Reply #64: Have you ever won an election????

[loyalsister]

This long post might indicate that you actually know what it takes from experience, or do you?
I want to know who people are talking to beyond this board. If you want some hard facts and real information on this talk to some people who have won or lost actual elections. Talk to county, state, local elected officials. Ask them what their constituents complain about and what they want. Polls are useless. You have to go straight to the source if you want the facts. Find out what people want, and then consider the assets of the candidates. One possibility based on an analysis of a county official I know. She recently was elected president of the National Association of Counties. She did this by focusing a lot on rural voters.
Consider this:
I asked her if Dean's neutralizing the gun issue would bring them back. She said it would definitely help. She mentioned his fund raising as an indicator of electability. Obviously, you've got to have cash.
We spent some time at the County Fair passing out Dean lit. She said that she found it very impressive- reaching out to rural voters. When someone who has won elections says you're doing something right, it means that they think it might work.
Local officials are very often accessible if you want actual FACTS go to the source. Broad assumptions based on history very well could be the least valid basis for these analyses.
We have a freak accident of a president who has some of the most bizarre behaviors many of us could have imagined, and we have a foriegn policy that is unlike any we have seen in our lifetimes. We have actually been attacked. Two pieces of legislation (PAs) beyond anything we could possibly imagined have been passed- written.
We are living in a country that does not fit the context of any other time in history. The assumptions based on what has happened in the past belong to a different world. Let's leave them there and find out what people actually say.