You'd think voters would have learned something about "electability" after John Kerry

Remember 2004, when Dick Gephardt and John Kerry tag-teamed Howard Dean, and then Kerry became the anointed nominee because as a war hero, he was more "electable"?

How'd that "electability" thing work out for ya, America? Not so hot, right? Even if John Kerry has now, three years after the election, decided he's going to fight back against being swiftboated. Barn door, horse, etc.

But if the latest New York Times/CBS News poll is to be believed, voters are still trying to parse what they think other voters are thinking in determining whom to support:

Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire — the states that begin the presidential nominating battle — say Senator Barack Obama and John Edwards are more likely than Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to say what they believe, rather than what they think voters want to hear, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Polls. But they also view Mrs. Clinton as the best prepared and most electable Democrat in the field, the polls found.

Republican voters in those two states say that Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, shares their values and views on immigration, a red-hot issue for Republicans in Iowa especially. But they are divided over whether Mr. Romney or Rudolph W. Giuliani, who Republican voters say does not share their values, would be the party’s strongest general-election candidate — and electability looms as a crucial factor for Republican voters in those states.

[snip]

...50 percent of New Hampshire Democrats said they would not be prepared to vote for a candidate who wanted to keep troops in Iraq “longer than you would like,” even if they thought the Democrat had a good chance of victory in November.

This makes absolutely no sense, if a majority of Democrats think that the candidate who best reflects their values is not electable, but they think that the most political animal is the one OTHERS will vote for?

I'm starting to think the caucus format is a better idea than a primary, because it at least gets people out TALKING to each other. Perhaps if voters understand what drives their fellow voters, they'll stop this assumption, fed by the media, that the candidate they don't really want is the one for whom everyone else will vote.