Look, the Republican party has demonized Democrats as either (a) Northeastern intellectual Jews who went to Harvard and eat wine and cheese, and (b) pinko commie hippies who live in California and sleep in sex orgies.  That is the reality of what's out there.  I am not making it up.  And I am not really advancing the idea by writing it down on a blog somewhere either.

Image is superficial but it is also everything.

Simon Rosenberg is a sincere guy and the ads he developed with NDN were the best anyone made last year.  But if you put Simon Rosenberg as the party's public face and say, now we're going to go on talk shows and appeal to blue-collar workers in Oklahoma, good luck.  

Don't know what parts of the country you're used to, but neither Jews nor New Yorkers are well-loved in big chunks of it.