Inverse. Ritter for the top spot. His Iraqi-backed handlers have prepped and shined him up over the past year to be presentable and coherent, at least at first.
All Gore's got is some West Wing type clipping Eurosnot stories regurgitated in US papers, and buzzphrase talking points from a while ago.
If this is planned from DNC, they chose the wrong person. It would show that the election strategy was something like this - attack and attack Bush (started bout 4 mos. ago), Make Iraq an issue, discover that it doesn't help them, change to the "economy" for a week, then back to Bush, insinuate 1. he's going to attack before the election (always a fear of an opposition party), 2. that he's stirring up war fervor ((which I don't see, but only as a "response" to the various forces putting him on the spot. I think the plan was to keep it quieter).
Top Dems are narcissistic - they are more personalities than anything, so naturally they think about attacking ad hominem. I don't know anyone who's thinking about Iraq when considering these congressional elections.