I have to give Doug Ose credit for one thing (in addition to being a team player / endorsing and campaigning for Tom McClintock) - he sure in the hell knows how to make an attack mailer.

Charlie Brown on the other hand - took a lot of the same information disseminated by Ose and used some sort of neat DCCC decoder ring to make the information ambiguous. Two mailers were produced by team Klink - unfortunately, they didn't have Ose's money or his team.

In the course of trying to target the vaunted undecided voters (which Brown must carry to the tune of 90% to win) - they seem to have lost their message.

One mailer tries to compare the timeline of Charlie Brown's military service versus Tom McClintock's public service. Notably, after 2002... there isn't much on Brown. Maybe they should have added in the rallys that Brown attended (SEIU hall, Kerry Rally in Reno, Effigy etc...) for continuity. Independent Voters don't like seeing obvious holes in the story.

Maybe Brett Shylock could have figured out how to re-spin Brown's activities to fill the hole in the timeline.

The Second featured articles produced as a result of Stenhouse's story shopping around the district. Maybe Nick (lolly) Popadopolous should have looked this stuff over at his favorite spot on Castro street, surely he could have picked better snippets from the newspapers.

You see, Independent voters and undecided voters are skeptics. I looked at Team Klink's McClintock-is-a-liar mailer and I could not tell why. Independent voters are not going to see that mailer as anything other than Team Klink calling Tom McClintock names. Since those Independent voters have seen that before from Ose, they are going to either leave their ballots blank or vote for McClintock.

Back to the first mailer - this is where the expertise of Brett Shylock could have come in handy. Shylock was on the team responsible for creating the Rambo image for John Kerry. Stenhouse should have had Shylock go over the mailer before it was sent out. They tried to do too much with the mailer - and those same independent voters have been treated to three weeks of TV, Radio and Mail in effigy. Had Shylock done the mailer - I think he would have been sure have arranged for Sean Penn and other patriots to have their pictures in the mailer.

It is hard to convince a skeptical voter with one mailer after three weeks of evidence to the contrary. Charlie Brown would have been better served having Nick (lolly) Popadopolous vet some good, clear distinctions.

Alas, at the end of the day, Charlie's glass jaw took over for good campaigning. If Team Klink was serious about winning, I think pictures of spotted Owls covered in Oil might have worked... Maybe pictures of Bomb damage in Baghdad would have worked. Undecided voters are going to start breaking now that ballots are hitting people's boxes.

Team Klink decided to fire back with a couple of hit peices that resembled a whiffle-ball bat as opposed to a good stick

Closing time Charlie, what are you going to do for an encore?