I fully agree that I wouldn't give a candidate the time of day if they didn't offer positions. But I'm in the 2% club on that. Most voters don't care about positions and if the candidate gives too many positions then the voters have too many reasons to disagree with the candidate.

What most voters want is to have confidence, hope, and trust in the candidate with some sense in just a few issues areas of the general stand of the candidate (such as for or against the war) and then let the candidate take care of the positions.

That is why both Obama and Clinton have been short on speaking on specific issues. Clinton has tried to make the non-issue issues like "experience" her campaign theme and Obama makes hope for change his theme.

Where they stand on the issues is out there for people to research, and they make broad statements like "protecting a woman's right to choose", but it would be poison to go deeper because the more stands you take the more people will disagree with you. Voters will let slide the fact that they know little about a candidate's positions, but on anyone issue the voter may have a pet peeve and 10 points of agreement will be wiped out by one point of disagreeemnt if a personal ox gets gored by too much discussion of the issues.