What Politician/Thinker from the "Other Side" Can "Your Side" Learn Most From?

[traininthedistance]

I'd nominate Milton Friedman, on the grounds that a) his idea of a negative income tax/guaranteed basic income would be a more efficient and equitable way to do welfare than what we have now, and b) monetary policy is damn important, arguably more important than fiscal policy.  Those of us on the reality-based left ought to be arguing for monetary stimulus and pro-inflationary policy from the rooftops, especially when fiscal stimulus is a political non-starter, and is admittedly not without its own set of issues.  But, no, we let the goldbug cranks and the myopic creditor class take up all the oxygen in that particular fight.

[traininthedistance]

Gramsci indeed is a good choice, the Frankfurt School, Saul Alinsky.  Personalize, ostracize, frame, shame, and demagogue.  No compromises, no surrenders, no parlays.  No letting up or letting go.  No negotiations - present a list of demands, agitate until they are fulfilled, then, once they are, declare them to be "not enough."

The left instinctually understands this, to their credit[?]  Few members of the "right" do, only Lee Atwater clearly did and beyond him Nixon, Pat Buchanan and Joe McCarthy half-understood it.  Among classical liberals, the choices are even more bleak, you'd pretty much have to go back to Andrew Jackson or John Hancock in the US.

Goldwater.  Someone who stuck to his principles even when it was clearly politically unsafe, and whose policies were always in line with what he believed in.  The modern-day "left" certainly could learn a lesson or two from that.

Seeing these two posts back-to-back is really kind of hilarious.

Especially in how they do a good job of illustrating how the content of each other's posts has a lot more to do with the posters' biases than anything approaching objective reality.