Every cycle Democratic pollsters develop messages that purport to give our candidates substantial leads over Republicans. But too regularly those messages disappoint by losing. To cite one example, on Election Day in 2000, Al Gore’s pollster presented a message that was preferred to Bush’s by a 17-point margin, a result not replicated in voting booths.

Why not?

Sometimes voters prefer a message, but not the messenger.

We like to think that elections are about, well, politics