WASHINGTON, March 5 — From Arizona to Pennsylvania, from Colorado to Connecticut, Democratic candidates for Congress are reading from a stack of different scripts these days.
...snip...
These scattershot messages reflect what officials in both parties say are vulnerabilities among Republicans on Capitol Hill, as well as President Bush's weakened political condition in this election year.
But they also reflect splits within the party about what it means to be a Democrat — and what a winning Democratic formula will be — after years in which conservative ideas have dominated the national policy debate and helped win elections.
And they complicate the basic strategy being pursued by Democratic leaders in Washington to capture control of Congress: to turn this election into a national referendum on the party in power, much the way Republicans did against Democrats in 1994.
Interviews with Democratic challengers in contested districts suggest that the party is far from settling on an overarching theme that will work as well in central Connecticut as it does in central Colorado.
http://nytimes.com/2006/03/06/politics/06cong.html?hp&ex=1141707600&en=790e7f23b923bdba&ei=5094&partner=homepage- - -
I have told Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanual personally that it's not enough to locate good candidates; we need a coherent and concise message of what the Party stands for. I had a 20 minute discussion with one of our "Fighting Dem" candidates last week, and if DCCC was working on a message, he wasn't aware of it.