For the vast majority of Bernie Sanders' supporters, the issues are the most important thing. To me, they are literally everything that really matters in this election year.

But you wanna know something?

Even if Bernie had (1) somehow won the Dem nomination outright months ago and had (2) even been able to persuade the Dem party establishment to hop on his bandwagon (!!), it would not have convinced me that winning the general election would be a virtual certainty.

Being right on the issues is simply not enough to take your crusade to the promised land...

You see, I've been around for a while and I have seen how the Republicans have been able to persuade millions of average Americans to go into the voting booth on election day and vote against their own best interests.

I've watched as one Democratic candidate after another has gone down to defeat, their campaign strategists apparently clueless as to what the Republicans are doing and how they must act to beat them at their game.

Here's how I put in in an analytical tract I wrote back in 2004 called The Republican Nemesis:

Republican strategists have been able to blend their astute grasp of marketing principles, human nature, & social psychology into a formula that delivers almost guaranteed success at the polls. While Democrats knock themselves out every election cycle trying to talk to Swing Voters about The Issues, Republicans have calmly focused their attention on winning The Image Campaign. Quite simply: Democrats lose because they don't understand what moves their target audience.

Who is this target audience that I referred to? The Swing Voters. The Swing Voters comprise a fairly small slice of the electorate, maybe only 5%-8% of all voters, because unlike just about everyone you know, a swing voter actually can be persuaded to vote for the candidate of either party. It is they who always decide every national election. If you can't get most of them to vote for you, you are going to lose.

The Issues might actually be important to many Swing Voters early on in a political campaign, but when both sides start to pick apart each other's facts and interpretations, the typical Swing Voter quickly becomes confused. As the debate over The Issues drags on, Swing Voters realize that they don't understand the details well enough to make an informed decision, so they end up relying on their impressions of the candidates.

Republican strategists see this clearly. That is why they continuously try to create doubts in the minds of the Swing Voters about the character of the Democratic candidate. They know that it doesn't really matter if they can't find any real flaws in their Democratic opponents. Accusations, insinuations, & innuendo will work just fine.

They hope to encourage voters to question the motivation and dependability of The Democrats. They try to create the perception that Democrats are 'defective' in a disturbing way. By accusing, the Republicans implicitly suggest to Swing Voters that they are not defective like the people they are looking down on.

Here's more:

Republican strategists know they would rarely win if election results were always determined by a logical discussion of The Issues and nothing more (they know that most voters would benefit more from Democratic economic policies than from Republican policies). They know they must win the Image Campaign to have any chance of winning. That is why they are committed, now and forever, to negative campaigning.

Republicans have never forgotten a key stratagem they perfected during the Reagan Era: DEMONIZING YOUR OPPONENTS WORKS. It works because Swing Voters are essentially 'headline readers' and 'sound byte nibblers.' When they see in the headlines that Candidate A accused Candidate B of having a certain personality defect, they tend to believe it. (Unless it is effectively answered.)

The most important reason why negative campaigning has worked so well for the Republicans is because their negative attacks on the Democrats create a positive impression of Republican candidates, who appear---in contrast---to be individuals who do not possess the defects that they have accused others of having.

They define themselves positively by defining their Democratic opponents negatively.

On a visceral level, what the Republicans actually 'stand for' in the minds of Swing Voters on election day is that they are not Democrats, those defective people who seem to have been born to ruin everything. It's simple, really. By bashing Democrats, Republicans present themselves as the desirable alternative.

The negative character attacks also provide the Republicans with one more benefit. They know that the media will give priority coverage to their personal attacks and that it will distract attention away from any of the "substance" blather that Democrats always like to talk about.

So there you have it. The Issues really are important...to you, to me, to Bernie Sanders and to all those who would like to wrest control of our government away from The Oligarchy. But when it comes to winning the elections that will give you that control, it is absolutely essential that you don't fool yourself into thinking that simply emphasizing the issues in the face of a continuous character assassination campaign is going to give you the victory you seek.

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In a follow up essay, I'll present my prescription for how win over the Swing Voters and create a true Majority Party that represents the economic interests of average Americans everywhere.