Arguing over just taxing and spending still feels too much like "small ball," so to speak.
Conservatives today are animated by an overarching vision that Ronald Reagan first began sketching out more than 30 years ago. Remember all of that talk about a "shining city on a hill"?
Barack Obama today must speak in terms just as evocative not just about why Republicans are wrong — but, more importantly, what he is for.
Clinton did it with his rhetoric about a "place called Hope" and helping those who "work hard and play by the rules."
People understand that. It makes sense to them on a sort of instinctual level.
That's what Obama has to do — now.
He has to describe what he is fighting for, in terms that every day people connect with. Let other Democrats fill in the details and connect the dots to actually make this vision a reality.
Once Obama articulates the kind of uplifting community we all want, and how we plans to bring it about, Republicans will have lost their most potent weapon — because Americans will never want such a decent place cut away into nothing.
Rather, we will have been mobilized to fight like hell to defend it.
The only question is: Does President Obama have such a vision?
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