"Making the perfect the enemy of the good."

[Ken Burch]

111. I'm not talking about Bill here as much as I am about the future.

What happened in the Nineties can't be changed. I know that.

But there are things we can do to avoid getting in the situation he was in after 1994 and that Obama was in after 2010 and even more so after 2014

To avoid repeats of that scenario, we need to change several things in how we operate as a party.

1) We need to finally learn how to campaign effectively in mid-terms when we hold the White House. That means actively trying to shape the political narrative before the midterms and then, once the mid-terms are underway, running national campaigns with ads that defend what we've passed and that include people talking about how those measures helped people. These campaigns need to be tough, proud, no apology affairs where we fight just as passionately in defense and support of what we've done as the other party trashes us;

2) If we lose mid-terms, the fightback campaign to retake whichever legislative chambers we've lost needs to start the day after the results are in. If we are compromising with the crazies(assuming anyone on the right will ever be open to compromise again) we need to be getting the message out that, once we've regained our ground, the bad deals will be undone and the poison pills taken out;

3) All aspects of these campaigns must involve grassroots activists and keep them fully in the loop about strategy and proposals. Any victory we win depends on the creation and maintenance of enthusiasm, and actual respect for the grassroots is the only way to get that.