Sometimes you need the Third Rail to get where you want to go.

William Safire's  essay on the phrase "Third Rail of American Politics" noted that "...the cliché about the third rail...can be wrong. It was disproved when Congress put aside partisanship as it did to fix Social Security in 1983. And Medicare might not be deadly if both parties worked on it together.”  The next year Tom Oliphant told Safire that he asked the man who coined the phrase "Third Rail of American Politics" why nobody got electrocuted.   Kirk O'Donnell replied, that the third rail is not like the one in the subway: if a Republican foot and a Democratic foot touch it simultaneously, nothing happens.