Do yourself a favor.  Buy and read a copy of Drew Westen's The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, which is just out in paperback.  

Westen has gotten the attention of shakers and movers within the Democratic party--Howard Dean, Bill Clinton, Robert Kuttner, and the Obama and Clinton campaigns reaching all the way to the very top among them, as he describes in the postscript to the paperback edition in an appropriately graceful and modest way. 

As a clinician and researcher, Westen is eminently qualified to apply what has been learned about how the human brain functions to one of his passions, electoral politics.  A committed Democrat who is every bit as frustrated as most of us have been with our party's propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in too many elections, Westen explains in easily accessible terms results of many psychological experiments which have great relevance for how Democrats communicate with voters. 

He analyzes selected communications--TV ads and speeches in particular--from recent Democratic and Republican campaigns, in light of these findings.  And--in what for me are the most fun but also the most regret-inspiring sections--he tells you what he would have recommended that the candidates say. 

Wow!  For all of you out there, and I am certainly one of them, who is sick and tired of being sick and tired of having Republicans drive campaign narratives and define us instead of having us define ourselves as who and what we know we stand for, this book will give you a stimulating and practical guide on how you might make your own advocacy efforts more effective.  

As someone who has been engaged in public affairs and politics for 25 years now, after reading this book, I conclude there were things I thought I knew about campaigns that I now think I did not know. 

In particular, as one who was earlier urging Obama to be more specific on his policy proposals (partly because I, personally, as a very atypical voter, wanted to know more specifics), I now conclude I was simply wrong about that.  Obama was right to ignore the MSM calls along the same lines for more policy specifics. 

When past Democratic presidential candidates have acceded to such urgings and satisfied their Inner Wonk, that has been an electoral kiss of death.  I have thought of myself in recent years as something of a recovering wonkaholic who occasionally lapses into bad old habits in contexts where I should be thinking differently about how and what I am communicating.  I realized while reading Westen's book this was one such incident.   

Obama will of course need to be able to get more specific on his policy proposals, and I am hopeful that he will, at the appropriate time and in the appropriate forum and way. 

Michael Tomasky cuttingly described Democratic political professionals in his NY Review of Books review of Westen's book as "insular and arrogant", with "an explanation for everything". 

As to whether the Democratic political pros will go beyond going through the motions of appearing to heed Westen's message and actually apply its lessons--and whether, if they fail to do that, major candidates will have the self-assurance to fire or simply not hire them in the first place--well, I defer to one of my newly acquired heroes.  As the Phillip Seymour Hoffman character in the movie "Charlie Wilson's War", "Gust", says to Wilson: "Yeah, well, we'll see..."