The Timeline's Too Short

Yes, the policies that started the Mexicanization on America began roughly thirty years ago, but the boots-on-the-ground mechanisms that formulated and promulgated the policies were another decade in the making, and they should remind us that very little happens as a matter of policy in our country without a great deal of premeditation, and that to win the policy wars, it's essential to win the messaging wars. (It shouldn't have to be that way, of course, but in a political climate where discourse is driven largely through the filter of network TV, it's pretty much inescapable.) That's something that liberals have never been particularly good at---though "Change We Can Believe In" was one of our catchier marketing campaigns---and since the crazy people have already got a monopoly the fear side of the ideas market, we need to do a better job of appealing to voters' collective aspirational psyche, using easily grasped terms to which everyone can relate. So in the future, as an example, instead of pitching our policies with nebulous catch-phrases like "public option" and "affordable care," why not try the more inclusive and understandable "Medicare for all" instead? Just trying to be helpful here.

---Baron V