals, but they aren’t.
at least for a majority of voters who matter — the swing voters. It’s frustrating to those who believe that the person with better policy ideas should win, but that’s the way things are. If this is not something you can deal with, then you need to find another line of work.
Obama won in part because he’s a great campaigner and gives great speeches, while McCain is dull. Not the only reason but one important one. Democrats won in 2008 because finally they picked the best candidate, not the one with the best resume on paper or whose turn it was. I’m not sure a dull, boring Deval Patrick could have won in ’06 with the same strategies and platforms.
It’s not just making the case but making the case in a way that connects with people. In the current environment especially, Democrats need candidates who are gifted in communicating and connecting, because it is is easier to stir up fear and anger in an era of declining standards of living than it is to counteract those forces once unleashed.
I’m sure Marisa DeFranco was ready to make an aggressive case for progressive values as well. Elizabeth Warren is so exciting not only because she sticks to her guns, but she does so in a way that gets things done and inspires others to join her cause. I know many voters who admired the way she kept her cool while testifying in Washington despite the shabby way she was treated. So it’s not necessarily about being the loudest and most aggressive. There’s more than one way to make an emotional connection with voters, but above a certain level, it’s usually necessary. I haven’t seen it necessary in statewide races Ike attorney general — which may help explain why our last few AGs who ran for higher office didn’t do so well.
… is more what I was driving for. Emotional and narrative-driven vis-a-vis logical and data-driven. But otherwise agreed.
I for one am more than happy to debate how to best address issues facing our society, but we have to agree on some basic facts. If someone wants to debate how best to meet the challenges of climate change, I’m game, but if the other side starts by denying that climate change exists then suddenly I’m not so interested.
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It’s kind of a false dichotomy to say that either politics is driven by reason or politics is driven by messaging. Voters are driven by their emotions, but messaging is an incredibly tiny factor in what sways people’s emotions. Obama won in 2008 because the economy was bad, and Republicans won in 2010 because the economy is still bad. The economy isn’t the only factor, and you can reasonably say that Republicans outperformed expectations in 2010, but messaging is a small factor. It is difficult for political junkies to realize how very little most people (especially swing voters) pay attention to politics, and thus how little messaging actually trickles down to them.
Whoever wins or loses elections is something largely outside our control. (Although we should certainly do what we can to nudge numbers a few extra points where we can.) As such, the point of political discussions should not be to win over voters, but to better understand the truth through “judicious study of discernible reality” so that when power cycles around to us, we can actually use it correctly. That means good old fashioned “reality-based discussion” and rational arguments.
I have been saying this for years now, particularly on this forum. We can go way back to what attracted me most to Deval Patrick. Initially it was not his post-partisanship but his willingness to fight for progressive causes when presumed frontrunner Tom Reilly couldn’t even take a stand on gay marriage, cape wind, or universal healthcare or any issue. Similarly this is why Coakley lost, its not because she was too liberal for the general electorate, its because, like Reilly, she didn’t know how to be a fighter and actually stand for these principles.
This is also why I was initially attracted to Warren, but like many progressive candidates in the past, even if her positions are not being watered down her personality is. We need a real fighter not another milquetoast egghead. Warren needs to get back into fighting mode, the President finally has and his numbers are going up, and will definitely go up once people contrast the conventions and debates and see Romney as a stuffed suit like Kerry and see Obama as a fighter like Bush (with an actual record of competency and enlightened principles of course)