Brian Beutler says moderates should stop worrying that the Real Americans are going to run for the hills: The implicit premise, familiar to every Democrat in politics, is that Republicans will declare all progressive ideas “socialism” whether their contents or proponents are socialist or not. One school of liberal thought holds that Democrats should thus downplay these kinds of ideas—avoid bad-faith GOP backlash and seize the center through the absence of controversy. Another holds that Democrats can defeat Republicans in a contest to define the issues. As a liberal politician, you can run away from the idea of universal school lunch, because Republicans will call it socialism, or you can run toward it, while persuading people that it isn’t socialism, it’s neighborliness. If you opt for the latter, you can go a step further by noting that stripping free lunch from hungry children, or making school lunch programs a source of stigma for the children of poor parents, are ideas that only animate people of troubling character. Free school lunch won’t take us down the road to serfdom, but hating free school lunch is pretty weird. Walz has provided Democrats a replicable template for the latter approach. None of his competitors can say the same. It’s why Harris was right to pluck him out of obscurity and why moderates should rest easy that the two of them have a solid theory of victory. I think Brian’s theory of the case is correct. This re-framing of the issues is long overdue…