My suspicion is that, if you were able to measure what juices American voters about politics, almost none of it would be process, almost all would be some element of policy that has entered their lives.

And that there are hundreds of thousands of articulate folks with personal stories to tell capable of lifting the roof off by way of popular response.

Because - well, generic bleating about Bush is one thing: a story of the human effect of bad government is another.

An excellent piece over at Kos illustrates. On the DOJ priotitizing base-goosing child porn cases over other sorts of child abuse that, in the aggregate, cause much more hurt, take much more cash and have much less goosing effect.

The writer the wife of an ex-social worker in the field. Very much with the ring of truth about it.

By me, this is a key component of what political blogging should be about. (But - note - this piece only crossed my radar screen because of what they call diary rescue. Otherwise, the Scoop system just deluges it in five minutes with acre-feet of stuff.)

So - isn't this an untapped resource for the Dems? Getting ordinary people to detail their woes under the Bush regime. With a stirring rendition of Happy Days Are Here Again to follow, natch.

Trouble is, these testimonies, admirable and powerful though they be, don't come ready partisan-sanitized.

For instance, the Kos piece I mentioned featured a social worker in WV. Which, throughout the Bush regime has had a Democratic governor.

Any complaint made about child protection in WV in recent years, therefore, is likely to hit both GOP- and Dem-controlled administrations.

And the WV Dem machine (or what passes for one) would be understandably miffed at national Dem alphabet soup using such material that might rebound against their fine, upright pols.

So - if you're Chairman Dean, with troubles of your own, why are you going to upset regular (if quite possibly crooked) Dems by using material (however powerful) with such blowback potential?

Background: official Dem prose is gnaw-your-arm-off boring. It has the fire of a dead rat, the emotional appeal of - well, a dead rat. Pretty much all ways round, it's a dead rat.

The sort of authenticity one finds in the social worker's wife's piece is what it needs to give it life.

Does Dean dare?