Richard Gephardt's presidential hopes seem to be coming to an end. I would blame much of that on his poor understanding of the electorate. There's a saying in politics, "It's all about the numbers." Gephardt, who kept claiming polls don't mattered, should have realized that polls do matter and only sounded desperate when trying to deny this reality.

But you have to give him credit, he truly seemed to believe that polls don't matter. Like I said, he just doesn't seem to understand the electorate in raw numbers. Nothing spoke more of that than his advertisements in the final days that basically went like this:

1) I will raise your taxes.

2) I will take that money and give it to a relatively small percentage of adults, who, by the way, rarely vote in elections anyway.

That was the basic message in his ads. "I'll repeal the Bush tax cuts and use that money to ensure health care for everyone." Guess what, Mr. Gephardt, most people have insurance already. Yes, somewhere between 30 million and 40 million Americans don't have health insurance. Most of them are children, however. Moreover, those people are disproportionately in urban-centric states (i.e. not Iowa).  It was the wrong message in the wrong place for the wrong people and it cost him.

That isn't to say that universal health-care is a loser of an issue. Just that it was a poor choice to talk about raising taxes to pay for it in a state where relatively few people would benefit.  People who vote tend to pay taxes and have insurance. So telling them you want to raise their taxes and provide them nothing in return isn't likely to resonate.

It's all about the numbers, Mr. Gephardt.