Is that a Neil Caglienelli brand trench coat?

While you get some sleep, let me see if I can clarify something.

You may be surprised to learn, Titus, that I agree with you more than you think. The Dems have been running on "we're not Bush" since he won the Florida recount (save right after 9/11). And if they were to offer a measurable and specific plan it would help their chances (or seal the deal) in 08' immensely. I guess I thought we were discussing which was more important - plans or personality. No one would argue that they haven't been used in concert for electoral victory in the past, it's just my assertion (and apparently Jambo's although I won't presume to speak for him) that the plans compliment what is essential and foremost -personality.

But just for the sake of clarity this is what started this thread ...

Learn this lesson, Ryan... answer the questions, no matter what they are, as if your talking to your next-door neighbor. You may not like him, or even understand him... but you have to be civil and you want to CONVINCE him you are right. Sell the plan, not the candidate... the candidate wins when the PLAN wins.

Now I'm not trying to pick on you, I really am not. But the following comment on what you were trying to get across involves a different thesis in it's assertion entirely ...

Obviously, I am incapable of making the point to you that is so abundantly clear to me… that SOMETIMES, when an incumbent President is unpopular enough come election time, the opposition party has a chance to take the election by showing they have a PLAN. This doesn’t always work, but it has worked in the past on some occasions.

With that I have no quarrel. Yes, this is a possible scenario. But, if you are telling me that a candidate wins when his plan wins, I have to disagree with the order in which you assign value. I would argue that a candidate's plans win when his personality wins. If they don't "like you" or perhaps "feel comfortable with you" is more apt, then they won't even bother listening to the plan - especially in this day and age.

You were admittedly sleepy when you wrote this but I want to address it just the same. You asserted that Quayle, Dukakis and Gore were all good-looking (w/Dukakis listed as questionable) photogenic candidates and by my analysis of "personality" being the deal maker on electability, they should have won based on that alone, yet they lost. Well, in each of those instances I would argue that they lost because the candidate with whom they competed against at the time was even more photogenic and "likable." Quayle (ala the Bush administration) was beaten by Clinton - no one has more used his personal charisma to get what he wants done since Napoleon. With Gore he ran against "W." That nickname alone says mounds about why Gore lost. He was robotic, a policy wonk, and sometimes down right strange (remember he walked up on Bush in the debate, almost in his face, and Bush won the debate cold at that moment by stopping in mid sentence and looking him up and down like he was some weirdo). Did anyone outside of the 2% category of political nuts (which we fall in) even bother to invest time in what a "lock box" was or did after that? I don't think so. In other words, and this was said at the time by all the talking heads, ol' dubya was the kind of guy you can sit down and have a beer with where as Gore seemed elitist and unapproachable - a death knell in American electoral politics. People were more comfortable with, or liked Bush. Now Dukakis is the weakest link here whereas Bush 41 isn't a classic example of "photogenic." BUT people did like Reagan, a lot, and 41 basically won because people liked and trusted the Reagan administration from which Bush came, rather than Dukakis - who looked like a duphus riding around in that tank with an over sized (it looked it anyway) helmet on his head. It was just plain laughable - and they were laughing at him, not with him.

At any rate, rest up my friend. I'll check in later.
FR