Strap on a pair...

...is essentially Peter Beinart's advice for Democrats in the Atlantic today. And I couldn't agree more.

In "Democrats Can't Keep Playing Not to Lose," Beinart writes (my emphasis):

Senate candidates ran timid midterm campaigns, relying on turnout and ignoring the issues they're passionate about. The resulting GOP wave is a warning to Hillary Clinton for 2016.

This fall, Democrats ran like they were afraid of losing. Consider the issues that most Democrats think really matter: Climate change, the expansion of Medicaid, our immoral and incoherent immigration system, our epidemic of gun violence, which produces a mini-Sandy Hook every few weeks, and the rigging of America’s political and economic system by the 1 percent.

For the most part, Democratic candidates shied away from these issues because they were too controversial. Instead they stuck to topics that were safe, familiar, and broadly popular: the minimum wage, outsourcing, and the “war on women.” The result, for the most part, was homogenized, inauthentic, forgettable campaigns.  

If Hillary Clinton wants to reverse those numbers, she’s going to have to inspire people—people who, more than their Republican counterparts, are inclined toward disconnection and despair. And her gender alone won’t be enough. She lost to Obama in 2008 in part because she could not overcome her penchant for ultra-cautious, hyper-sanitized, consultant-speak. Yet on the stump this year, she was as deadening as the candidates she campaigned for. As Molly Ball put it in September, “Everywhere Hillary Clinton goes, a thousand cameras follow. Then she opens her mouth, and nothing happens.”

The Republican against whom Hillary runs in 2016 will campaign like George W. Bush in 2000. Rhetorically, at least, he will ooze compassion. He will sand off all his party’s hard edges. He will probably put a woman or minority on the ticket. He will campaign on non-threatening change, and simply by being a Republican, he will win older white voters by a vast margin.

To reassemble the Obama coalition against such a candidate, Hillary Clinton will have to become a different candidate than she was this fall. To win, she’s going to have to show there are subjects she cares about deeply enough to be willing to lose.