Reply #26: There are some good things in that

[forgethell]

post. but if we think the reason we have lost votes is because the conservatives have taken ownership of the "good" words, and stuck us with the "bad" ones, we will never win another election.

Rather than defend the word "liberal", we must defend the ideas that it represents. The election was about ideas, and the conservative's idea won. We tried to pin "Nazi" and "fascist" and "racist" on them, but they didn't stick. They tried to pin "liberal" and other words on us, and evidently they did.

What we need to do is ask ourselves, "why?". Our ideas aren't selling. We can't just assume the conservative electorate is stupid, because they are not. Somehow our ideas are not meeting their needs, and saying they do is not convincing them.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know we didn't find it in November.