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I *was* a campaign manager, and I have back issues of Campaigns and Elections. Not that this qualifies me or anything... my record as a manager is 0-2.
I believe the simplest, proven, effective way to get Democrats OR Republicans out to vote is to call them on election day and ask them to.
Most people do not operate the way you do. They would like to have opinions and principles and stuff, and CARE and stuff, but it's too hard and there is too much more to be interested in.
Now you may really vote hard, you may really press that button down hard or pull that lever until it almost falls off, but that still only counts as one vote. Dean's "Bush lied!" gambit excites 5% of the population to a frenzy -- the people who operate by principle, share his biases, and care about politics. Now that he's gotten ALL of those people and is still not a front-runner, what next?
Look at it from my old perspective. I've had this very same debate many times with Libertarian Party True Believers. I wanted to run somewhat populist candidates with moderate views, and teach them how to appeal to the common person, in order to build a big-tent party. Most everyone else felt it would be much more effective to run hardline 100% highly-principled philosophers who believe in things like shutting down the public schools.
I consistently lost that debate, and not only are there precious few elected LPers, but the party has now reduced itself through this purification to a small number of committed, highly-principled people like Radar who will never, ever win one election, and shouldn't anyway.
Leave the purists to the Green Party, the big parties are for politics.
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