this is not meta. this is not du. this is not whining. .... this is our political party.

[el_bryanto]

39. People use different techniques to get their message across

Whatever that message happens to be - sometimes those techniques or tactics are effective at convincing me and sometimes they aren't - but they presumably work on other people.

Having a discussion about what issues we support - i think it could be useful, but it is probably going to be problematic. We all have different issues that we 1) care about, 2) know about, and 3) are able to communicate passionately about.

On top of that you have to consider what we might consider baseline issues - issues you don't have big arguments over or passionate arguments on because you assume they to be baseline issues; any serious democratic candidate will have the right position on those issues.

One methodology might be to take a set of issues - and then ask the following questions.
1. Is this a baseline issue for you - i.e. you wouldn't vote for any candidate who didn't share your position on it?
2. Is this an issue that you care deeply about and think about often? (if an issue is a baseline issue, you probably care about it a great deal, but you might not think about it that often).
3. Is it an issue that you know a fair amount about?
4. Is it an issue that you are able to argue about passionately (which is probably just a reflection of 2 and 3)?

I do agree that most of us have generally liberal views; one of the things that sets me off is when some one argues essentially that DU is full of conservatives who aren't really liberal, because they aren't paying attention to the specific issue they want to talk about.

And I do appreciate your posts - I don't always agree, but think they are always worth reading.

Bryant