Eric Krol on Rep Bean and taxes

Krol has a column in today's Daily Herald but I can't find a link to it. He writes about a question to wchich U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean simply won't give a definitive answer: should Bush's tax cuts be made permanent.

Democrats need some moderates like Bean but it can't be an easy task running as one today. She should read fellow Democrat Brad Carson's response to
Michael Tomasky's Party in Search of a Notion. One of those notions being common interest.

The "common interest" is fine as a rhetorical ploy. Tomasky's "common good" won't be the Democrats' grand narrative, though. Because, its linguistic utility notwithstanding, the "common good" lacks any real substance and is incapable of doing the important work of prioritizing among (and adjudicating between) competing ideas. In the first 100 days of a new Democratic president, does the "common interest" dictate that we should first do universal health care, welfare reform, or gays in the military? We've been down that road before, and we know the baleful destination already.

The failure of Tomasky is that, like Lakoff, he seems to believe that the problems facing Democrats can be fixed with only a rhetorical shift. "If only we progressive had a Frank Luntz to wordsmith for us," they would seem to say. But the Democrats' problem is far deeper; it is not that they fumble for words, but rather that they have lost their voice.

Dodging questions on taxes no way to find that voice. Voters want and deserve to know your thoughts and criteria for prioritizing and adjudicating the questions before us.