It's an interesting perspective, but I still think it fundamentally assumes that all voters are ignorant if not downright stupid.

The Republicans may be good at inspirng ignorant people to vote for them, but such a one-sided approach by the Dems would quickly turn off their base set of liberal voters who DO care about the issues and aren't just voting for a fishing buddy. What works for the Republicans does not necessarily translate to working for another party; just because the Republican party has been successful lately does not mean the strategy makes sense for Democrats. The Democrats have not exactly been successful trying to copy the Repub strategy so far -- their downfall is that they don't have a strategy at ALL.

For example, in the California recall election, Peter Camejo came in 4th. Mr. Camejo got ZERO publicity, ZERO press coverage, and the single instance I did hear him mentioned was *after* the election when he was erroneously reported as an "Independant" candidate -- which in CA means the American Independant party, an ultra, ultra-right wing group. Peter was the Green candidate.

Yet Peter got 2.8% of the votes entirely on issues, ranking significantly above Arianna Huffington, Peter Uberroth, Larry Flynt, Bill Simon, Gary Coleman and the porn star, Mary Cook -- all of whom received a lot of media attention and coverage. 'Scuse me -- where DOES Gary Coleman stand on the issues? Peter got 5.3% of the vote in the last general election with similar (i.e. nonexistent) coverage and with a much smaller pack of candidates (6 vs. 135).

I don't think another voting strategy to try and win the ignorant middle is very bright. They've tried it a bunch of ways -- instead, I think it's time to return to the Democratic ideals and motivation that served the political process so well pre-Clinton.