what I believe

(correction appended)

I believe that this campaign has gone negative because there's something dangerous in letting people talk about the positive. Some people benefit from the negative framing. Some people benefit more from the positive framing.

If you're for universal health care, you're better off talking about what we want, not what we don't want.

If we really want change, we need to articulate what change.

We should talk about what we want, not what we don't want.

We could talk about what we do expect, not what we won't accept.

This might sound like a really minor point, but it really really isn't.

When you flip your language around, you can see why the* women of color and the white women are ripping the feminist boards* apart: instead of defining what they want (which leads to how do we get that), they are basically fighting over who gets to own the word discrimination, and hence the right to decide what it means.

When you flip your language around, political agendas become clear. Do people defend abortion because they want to see zero babies killed? Do people defend affirmative action because they believe it eradicates discrimination and poverty?

When you flip your language around, the real difference between HRC and BHO becomes much more obvious.

* that should have been some women ripping some boards, not spoken as if it were universal. My bad.