Wow, these guys really nailed what the Dems are up against, what they need to do with/to Bush next year. (It comes from Jeremy Heimans and Tim Dixon, on Salon today). I wish I had thought of this.

Key excerpts:

Rep. Dick Gephardt made his best and perhaps his only significant contribution to defeating George Bush in 2004 last month, when he derided the president's "bring 'em on" challenge to Iraqi attacks on American forces. "Enough of the phony macho rhetoric," Gephardt shot back. The Missouri Democrat's line was more than just padded flight-suit envy. His jibe hints at the strategy that could put a Democrat back in the White House: convincing Americans that Bush is a phony.

The Democrats can only win if they succeed in undermining the president's greatest strength: his credibility as a decisive and authentic wartime leader. The problem is that in such uncertain times many Americans instinctively can't and don't want to believe that George Bush is screwing them. Until the Democrats change how voters view Bush the man, and then link that to a broader critique of his administration, the Democrats will have a hard time punching through.

In 2000, the Bush machine played skillful personality politics to successfully paint Al Gore as inauthenthic, a poser and a "chronic exaggerator." Despite Bush's far more serious exaggerations on Iraq and his tax cuts, he is still riding high on key measures of political character ...

The core problem with the current Democratic strategy is that a piecemeal, issue-by-issue attack on the policies of the administration will not resonate while Bush retains the esteem and even admiration of many ordinary Americans. ...

The question is what communications strategy will wear down the personal appeal of Bush as effectively as the "weak and indecisive" tag slapped on Jimmy Carter, and the "out of touch" tag on Bush's father. ... The one label that will stick and could work to undermine the positive personal perceptions of the president comes from Gephardt's line last week: George Bush is a phony. It works, because it has a ring of truth about it ...

The message that Bush is a phony needs to be hammered issue after issue, month after month. We'll know this is working when people start using the term in the checkout queues, the gas pumps, the classrooms, the malls, the churches and living rooms across America. The message has to be so simple that Bush's own appearances and announcements, instead of countering the Democrats' attacks, actually underscore them. It has to pick up on areas where voters are already uneasy, like Bush's handling of the corporate fraud scandals and his environmental record.

Stunning. They're dead-on about the piecemeal business. That seems to have sunk so many Dem campaigns before. Just a bunch of fragments, nothing for someone looking at the guy to hang their hat on.

And I think you don't defeat an incumbent by demonstrating how great you are. First and foremost, you have to get people to reject him. You have to be a good alternative, but to unseat an incumbent, it's not enough for people to think you're better. He's still safer. They already know what they've got. To throw a guy out, confidence in has to be undermined.

And that just seems so easy to do with Bush. He's such a freaking dufus. He doesn't exactly scream out stature when he walks into a camera frame. You've got to pick your charge and pound it home, and it sure would be great if all the Dems could get together on this. They don't have to stop fighting each other, but they can unite on how they're fighting him.