I was reading another thread of discussion today where they were talking about how Democrats play into the Republican talking points. Specifically they were talking about how Democrats didn't have any new ideas. This lead me to wonder if maybe the Democrats shouldn't be doing a little Jujitsu with this.
When Republicans attack, saying Democrats have no new ideas, there are two obvious avenues to respond:
- We do so have new ideas (true but whiney)
- Oh yeah well at least we're competent (true but also kinda whiney)
I've found that in politics, usually your best bet is to embrace the accusations of your enemy and use them in your favor. If they say you're angry, say that of course you're angry, you've got a lot of things to be angry about. So perhaps we can use similar jujitsu to turn this notion around. So let's run with this and say that the Democratic party is the party of old ideas.
Think about it.
- Social Security has been around and working for nearly a century now and it's doing a lot of good for a lot of people. With some work it can probably do even more good. That's an old idea, let's work with it.
- Fiscal responsibility. There was a time in this nation's history when running a debt, let alone an enormous one, was unheard of. Maybe we had the right ideas back then.
- International diplomacy. The UN has been around since just after World War 2 and was founded on ideas that came from the US. Why not help this institution become what we envisioned it to be and try to improve relations with our neighbors in the world.
- Education. Remember when schools received reasonable amounts of funding? Remember when college was something a middle income family could afford to have without massive debt?
- Health care. Medicare is the most efficient medical insurance system in the United States. Why not take a good thing and expand it to cover everybody?
You get the idea. The gist of it is, yeah we don't have many new ideas, because frankly, we got the good ideas down over the last century. We don't need radical new ideas, we just need to tweak the ones we already had. Frankly folks, the Democrats should be seen as the new conservative party because we recognize the value of the things that have been done well in the past.