Effectively running a campaign?

Lori Sturdevant talks about Becky Lourey's campaign for governor. She finds the candidate "polishing a belated position paper on education, calling for more school time, fewer costly school regulations, and more stable state school funding." Lourey, being the challenger, wants this campaign to be about "issues", like many pie-in-the-sky Democrats.

Yes, campaigns should be about issues. However, spending time writing a position paper? The way to electoral success is not in writing doctoral dissertations. Nobody but the hardcore activists are going to read any of her position papers. They will not have a significant impact at all on her electoral chances. And yet, this is where she is spending her time.

Eventually, I think that Democrats will learn that running as the professor from Gilligan's Island is not the way to win elections, at least not at the present time. The long-term strategy for bettering this country should be to smack the media back into line and get rid of the anti-intellectualism that is rampant among Americans. But that's not going to happen until the right people gain power first, and they aren't going to do it by assuming that the average voter wants to read ten position papers before determining who to vote for.