"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" - John Lennon.
In a time long ago and far away, I was a debate coach for Cass City High School, a small town in the thumb of Michigan. I helped guide the debate to their highest finish in the school's history, 3rd place in the state (Class C Division).
We had much fewer resources than other schools. This was long before the days of the internet and google. The library either carried the magazines and books we needed. Or it didn't.
We had to be smart. We had to be clever. Our affirmative team had one case, and they knew it backward and forwards, and they displayed supreme confidence when presenting it. Our negative team had a sneer and disdain that would poke holes in any case presented. They knew basic arguments, and a similar logic, that they could use to smear any case presented.
The negative team was two people, one male, and one female, who were the brightest kids in school, really two of the brightest kids I ever knew. Even without being armed with the jillions of quotes of other teams. In fact, the simplicity and quickness of their strike, the tightness, and cleverness of their language and style, made them almost impossible to beat.
The affirmative was good enough not to drag us down. The negative team was the reason we achieved our best finish ever.
Maybe it wasn't fair. It's so much easier to be negative than positive. That and the fact that I had two of the smartest kids in the state on it made our rise pretty easy.
It's so much easier to be negative. Ever do family traveling with a kid, who, when asked where he wants to eat, says, "I don't care. Wherever you want to." And then when you go by specifics places, the kid trashes it and tells you why that one is not where they want to go?
That's where we're at in the Democratic primary. Everybody's whining for specific plans, and then when they get them, sniping at them for not being perfect.
I love Elizabeth Warren. I am a dedicated member of Team Warren. I believe she represents the very best interests of working people and has the smarts, abilities, persistence, and persuasion to get the job done. But, both fortunately and unfortunately, she has plans. Lots of them.
Most of her plans are very, very good. They represent a blueprint to a better way forward. Without them, she may not have caught fire and moved up in the polls.
That works until you are perceived as a frontrunner. Then people will start sniping at your plans. Having detailed plans invites your opponents to stab and stab and stab and, if necessary, misrepresent them, so you have to spend all your time in a defensive posture.
This is why so many times our party nominations are won by the fluffiest, those who are inexact and full of platitudes. Make America Great Again? What does that even mean? Secret plans to end wars? Replacing Obamacare with something better, but I'm not gonna tell you what that is? We need to replace Washington insiders because...shiny and new is better?
We say we want substance. And yet, time and time and time again, WE DON"T VOTE THAT WAY.
It's so easy to say you want to do something better. It's much more difficult to present something to get us there.
Some of the Democrats are bold and decisive in moving us to universal healthcare. Others have more vague or incremental plans, and they feel free to snipe and undermine those who are more exact. I won't name any names. Still, there are candidates who have abandoned Medicare For All and decided instead to concentrate on handing Republicans negative talking points about it on a silver platter. And, for at least for one candidate, switching from advocating hope to playing up fears on healthcare, that strategy is actually working. Huh. Maybe it's my negative debater all grown up.
The topic that year I was debate coach?
Resolved: that we should adopt a single-payer national health care program.
That was in 1978.
Yep. When it comes to sniping at plans, health care takes the prize.
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