BRUNI: Joe Trippi, you mentioned something that has greatly concerned me, too: the dangers of stridency. What qualifies as too strident when it comes to Democrats and the right messaging and positioning and candidates for the midterms? What are a few things you’ve observed recently — tactics, statements — that made you wince and think: “That’s too strident. That’s not wise.”

TRIPPI: A partisan from either party who is in a marginal district and lashes out at the other side is likely to hurt themselves with these voters. How is this candidate not going to add to the chaos and hostility in Washington? How is this candidate going to get anything done for me?

Democratic activists want someone who is going to attack and fight the Republicans at every turn. That will work great in a Democratic district — it may work to attract support and money and win praise from the base. But in marginal districts, particularly places that have voted Republican for years (like Alabama, for instance), that will squander an otherwise winnable district or state.

We can’t be a one-size-fits-all party. I should point out that Doug Jones did not have a competitive primary, whereas the G.O.P. had exactly the ideological fight we need to avoid in marginal districts. It’s the candidates we nominate in the primaries of 2018 that will determine how successful we are.

BRUNI: Governor Patrick, but aren’t the “means” really everything? Single payer and Medicare for All are a world apart from Obamacare, and when it comes to how things play out in the political arena, Republican strategists tell me they’re champing at the bit to have their candidates campaign against any plan that they can brand “socialized medicine.”

PATRICK: I get that, but it doesn’t trouble me. For example, Obamacare started out as a Republican idea, conceived by a right-leaning think tank and tried out (successfully) in Massachusetts. When President Obama proposed and passed it in Congress, it soon became clear that the only thing Republicans didn’t like about it was the Obama part. Now they want to fuss about alternatives, including Medicare for All or even a Medicare option in the marketplace. But they have yet to propose any idea to ensure health care for everybody. That’s the revealing truth. And that’s what’s wrong.

BRUNI: As a member of the (very populous) camp of Americans who believe that President Trump is a great danger to us and that we desperately need him to be checked by at least one chamber of Congress in Democratic control, I have to admit that I’m spooked by some of what I’ve seen recently. A Washington Post/ABC News poll over the weekend showed that 58 percent of Americans rate the economy good or excellent — that’s a 17-year high. Another recent poll showed that the generic-Democratic versus generic-Republican difference had collapsed from over 10 points to just six. Tell me why I shouldn’t — or should — be hugely worried.