Are Dems Too "Reactive"?

Hunter at DKos offers some excellent points today - he often does - that I think are worth a shout out. Here's a serving, but go read the entire thing.

A minor point for discussion: I've been hearing talk in a number of places opining that the Democrats are "too reactive". That is, that instead of announcing policy proposals of our own, taking the initiative on issues, we are merely reacting to whatever gets tossed our way from the other side. Shouldn't we be ignoring sideshows like Justice Sunday and Ann Coulter, not letting ourselves get distracted by going 24/7 on parlor games involving Bolton, DeLay, etc? Shouldn't we use the extra time to promote our own agenda?

Hell, no.

Let's be blunt, here. The Democrats are coming off a ten-year period of being spectacularly inept in national politics, and I would chalk a fair amount of that up to being categorically unable or unwilling to react to thrown attacks. It's not that Gore lost, or Kerry lost, or the House and Senate have Republican leads -- all of those things happened by hair's-breadth margins, and in and of themselves are not very indicative of anything resembling a long-term catastrophe. What is of more import is the way those elections or particular legislative agendas have been lost, often times in circumstances where public opinion was clearly -- unambiguously -- on the Democrats' side. The problem is -- and this is important -- current national politics has almost nothing to do with policy.

Agreed.