Reply #43: If I read you correctly ...

[Philostopher]

you have no problem framing the existing values of the left; it's reshaping the values in order to suit people who already vote Republican that bothers you. When framing the message becomes shaping the message (two entirely different actions and motivations), it changes the whole ball game.

I never really thought about it the way the upper reaches of the Dem Party seems to feel it must, but I do 'troll' people I suspect are Republicans, or wobbly Dems who have voted for Bush, because I find it forces them think about how this stuff affects them, personally. I don't talk about issues as partisan issues -- I simply present them as human issues and point out the flaws and fallacies of the way Bush is handling them without being specific, like outsourcing or union-busting (just as examples).

Most of the time, they probably figure out that I'm liberal -- but, at the same time, I'm also pragmatic and rational, and even if they don't agree, they don't feel like they have any right to trample all over me.

But when 'framing the debate' becomes 'shut up and only say what we tell you,' it leaves us little room for adjusting the message on the personal level, and you're right -- nobody has told me what to say since I did my senior class play in high school, and at forty, I'm not about to sit back and say, 'okay, you've lost the last two elections, or at least didn't win them with enough of a margin they couldn't be tilted to the other guy by subterfuge. Please tell me how to speak about my own party, since you've been so successful for the past four years.' That ain't cuttin' it.