As a matter of rhetoric, I think Dems should count SS as *won*....

.... and broaden to attack other things, using the SS victory as foundation...

(1) There is no SS crisis - anyone who says there is is a liar. Also, it is well-known that tort reform will do nothing to lower malpractice costs. Tort reform should be called "Freedom From Medical Responsibility".

(2) There is no SS crisis - anyone who says there is is a liar. Similarly, Intelligent Design is not science - anyone who says it is is a liar. ID is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to teach creationism in school, thus incorporating christian theology into our science classes.

and so forth...

keep em on the ropes, I say...

We can get teh American people behind us on Social Security and probably Tort Reform, but I don't think we can get the same kind of support on Intelligent Design. Particularly if, as often happens on here, attacking intelligent design becomes a coded attack on religion itself.

Frankly I don't think Intelligent design is a national issue--in so far as it is trying to be put into our schools it is happening on a regional basis, and that's the basis on which it should be fought.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

By "good" people standing around talking about how irrelevantly provincial the issue is, and not deserving of attention, I say...

LOL - Start a whole "Defense of Science" movement. Don't say word 1 about religion. Just explain in common-sense and convincing terms "the scientific method".

that'd be kewl....

But as for provincial verses national, Its a matter of choosing terrain. I think choosing to fight Intelligent Design on a national stage weakens our arguments in other, more crucial fights, like Social Security, or making the Bush Tax Cuts permenent or Iran. Like it or not that isn't a winning issue for us.

Bryant.

There's lots to choose from, in the dilute-repubs'-strength wheel of fortune... Kinda hard to go wrong in choosing, in fact...

oranges to our apples (our current understanding of what SS reform means). A shell game for sure. If the Bush White House refuses to say what their plan is ... don't you think they do it for a reason?

Let us Democrats talk & write about it using old assumptions. Then boom: the 'real' plan comes out.

This is not a pretty situation. Democrats are currently left spiining in the wind. They don't know the facts. They cannot mount and 'appropriate defence or study' of the Bush Plan.

Read Kevin Drum. Read Krugman. Read Kos. Read Josh Marshall. (There was an awesome lengthy historical editorial in the NYT a month or so ago - anyone recall/have a link to it?)

The facts are perfectly well-known, and well-understood. There is no crisis (check out the eponymous website).

In fact, quite the opposite: Can anyone name a more successful (ie, achieves its stated goals) government program than SS in the history of the United States? Is it of similar scope?

next 75 years in the West because our economies are mature. So the SS may not be as successful. Because World Growth will not favour the US in the first time in 200 years. Other places will be favoured. That being said, I know too that Bush and his cronies need to kill SS in order to kill nanny government for their corporate backers. I also know that they want to institute tax reform.

What I am saying is: give me their facts and their assumptions so that you can take the 'good ideas' if there are any... and disregard the rest. You cannot possible mount a good & strong defense if you do not know what you are dealing with. Know your enemy and know their policy and know their assumptions. Because if they 'barf out' something completely off the wall at the last minute - all of this work by wonderful journalists will have been for naught. I want to know what the Bush assumptions are about the economy. I want to know what the Bush plan is. I think the fact that they keep it secret is proof enough that they think that gives them an advantage - in some way.

I do not want to see Democrats, or people who love their country, or the working poor to be blind-sided.

I think Democrats are over-confident. They know not what they are dealing with.

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I said AS A MATTER OF RHETORIC (or something equivalent, at any rate)...

The point is to lay an initial smackdown (that's done), and then start moving the target, derailing them, forcing them to thin their resources over a number of goals, rather than allowing them to stay consolidated on just one.

In such a way the battle can ACTUALLY be won.

Again - I'm suggesting a RHETORICAL maneuver, to achieve an ACTUAL goal - in case that isn't clear. There's no "false sense of security" on my part - quite the opposite, in fact.

Do you really believe b*sh is not going to give our hard earned SS surplus to Wall Street? Based on what? How do you know?

Your Tort reform statement has no proof. This freedom from medical responsibility slogan contradicts the truth. It sounds more like a Repuke slogan than a Dem or liberal slogan. The logic of it is lazy. When a doctor accidentally cuts off your arm, and then you sue him, how is that freedom from responsibility?

Your information on Intelligent Design (ID) is seriously flawed. ID is actually a Ralien religious fundamental. Do you remember the Raliens? They were the ones who claimed to have cloned a human but lied. They believe aliens from outer space began life on earth and UFOs were the ones who controlled the development of intelligent life. ID was introduced to further the Ralien religion not the Christian religion.

Repukes will not be happy until they own everything and everyone does as they say. If we don't fight them now, when are we going to?

The tort reform stuff is perfectly well-known. Kevin Drum has some stuff on it, and Public Citizen Congress Watch has a lot more.

Um, Intelligent Design is old. Much older than the Raliens. LOL (that's funny as hell tho). Sheesh. Do you recall the old pocketwatch example? If you run across a pocketwatch on a deserted island, you would never think it was the result of random processes, but rather came from an intelligent designing hand? (don't remember who came up with that, but it was like a jillion years ago, by someone who was *specifically* christian.)

Maybe ID didn't *start* from a christian slant, but that's just cuz ID is so much older than christianity. As far as recent times (ie last 500 years or so) are concerned, it's basically a christianity thing though. It's part of the "science wars". Look it up.

"If we don't fight them now..."? Huh? Who's talking about not fighting? Certainly not me....