Reply #111: I strongly suspect [View All]

[XemaSab]

It's not a problem so much with the candidates, as with the level of dialogue.

I look at the republicans, especially here in California, and I'm regularly underwhelmed by the caliber of the candidates they put forth.

You can't call the Chimpster a great statesman, or anyone else the republicans have put forth for president in a very long time.

I think we had some really good folks running the last time around, and it was almost too many good candidates. I think there was only one person who wouldn't have made a decent president and who I would not have supported in the general election.

I think they sucked energy away from each other. Even looking at dialogue in DU, there are at least four candidates who would have support for a 2008 run.

The issue is that the media has no interest in really genuinely airing the candidates in a detailed or impartial manner, so we're left with the guy who has the best sound bites, and few of our candidates had the ghastly repetition that Bush showed in the debates. He was very "on message."

Democrats tend to be windy, windy folks with the big palette and the little brush. Whereas Republicans are terse, with the black and white paint and the big brush. They have an easier job of staying on message because they don't actually want to talk about their plans, because their plans are evil, so they have to fill the time in debates with sound bites instead of ideas.

It's tragic and depressing, but this is what the people like. They think it indicates resolve or something to hear the same message regardless of the day, and you've gotta give the people what they want.

Trippi's article about the "vision thing" affirmed this. People don't want to hear about details of plans, they want a big, general idea that can be summarized in 100 words or less, and that's what our candidates haven't had.