The debate here at TPM Cafe over Hostile Takeover has now moved into the second clause of the book’s subtitle – "how we take it back." It’s an important question – and as I told the Jobs Now Coalition in St. Paul today, I wouldn’t have included that clause if I wrote the book 10 years from now, as I believe if we don’t act now, we won’t ever be able to take it back.

There are three parts to analyze here: what the politics of taking our government back look like, what the policies look like and how to actually implement those policies.

1. How We Take It Back - The Politics

In his latest post, Ruy Teixeira is focused only on the politics not the policy, which is understandable – he’s a public opinion analyst, and we certainly need good politics and good policy if we are to fight the hostile takeover. He makes some good points about how "the key weakness of the progressive coalition is very weak support among white working class voters." Where he goes wrong is in distorting/misinterpreting poll numbers and Hostile Takeover's proposed prescriptions.

For instance, Ruy correctly acknowledges that polls show voters in general and white working class voters in particular "are already quite hostile to big business, believe corporations are taking unfair advantage of the system and think Bush and the Republicans push corporate interests over and above that of the public's." He also correctly notes that "Democrats have been doing especially poorly among white working class voters." But he then concludes that that means "clearly, these voters do not see progressives as representing their aspirations for a prosperous, stable middle class life."

Notice that ever-so-slight, too-cute-by-half change of language: "Democrats" suddenly becomes "progressives" – a mistake too many make.

The reason "Democrats have been doing especially poorly among white working class voters" at the same time these voters "are already quite hostile to big business, believe corporations are taking unfair advantage of the system and think Bush and the Republicans push corporate interests over and above that of the public's" is precisely because the party has for the last decade refused to embrace the progressive populists within its ranks. These are the very same progressive populists who are willing to challenge Big Money interests; the very same progressive populists that are defying D.C.’s conventional wisdom and (as I saw firsthand in working as a strategist for Brian Schweitzer in 2000 and 2004) winning working class voters in red America.

Ruy, in fact, actually proves my point in his own essay. If we are to accept Ruy's conclusion that the voters we need already "believe corporations are taking unfair advantage of the system and think Bush and the Republicans push corporate interests over and above that of the public's" - then the logical conclusion shouldn’t be that Democrats need to behave more like Republicans. The logical conclusion should be that Democrats have not effectively represented a vehicle to challenge those corporations, those unfair advantages, and that right-wing machine which has ignored the public interest – and that if they start doing just that as a national party as progressives have been demanding, they will succeed.

The flip side is also true. For instance, we cannot blame progressive politics for John Kerry's inability to win working class voters in places like Ohio when Kerry has long embraced Washington, D.C.’s "free" trade orthodoxy, and on the campaign trail refused to embrace a serious, cogent message that describes how he would reform that trade policy to make sure it stops decimating these regions' white working class jobs, wages, and economic security. Instead, we can and should blame Kerry and the Democratic Party's unwillingness to champion a progressive populist message on trade (such as the one concretely proposed in Hostile Takeover) that would provide a vehicle for these working class voters' aspirations for a government that stops selling America out.

Similarly, we cannot, as Ruy does, claim it is somehow progressives' supposed failure to represent working class aspirations that is the cause of the Democratic Party's failure to win these voters when big chunks of anti-progressive, bought-off Democrats disregard progressive Democrats within their ranks and voted for working-class-crushing travesties like (to name just a few) the bankruptcy and energy bills. That's not progressives' fault - that's Democrats refusal to be progressive that is causing the problem.

More generally, Beltway types will claim that because Democrats haven’t won more of these working-class voters, that means these voters won't respond to class-based, progressive populist politics. But as Ruy essentially admits, these voters possess at least an openness to class-based politics as evidenced by "their hostil[ity] to big business and believe that "corporations are taking unfair advantage of the system." That this anger hasn't been maximized by Democrats speaks far less about a supposed antithesis to class-based politics than about the failure of today’s Democratic Party to maximize the potential for class-based politics by embracing progressive populism. And frankly, to claim any different is to go out of your way to create a fictional narrative (that conveniently serves Big Money’s desire to play down class populism) rather than face facts.

2. How We Take It Back - The Policy

On policy, Ruy says my book "comes up short" in proposing a winning political formula because it "simply throw[s] more truth at them [which] is unlikely, by itself, to have that much effect."

Let’s be clear – my book was never written to be a political strategy playbook. But even if it was, Ruy is setting up a straw man, at least when it comes to a debate over Hostile Takeover. No one (other than perhaps Seinfeld-Strategy-weilding congressional Democrats who have refused to take official positions on all sorts of issues) is suggesting "simply throwing more truth at them." And certainly, Hostile Takeover isn't suggesting that. Each chapter in Hostile Takeover includes concrete proposals that - if Democrats embraced them - would show that the party was serious not only about criticizing a broken system, but also about fixing it.

Don’t go buy the book simply trusting me that this is the case – trust the critics. It was the Washington Monthly that said Hostile Takeover "argues that on each issue, there is a set of public solutions - responsible and achievable - that would answer the takeover and restore public trust." It was Matt Yglesias – not exactly a fan of my work – who acknowledged that in Hostile Takeover, "Right-wing talking points on the full spectrum of economic issues are debunked [and] progressive alternatives vociferously defended." These alternatives are designed both to solve problems, and to convert the public’s sense of anger that Ruy acknowledges into concrete policy prescriptions (I won’t go into an issue-by-issue description of what Hostile Takeover proposes – you can go check out the book for that).

3. How We Take It Back - The Implementation

That gets us to Elizabeth Warren’s critical question: what do we have to do to take the proposed solutions and make them law? Again, I have a whole chapter on this very question, and you can go check out the book for the in-depth write-up. But as a preview, here are two suggestions.

First and foremost, we’ve got to start focusing on politics in our backyard – not just national politics. The media and the political elite in Washington want us only focused on federal politics. They seem to think, as ABC’s The Note epitomizes, that the only thing that is important in politics is what a bunch of suits in D.C. decide is important. Though that might make the self-important Washington political operatives, pundits and media chattering class feel good about itself, nothing could be further from the truth.

State, county and municipal policy often affects people's daily economic lives in far more profound ways than even federal policy. That's not to say that federal policy isn't important, but it is to say that there are other arenas for engagement. And because the hostile takeover is far less pronounced in these other arenas, it means citizens still have an ability to affect policy at this level, elect good people to office, and make real change. Put 20 people in a room with your city council person and demand something from them, and you will see that while they may not fully switch their position or do exactly what you ask, they are listening a hell of a lot more than your average national politician.

The other reason to get local is because these city council people, county commissioners and state legislators are going to be tomorrow’s congressmen, senators and presidents. We’ve got to get to them now before they become co-opted by Washington’s money-drenched indoctrination system.

The second suggestion Hostile Takeover puts forward is a demand that progressives put public financing of elections at the center of our movement - not just leave it as a peripheral issue. I’ve written a lot about this before - and about how it is a travesty that progressives and the Democratic Party still refused to make public financing proposals within their midst a national theme , even in the wake of the Abramoff/Delay/Cunningham scandals where with a bit of work it could be made to resonate even more powerfully with the public than normal.

Oh sure, Big Money interests will deride public financing of elections as "welfare for politicians." But the simple truth is that we get what we pay for. Elections are going to be financed by someone. If we allow elections to continue to be financed by Big Money, we will always have a government that represents Big Money. If we are willing to pay for our election system, we will get far closer to getting a government that represents us. And if you are worried about the cost of a public financing system you need look no further than Duke Cunningham and the over-the-top earmarking abuses to know that taxpayers are already paying a far greater price under the current system of legalized bribery.

You can tell just how important public financing of elections really is by the opposition to it. As just one example, in Portland, Big Money interests are pouring their cash into a campaign to repeal that city’s public financing system. These interests know that if a system exists to free political leaders from the grips of corporate campaign cash, government policy may be a whole lot different. That is, a whole lot more representative of ordinary citizens’ interests.

As I said, for the other suggestions I have for taking it back, go check out the book. But remember the bottom line: we still have a chance to take back our government, as long as we have the guts to start fighting the real fight that we all know is at the center of American politics, but that too many in the Establishment want to pretend is not important: namely, the conflict between those who want to let Big Money interests continue to run roughshod over our country, and those of us who think America deserves better.

To be sure, there are always going to be well-funded, corporate-sponsored voices telling us we shouldn't really be angry that our political leaders are selling off our democracy, that we should just tone it down, that we should back off, and that the political elite really supports everything that we are pushing for, when in fact they clearly do not. That's exactly what the Establishment wants - us to retreat, stand down, and fool ourselves into thinking everything is O.K. But that's exactly what we shouldn't do. We must instead refuse to be intimidated, refuse to relent, refuse to swallow the poll-tested fictions. We must, in short, fight back.