Has it EVER been a good idea for Dems to be to the Right of the people?

[Ken Burch]

We were on Vietnam in 1968. Arguably the Carter Administration was in 1980 with its insistence on an economic policy based on low inflation first rather than full employment first.

We were in the 90's, when we didn't introduce single-payer health care despite the fact that all the reputable measures of opinion indicated that people wanted it.

And we were in every campaign ever waged against Reagan, when the strategy was always to nominate a bland centrist and paint the Gipper as an extremist...a strategy that left us with a perfect 0 for 4 record.

Why is there still this insistence on timidity and conservatism, this idea that "we'll move AFTER the people move"?

Isn't it time to try SETTING THE TERMS OF THE DEBATE, for once?

We're going to need to when we take the House anyway, so why not now?

[lvx35]

1. Well said! The Iraq war was a perfect demo of your point.

76% didn't want to go in without full UN backing or go in at all. You had about 30% who didn't want to go in at all, more than half the Dem base. Yet the gave Chimpy the right to go in, and what now? Called flip-floppers by the people they supported, put down by the base that voted them in, where did it get them? It got them agreeing with the biggest military screw up since viet nam.