heric, I hate to continue what you call a "pissing match," but you are not being truthful. In the post to which I was responding, you said this (and I quote):

"I'll get blasted for this, but the population of Vermont is 600,000, with its largest city having 40,000 people in it. Based on that, Dean has the qualifications to be the mayor of a very small city in California."

This sounds like you are saying that coming from a small state automatically means you are not qualified to be president. You offered no other reasons besides the size of his state why he should not be qualified. You did not even mention "training and experience," except to snidely and quite incorrectly say in parentheses that he also "knows nothing of ethnic relations." For a detailed refutation of this idea, complete with several links, see my posts above.

Maybe the "training and experience" were as you say "straw," or maybe they were part of an argument YOU have going elsewhere...

I can only respond to what you actually SAID, which as I said before, was neither obvious nor common sense.