Explaining is everything: Some pundits love to repeat the phrase that ???in politics explaining is losing??? ??? the subtext being that the public are too stupid to understand any complex political or policy issues. But the political science consistently shows that in matters of controversy the public looks to their political leaders (amongst other people) to explain what???s happening and to argue their case. This is something National is really good at ??? Key especially ??? and Labour generally doesn???t do at all, which means our window of political debate is constantly being shifted to the right as National wins almost every argument by default (Welfare and education being the obvious examples). The great exception to this phenomena: Capital Gains Tax. The conventional wisdom was that this policy was political suicide, but David Cunliffe went out, made the arguments and won them all. By the time the election came around public support for Capital Gains was roughly double the level of support for the Labour Party. Not explaining is losing.

That paragraph alone. Always a bit suspicious of aphorisms.