The joke is always that the pundit line is "What The Democratic Party Needs To Do Is Support The Policies I've Supported All Along." It's especially funny when it comes from professional centrists, who apparently don't ever pay attention to politics, because the Dems basically support that policy agenda and have for years. Ditto the endless calls for Bloomberg to start a third party "movement" which is almost identical to the Democratic party agenda.
But I always try to be careful about distinguishing between "things I support" and "things I think Democrats should support because they're popular." Sure I'm not interested in encouraging them to support things which might be popular that I hate, so what I really encourage is "support things I like and which happen to be popular." Not going to say I'm immune from the pundit's fallacy, but I'm pretty aware of it.
The other day someone asked me if I liked arguing about politics with people. The answer is no (weird,given what I do all day!). I'm not going to change any minds (except around the tiniest margins). The thing is to push the people in power to support Nice Things which would also, too, earn them votes. Money in politics matters, but so do votes, and the latter is not solely the consequence of the former.
