All apologies to Carville, but he got it wrong.
It's not the economy. It's the Community, stupid.
Our basic expectation as citizens is that our government exists to support and care for our community.
We live in communities, which include economic activities, but also other stuff like raising children, caring for aging parents, being with friends and neighbors, being near to the people and places we love. And worshipping, by the way, let's not forget that, because it's important.
Not the economy, or rather, not just the economy.
This is the one-line answer to every single Republican corporatist attack on progressive ideas: "It's the Community, stupid." Granting many of the theoretical merits of their economic arguments, still, "it's the Community, stupid" and what do you propose to do about that?
For instance, it's all well and good to tell me that GM is run by morons (this is a surprise?) and needs to be restructured for it's own good. But, hey, McConnell, you just put 47,000 people out on the street a week before Christmas - it's the Community, stupid. What are you doing about it?
Free trade is great in theory. Until the jobs that support a Community get shipped to China - it's the Community, stupid, and what are you doing about it?
It's the Community, stupid.
And, by the way, it can help blow apart the Republican stranglehold on right-wing evangelical Christians, because a part a lot of what may be motivating them is a loss of that sense of community. It will be a wedge, splintering those who are more evangelical from those who are more right-wing.
This has been bugging me for a while, and it just crystallized. This should be our simple, plainspoken truth:
It's the Community, stupid.