OxBlog

# Posted 1:47 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

ASK AND THOU SHALT (IMPLICITLY) RECEIVE: On Sunday night at 11:30 PM, I tweaked Matt Yglesias for devoting all of his guest-blogging at TPM to the subject of Social Security. What I said was "Now that promoting democracy in Iraq doesn't seem like such a ridiculous notion, the President's critics need a softer target."

Magically enough, at 9:40 AM on Monday, Matt starts of one of his posts by writing that

There is more to life -- and to politics -- than Social Security. Perhaps most crucially -- as this bloody week in Iraq reminds us -- there's national security, the issue that metaphorically killed the Democrats in 2004 and literally kills people each and every day.

If I were Mr. Chafetz, I would lambaste Mr. Yglesias for saying that national security "literally" kills people since "national security" can't literally do anything.

In contrast, Sunni terrorists are quite good at killing at people, especially Shi'ite civilians. In fact, if you click on that link provided by Mr. Yglesias, you can see a picture of a little boy wounded by one of the insurgents' car bombs. (The caption doesn't say whether or not he is Sunni, but then again the terrorists have never been too precise with regard to whom they kill.)

Anyhow, enough of the veiled barbs. Matt's post goes on to say something very important that a lot more Democrats should be listening to:

As the author of an article criticizing the Democratic Party's tendency to try and avoid these issues [i.e. national security] and head for the high ground of domestic economic policy, I must admit to some fears that the party -- and liberalism more broadly -- may be falling into just that trap at the moment...

You can bet that national security will be back with a vengeance in the election cycles to come. And rightly so since there's no government responsibility more fundamental than national defense. To succeed -- and, frankly, to be worthy of success -- Democrats need to get better at tackling this stuff.

Hear, hear.

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