Check Out This Article on Huffington Post

John Neffinger has posted an article on www.huffingtonpost.com that should be read by every Democratic candidate and campaign worker. It is about how non-verbal communication influences voters, especially swing voters. He quotes from several studies that show that voters will pick someone they feel comfortable but whose policies they may not agree with over someone whose policies they agree with but whom they don't feel comfortable with or don't like.

The theme of his article is that Democrats and liberals have a hard time with this concept. They keep insisting that policies and programs matter more than personality. Meanwhile we keep getting beat because we nominate candidates whose policies we like, but who can't relate to the American people on an emotional basis. Candidates like Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. The one candidate we nominated since 1980, Bill Clinton, who could relate emotionally to the American people won two presidential elections in a row, the first Democrat to do that since FDR and only the third Democrat to do that since 1860.*

Speaking of Clinton, he once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. The quote is not original with him, but you get the point. We need candidates who can emotionally relate to Americans, not just give them position papers.
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*The only Democrats elected to the presidency since 1860 were Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. Cleveland won two terms, but they were separated by one Republican term. Wilson won two in a row, FDR won four in a row, and Clinton, as noted, won two in a row.