Which is why I don’t talk about “climate change” any more – I talk “global heating.” I don’t talk about the environment except with friendly audiences – I talk about clean air, clean water, and public health. “National security” is a little trickier to reframe in Democratic Party-boosting terms, but I’ve been thinking about how the Democrats could use “national power” to their advantage. And purging “War in Iraq” in favor of “Iraqi Occupation” would go a long ways to getting the citizenry even more fired up against the occupation.

One big problem is that people with great ideas (like how to reframe conservative-serving frames to liberal-serving ones) are shut out of the policy-making and advisory apparatus. I tried several times to get myself insinuated into the Center for American Progress and failed miserably – they never even returned my emails. It seems that, generally speaking, if you haven’t paid your dues in the party grass and you haven’t spent decades cultivating contacts (or having Mommy or Daddy’s contacts on speed-dial), you’re SOL. The recent explosion of blogs showing influence over the process has offset this somewhat, and with a little luck blogs like this one will level the playing field even more.

Why in the hell can’t the Dems learn from the Repubs and reframe the hot buttons for their own purposes – make the talking points campaigns about, oh, “where do you stand on the environment?” and “what can we do to end the war?”

At least we’d be addrssing issues worth worrying about at present, then…