All of the many millions of people in our nation are affected by our federal government, for good or ill depending on whom we elect. In many cases -- as with deployment of our military, elder care and health care -- life and death, privation and despair, hang in the balance of their decisions. The stakes could hardly be higher.
Hence progressives must not shrink before a fight, nor hesitate to prevail. Though the facts are on our side, we must not get lost in a blizzard of detail nor allow ourselves to be defined by our opponents. These are elections not dissertation defenses. They call for clear, direct, concrete language.
Our opponents will bring the full arsenal of rhetorical tricks to this contest: straw men, ad hominems, tacit assertions, mockery, needling, quick questions that call for complex answers, false dichotomies, exaggerated expert disagreement, bandwagon appeals, slippery slope arguments, misleading metaphors, and on and on. Being similarly armed in this high stakes fight is a small price to pay for the public good that victory can bring.
So long as -- and this is a critical caveat -- we faithfully and aggressively implement our own agenda, and do not use the moral and factual deficiency of our opponents to cover a failure on our own part.
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