In Search of a Common Language

("Why Does Only One Party Play By the Rules?")

We hold this truth to be self evident for the Republicans: truth, like Elvis, has left the building. Or, at least, it is outside taking a cigarette break.

And thus how, the Democrats ask each day, do you prepare to argue against fiction, or at least the possibility of fiction, at every turn? 

Issues like climate change, immigration, trade wars, Russia, voter suppression, health care, taxation, even Supreme Court vacancies all become battles to establish a common language before substance can be debated.

Truth does no favor to Republican positions on virtually all matters of import and so Mr. Trump, in his singularly crude way, has provided his party with ready example and excuse to fabricate. Follow the leader because obfuscation and misdirection is a strategy that fits this party like a glove.

Campaigning has always been about framing, about pushing facts to their logical extremes in your direction. But when facts become fungible, framing becomes impossible.

And 2020 is likely to be as much a tug of war of what it is we are actually debating as it is about whose proposals are more worthy. For if we focus our debate on whether climate change is a reality, we may well never get to the question on what to do about it.

Which is just the answer the Republicans are looking for.