Seeming and Doing

This is quite sharp, I think:

Now that the elections are over, and the Republicans beat up the Democrats pretty badly, everyone is offering advice to both parties as to what to do now.

From conservatives, the advice is pretty much what you might expect:

To Republicans: Stay the course. Don't go overboard (like in 1994), but you have a clear mandate to do some good things.

To Democrats: You're screwed, buddy. :)

But from the left, the advice is much more fascinating. I'm of course paraphrasing what I've heard from different sources, but it seems to boil down to this:

To Republicans: Don't behave like Republicans. Do things Democrats like.

To Democrats: Don't seem like Democrats. Say things moderates like.

I don't know how correct that is, but gosh darn it throws things into perspective.

The funny thing is, I think that's no different from what the Democrats have been doing, and did do, to lose the election. Perhaps it would have been better, my own theory on winning be damned, to just seem like Democrats.

Another viewpoint is, maybe both political parties act that way. In which case, the one thing we can extract from that is, seeming has little to do with how the public makes its choices.

My advice for both sides is still: meet each other. Talk. And stop listening to the fringe.