I don't always agree with Kos but he does some damn fine work. I speak of his recent posts on developing a "coherent, unified, statement of values" for the Democratic party (part I here, part II here, part III here.) Doing what he suggests should be the primary focus of those of us who really want to build a sustainable progressive way of doing things. Kos says this:
Related Howard Dean story after the jump.
Writing this just made me think about this story that Howard Dean used to tell on the campaign trail:
They [voters] don't care so much about the issues, but how you arrive at decisions about the issues.He's absolutely right. The way that the party works now assumes that we have to get people to agree with us on our collection issues in order to get their votes. Bad strategy on a lot of levels but particularly when so someone otherwise sympathetic to voting Democrat disagree on something we've made a big deal of. We're screwed, then. If there's no obvious value or principle backing up the position, what, exactly, are we giving them to justify their vote? Take for example, abortion. I'll use this as an opportunity to quote something somewhat-related that Garance Franke-Ruta said on this once:
I expect that male politicians and pundits are not always cognizant of the way that men who are vehemently pro-choice can come across as creepy and irresponsible to some women.It's a great point. There are Democratic women, of whom I'm one, who find abortion distasteful. I'm sympathetic to what Hillary Clinton has been saying lately about how abortion is not a good, rah-rah, sort of thing that we ought to be cheerleading on every corner. But yet these same women will, like me, fight to the death to protect the right to make that choice. Why? There's a salient principle behind the issue. But I can't articulate what it is. Kos puts it under privacy and that's a good start. For the sake of winning elections, there's really nothing more important work that we could be doing than figuring out exactly what it is that we stand for and, more importantly, especially on tough issues like abortion, why we stand it is that we stand for it. Should be job one.
Related Howard Dean story after the jump.
Writing this just made me think about this story that Howard Dean used to tell on the campaign trail:
A little while ago, at a fundraiser, a woman came to me and identified herself as an evangelical Christian from Texas. And I asked her what you may be wondering -- what was she doing at my fundraiser, supporting me?It's just this sort of thinking like that confounds Democrats ready to through Dean overboard for saying dumb things -- many of whom never understood his appeal in the first place. The strong, even fervent, support that he still manages to elicit is a testament to the power of doing things the way that Kos suggests.
And she said there were two reasons she was supporting me. The first was that she and her husband had a child who had poly-cystic kidney disease, and that illness made it impossible for her to get health insurance, either for her child or for her family in the state of Texas.
And the second thing she said was, "But the real reason we're with you is because evangelical Christians are people of deep conviction, and you're a person of deep conviction. And what we want more than anything else, is not that you agree with every conviction, no matter how important that may be; what we want more than anything else is to know that if something happens to our family or happens to our country -- the people in office will act out of deep conviction."
