Why we lost the gun debate in the Senate, and why we'll keep losing it.

[Savannahmann]

17. The purpose of this post is not to revisit Gun Control in this Congress, or the next.

It is to wake people up, and let them know we need to take the effort to win. We need to educate ourselves on the issues, not just that the issue exists, but the details that make up the devil. The Gun Control issue was one of the most recent, but hardly unique in the way it was carried out. The RW always brings up constitutional questions about every issue, and we always reply with a poll, or a victim of whatever is being debated. We never take the effort of educating ourselves to the history, the nuances, and the facts that will be mis-stated by the RW. Instead we stand there, or sit there on the TV screen and toss out more statistics, and more victims.

Take the Sequestration issue. Same thing, we paraded forth a long list of things that would be affected by the Sequestration. We quoted statistics, and after parading the victims, we got more victims to parade. We were right, the sequestration would and has affected lots of people negatively. We were wrong, the RW just waited until the public got tired of seeing the parade of victims and weary of the statistics.

We should have attempted public compromises with the RW. Let us cancel three F-35 fighter jets, and that will free up the money we need to keep these hundred programs running. Then the RW has to explain why the F-35 is more important than Head Start to the nation. The RW has to explain why one F-35 is more valuable than Medicare, or Air Traffic Controllers.

The win was right there, if we had done our homework, but instead we relied on statistics and victims to make our case. We showed little Timmy, and talked about how he wouldn't get Head Start if Sequestration went through. We pointed at National Parks with 1 million visitors a year and talked about the suffering of those 1 million. There are more than 300 million Citizens, and they don't give a damn if one out of 300 is disappointed at a National Park that 280 of those 300 have no intention of ever going to.

WE need to do the homework, and we need to learn how to counter the RW arguments. Because I'm tired of losing issue after issue while we shout slogans and statistics and parade the victims.

I'm trying to wake up enough people and get them thinking. Simply replaying our losing plan on every issue is getting tiresome.