[Y]ou'll hear from me and others over the coming weeks and months all sorts of different jargon and policy particulars about caps and private accounts and add-on accounts and Trust Funds and rates of return and all the rest of it.

But the terms of this debate are actually pretty straightforward. The president and his supporters want to get the government out of the Social Security business by ending guaranteed benefits. It's really as simple as that. Not complicated. They'll put in its place some system of private accounts where you can save money on your own. And if it works out, great. If it doesn't, it's your problem.

Social Security is about spreading out the risk and the security by having near-universal participation in one program. That's what it is. You pay in through the course of your working years and after you retire you receive your guaranteed benefit every month for the rest of your life. It is that issue of guarantee -- which, in its nature, only a program like Social Security can provide -- which the president and his supporters are trying to do away with, either all at once or in stages.

So take away all of your policy particulars and computations and flow-charts and analyses. And set them to one side. That is the issue at the core of all of this debate. It defines what kind of society we live in. Its future rests in the hands of Senate Democrats. And all manner of honor or infamy is in store for the ones who make the difference.

This is what we need to continue to hammer on, over and over again, no deviation, no straying from the necessary talking points:

• There is no crisis.


• They want to do away with Social Security -- always have, always will.

Period. End of debate.

Frame it that way often enough, and people will begin to understand exactly what's going on, and they'll rebel. They're already doing that to some extent, but they're still confused: they're still under the misapprehension that there's a crisis, but they don't like Bush's solution to it, and they don't understand that the ultimate purpose of the "solution" is to eliminate Social Security.

We're about halfway there, but there's still a ways to go -- and Democrats must insist that their elected representatives and party leaders stay the course and not give in to the ongoing temptation to compromise and be "bipartisan" good guys. Don't give in to their reframing of the debate, don't accept the artificial "crisis" they've invented to give cover to their attempt to dismantle Social Security, and don't ease their way by creating compromise "solutions" which will only act as the kernel of the future death of the program.

Every Democratic official has got to understand that if they leave the reservation on this one, their days are numbered.

Ignore the taunting stupidities from the other side about "litmus tests" and so on. We know from experience that the GOP and the right-wing in this day and age (they're virtually coxtensive save for a few powerless Northeastern moderates) are nothing but litmus tests, the epitome of dogmatic ideology raised to a height not seen since the heyday of Communism -- so they're hardly in a position to point at us with disdain. (Except, of course, that they have no shame, and little honor.)

In any case, it's not about litmus tests, it's about not betraying the core of what it means to be a Democrat -- and Social Security is about as close to that core as you can conceivably get.