``Reich's analysis seems incorrect to me. The application of more sophisticated technology should enable one to do more with less. If the aim were to get voters excited about the election and the candidates, advanced marketing techniques could be expected to use fairly modest resources to create passionate responses, leading to an unstable electorate and the likelihood of landslides and upsets.'' (Gordon Fitch)
``That's assuming that marketing really creates desire and is such a good tool for manipulation. What marketing in its modern form most allows is finding the marginal consumers/voters who are least passionate about their preferences and subtly move them to an alternative.'' (Nathan Newman)
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I think Nathan Newman's view is probably closer to what is occurring.
The conceptual frame is consumer products in close competitive markets. The basic strategy is to parse the competition very closely, and match them point to point, while shifting the criterion of choice to some marginal feature that one competitor offers that the other doesn't. The reason for making distinctions within very limited domains is a matter of cost. It costs more to make something of better quality than the competition, so the idea is to keep cost distinctions very tight, and find an attractive, but almost costless and probably meaningless feature that can be added to an existing me-too product (thus determining what to question). For example, offer more colors or color choices, or some other insubstantial feature that is already part of the cost of production. Since almost nothing is costless, the feature competition can be offset by some depredation in production materials or methods, or their equivalent in cutting labor, shipping or distribution cost or some other hidden cost that will not register on the consumer perception level.
These marketing techniques are merely applied without modification to political campaigns. Since the hard nosed principles approach, more or less the equivalent to a product quality comparison, from the repugnants failed miserably when it was put forward by Gingrich and company (Contract On America), the repugnants have changed over to a consumer friendly approach of parsing the democrat's humanitarian issues as closely as GM and Ford shave each other on interior design and dealer finance options.
In this utter political void of consumer markets, Nader is the trendy, new product with cool features not offered by any of the established brands. These are namely some hat tipping to quality issues, like principles, and those most illusive of all features, sincerity and commitment. Of course with only a 5% market share, the Nader brand can afford to risk some cost or votes on quality, since there is no competition in this arena. But even this offer of authenticity is pretty thin gruel, since Nader isn't lumbering over to the podium and bending down to the mic to say, `Arm the masses and off the pigs' is he?
Chuck Grimes