I've been hearing talk in a number of places opining that the Democrats are
"too reactive". That is, that instead of announcing policy proposals of our own,
taking the initiative on issues, we are merely reacting to whatever gets tossed
our way from the other side. Shouldn't we be ignoring sideshows like Justice
Sunday and Ann Coulter, not letting ourselves get distracted by going 24/7 on
parlor games involving Bolton, DeLay, etc? Shouldn't we use the extra time to
promote our own agenda?

Hell, no.

Let's be blunt, here. The Democrats are coming off a ten-year period of
being spectacularly inept in national politics, and I would chalk a fair amount
of that up to being categorically unable or unwilling to react to thrown
attacks. It's not that Gore lost, or Kerry lost, or the House and Senate have
Republican leads -- all of those things happened by hair's-breadth margins, and
in and of themselves are not very indicative of anything resembling a long-term
catastrophe. What is of more import is the way those elections or particular
legislative agendas have been lost, often times in circumstances where public
opinion was clearly -- unambiguously -- on the Democrats' side. The problem is
-- and this is important -- current national politics has almost nothing to do
with policy.

We're all clear on that, right?

It's not about the facts of the argument, when there is no place where
the facts can be debated. It's not about reasoned discourse -- there aren't any
channels interested in showing that right now. It's not about deciding who has
the better proposals, on a given issue: there's simply no forum to present them
to. Every time I hear a liberal talking about how we need to be more "policy
driven", therefore, I get a bit confused. Isn't that missing every lesson of
contemporary politics? I'd love for our national discourse to be policy driven.
But that hasn't happened, and the Republicans have made it a major strategy to
make sure it doesn't happen anytime soon.

The way the game is currently played is that you, the Democrat, suggest
some new policy; I, the Republican, then hit you with a cinder block, take your
wallet, and declare victory. See in the absurd pronouncements of lobbyist-funded
"think tanks", or watch it live and up-close on Hannity & Colmes, or explore
it at length in the new Calvinballesque rules of Congress -- it's all the same
strategy, if "strategy" can really be applied to such a thing.

So, fine. As a point of carefully considered Democratic strategy, I say it's time to stock up on cinder blocks.

# posted by Jon Easton : 11:33 AM  2 comments