In starting off the conversation here by asking "What would we do?" Josh made the statement that "opposition can be clarifying." That's right, and the debate over Social Security privatization should be used as a springboard for demonstrating with precision how our vision of the role of government differs from the current leadership's. 

In particular, there are four principles at stake in the Social Security debate that draw a sharp distinction between the progressive and conservative worldview: 1) making the public feel more, not less, secure; 2) producing successful results in the real world, rather than fixating on unproven ideology; 3) serving everyone, not just the upper crust, special interests, or particular demographic groups; and 4) restoring public trust in government, instead of actively undermining it.  

The 2,000-word version of this rap is at the American Prospect Online, but it might help to stimulate debate here if I quickly crank through the gist of argument:

On security:  The central premise of privatization is that Americans' baseline retirement income should depend on how well the stocks and bonds in their accounts perform. Leaving the degree of each American's retirement security to the ups and downs of investment markets is a crystal-clear depiction of the prevailing conservative ideology, which elevates the importance of markets -- with their inherent risks and absence of values -- above all else.

Progressives, in contrast, are looking for ways to cushion American families against the intensified financial pressures imposed by the market forces that conservatives extol. The list includes rising health care costs, decreased job security, less stable family incomes, unprecedented levels of household debt  combined with negligible personal savings, less reliable pensions, and escalating child-care expenses. Because economic globalization and other free-market dynamics are the very source of those strains, the conservative response -- let the market take care for it -- is worthy of ridicule. Progressives have lots of ideas for helping to cushion Americans against those risks -- TPMCafe's very own Elizabeth Warren and Yale's Jerry Mashaw and Michael Graetz are among many liberals who have developed thoughtful proposals. (Mark Schmitt makes the excellent additional point that greater economic security creates more opportunity for Americans).  

Obviously, the word "security" also applies to the public's other main source of fear: terrorism. Bush won mainly because of that issue, and polls continue to show huge margins for conservatives over liberals on the subject. That has to change, and it can. Using the Social Security debate as a springboard, progressives should no longer be undecided about what comes between "It's" and "stupid." Security, security, security.

On results versus ideology: progressives believe in living, learning, and making progress, while conservatives just believe in believing.  Experience and facts demonstrate that Social Security works -- it is largely responsible for reducing poverty rates among the elderly from over 35 percent before 1960 to just 10 percent today. It's administrative costs are less than 1 percent, and people like it. But conservatives want to fundamentally transform a successful system into one dependent on private accounts because they believe that markets are inherently virtuous. Never mind that in other countries that  have implemented similar changes like the United Kingdom and Chile, the outcomes after more than two decades range from disastrous to disappointing.

In the past, many progressives were skeptical when Bill Cinton focused on cutting the federal deficit in his first term after Congress rebuffed the economic "stimulus" package that liberals wanted. But after it became evident that Cliton's 1993 budget agreement triggered years of economic growth so strong that even low-income workers achieved economic gains for the first time in decades, most liberals today are far more concerned about deficits than in the past. Similarly, Clinton was  vilified in many liberal circles for signing the welfare-reform law. Now, because welfare reform produced some undeniably favorable outcomes, progressives are mainly focused on how to build on the most successful state practices for implementing the law. Contrasting the well-established desire of liberals to achieve real-world results with the fanciful theories of conservative ideologues can help progressives win on a range of issues, just as it is helping on Social Security.

On serving everyone: privatization advocates have followed the well-established conservative game plan of trying to drive wedges between different groups of Americans, arguing that Social Security is a bad deal for women, for young people, for African-Americans, for Latinos, and even for gays. On each count they are demonstrably wrong, and liberals have done a decent job of explaining why to those particular constuencies.

But rather than instinctively falling back on the familiar counterpunching routine, liberals should be more forcefully arguing that Social Security is good for all Americans, regardless of gender, race, age, and income level -- and that privatization would be worse for all groups. In addition to being a good deal for everyone after taking into account the insurance protections the program provides, our society is a much better one now than it used to be because there is much less poverty among the elderly.

The broader advantage of emphasizing Social Security's universal attractiveness is to help begin to transform the image of liberals as a loose conglomeration of interest groups with competing and often narrowly defined priorities. Without question, that image is deeply rooted in historical reality and has a lot to do with the long decline of liberalism. But heightened financial pressures -- health care, debt, inadeuqate savings, child care, job insecurity -- do not discriminate by race, age, income, or any other demographic category. The nature of insurance as a solution is that it's most effective and cost-efficient, as Social Security demonstrates, when everyone is covered. Universal initiatives are also inherently more likely to receive sustainable political support, as Harvard's Theda Skocpol and many others have argued.

On restoring trust in government: On the Bamboozlepalooza tour, Bush makes the spurious argument that the Social Security trust fund can not be counted on to sustain benefits for today's workers into the future. Of course, it was Ronald Reagan who in 1983 signed into law the reforms creating today's large and growing trust fund, which he called "an ironclad commitment" to working Americans. Now Bush simply says, "There is no trust."

Conservatives have successfully planted all kinds of rhetorical seeds that have sprouted into pervasive skepticism about government. But now that the right is totally in charge, liberals have an opportunity to reap what conservatives have sown. Starting with the fact-challenged campaign to privatize Social Security, progressives should repeatedly remind the American people how often they have been hoodwinked over the last four-and-a-half years.  Promises have been habitually broken, with Iraq and the budget representing the most significant examples.

The two sentence story that the Social Security debate reinforces is this: Progressives can be trusted to make all Americans feel more secure. Conservatives are dividers, not uniters; they can not be trusted to run the government; they care more about ideology than results; and they value the unpredictability of markets over your personal security.