And in this corner … is anyone there?

Imagine you awaken one morning after a night of serial misjudgments to see through the cobwebs that sway before your aching eyes a contract with your signature on it. You lift it carefully, as if it might explode in your face, and you find it obliges you to serve as the campaign manager for Candidate D, the Democrat challenging Sen. Olympia Snowe in 2006. A small whimper escapes your lips. Your impulse is to hope that while you return to uneasy sleep the contract evaporates with the morning dew.

Let’s say it doesn’t. Let’s say that hours later you arise uncertainly to take account of your circumstances. You now recall Candidate D, the fine fellow you met the night before: sparkly white teeth, firm handshake, probably jogged five miles that very morning before volunteering at a soup kitchen. Good. Very good, indeed. And then you have his opponent, Sen. Snowe: elected and re-elected to Congress beginning in 1978, winning more federal contests than anyone from Maine in 60 years. In her last campaign, she beat former state Senate President Mark Lawrence by 38 points.

You return to the thoughts of sparkly teeth and firm handshake.

Maine Democrats have yet to give up entirely on the race against Sen. Snowe, but to win against her is the longest of long shots, and might produce nothing more than candidates who don’t mind being trounced in exchange for being known, perhaps for a race in the future. That would be a shame: elections are not only about candidates but about ideas. Challengers have the excellent opportunity to question the ideas held by the incumbent while offering their own – about government, the direction of the nation, the way things are and how they might be. But they must be serious for their ideas to be taken seriously.

What to do? Or, perhaps, first, what not to do. You wouldn’t, for instance, begin with e-mails to Maine newspapers, as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has been doing this spring, swinging hyperbolically at the senator. The last one claimed she “flip-flopped” on Medicaid with her latest budget vote and it cited, if you can believe it, a BDN editorial as evidence. But the flip-flop has been worn soulless; only the most naive editor would assign such a story. Instead, how about starting Candidate D’s campaign by calling a half dozen Republicans and Democrats with experience in statewide races and ask them what sort of strategy might be successful. Now you’re talking, and look – you’ve been saved the trouble. Here’s what they said.

Two, one from each party, began hopefully – the quality of the candidate is what really matters, they claimed – but all six quickly got down to the senator’s perceived vulnerabilities.

To begin, who said Olympia J. Snowe can’t be beaten? “Your senator rose to seem invincible, not because she was so great all those years, but because from Mark Gartley until the first Pat McGowan race, the D’s ran nothing but joke candidates against her. … Whoever runs against her should look at hard numbers re her actual productivity – going back to the House.”

“Elections are about choices,” said another, “and for there to be a choice there must be a difference. This is the most right-wing administration in 70 years. It must be pointed out that her tinkering around the edges of an extremist agenda isn’t good enough for the state of Maine.” Candidate D’s job then must “create an alternate story of what’s possible under a Democratic Senate.”

“Chronicle the number of businesses lost” during her time in office, said yet another. “Paper companies, the defense industry, and put that failure on her.” He hastened to add that this wasn’t a fair assertion, but it might be an effective one.

Should Candidate D want something of a more visceral campaign, there was this observation: “The best way to beat Olympia is to make her election a referendum on the corruption and failure of the Republican Congress. The ethical scandals of Tom DeLay, the inappropriate intervention into a personal family tragedy (the Schiavo case), the attempt to remove any check or balance on absolute Republican power (the ‘nuclear option’ on judges) and the effort to turn Social Security into a welfare program (progressive indexing) are all enormously unpopular with the American public.”

Almost everyone cautioned you. Since that close House race against McGowan in 1990, the senator has taken her races even more seriously and she is not only popular but is a good campaigner. “She’s truly great on the road,” said one. “She connects with people and they really like her.” She is also a tough competitor – notice the above comments have no names attached to them. I had to offer my solemn pledge not to make a half dozen lives less pleasant by revealing them.

One person, however, did go on the record with an assessment – the senator herself. “If you’re in the middle politically, it makes it all the more arduous to run. People are trying to put everything in stark terms, black or white, and that makes the environment much more polarizing.” Like trying to tie you to Tom DeLay or the Schiavo case? “I’m telling you, people will try anything,” she replied.

A last-minute thought came by e-mail from one of those contacted earlier. Reality had settled on the strategic-thinking part of his brain and he concluded, “You’d have to drive the negatives of a popular politician through the roof. The first best chance for the Democrats is for her to not run.”

The senator herself wasn’t as sure. “You never know what will present itself by the time the election arrives,” she said. “But I’m not going to give them any advice. They might use it against me.”

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.