Fight Back.

I am not arguing that the primary voters were mistaken in choosing Kerry. That is not the step in the process where Democratic candidates get into trouble. Where the last two Democratic nominees got into trouble was not recognizing what was going to happen to them and not attacking the Republican first. Trouble also arises for Democratic candidates when the don't respond to attacks.

As to where name-calling gets you? There really is a simple answer to that: The White House.

Of course, and you knew this was coming, it is extremely important to define what is name-calling. When I speak of name-calling, I am referring to the light hearted, unserious labelling of most republicans as "douchebags", but also as labelling republicans as "out-of-touch". Both statements are essentially ad hominem attacks, and while the first is not really helpful, the second won Democrats 2 elections.(See, 1992 and 1996) The other thing name-calling does, and this is seen repeatedly being done by Republicans, is then allows a bunch of people to "vote for the better man". From my own, unscientific, experience, there was a certain percentage of the electorate who did NOT vote for Gore in key swing states because they just didn't trust him. The statements from these people usually went like this: "I am an independent, and I always vote for the better man, and while I like Al Gore on the issues, I am voting for bush because he is the better man." One of the few reasons someone would say that is because of the amount of character attacks, name-calling at its heart, that republicans engaged in against Gore.