> The reason why grassroots organizing's capacity to mobilize and
> politicize people is central to social-movement building _but matters
> little in an election_ is that elections (especially
> money-and-media-driven elections like American ones) give
> disproportionate weight and power to moderate fence-sitters who are
> "undecided" until the very last minute, whereas social movements are
> powered by those who have strong opinions (be they on the left or the
> right), make up their minds quickly, and actually spend time and
> energy contributing to movement-building.
Doesn't this sum up the strategic differences between the Repubs and Dems as well? My impression has been that the right Repubs, from the defeat of Goldwater back when, built a social movement that first bore fruit with Reagan in '80. Sure, it helps to have lots of $$$, but they wanted to build a committed and activist base with that $$$, not try to sell their candidates at the last minute to people who hadn't made up their minds. The Dems, on the other hand, became lazy, ignored their traditional base--which in turn caused that base to lose power--and went after the swing voters, tacitly counting on increasingly low voter turn-out.
End result: the Dems are constantly fretting about alienating the apathetic. Meanwhile, more and more stuff from the far right becomes integrated into standard Republican discourse (the journalist David Neiwert, whose weblog is at http://dneiwert.blogspot.com, has covered this in rather disturbing detail)
To the Dems: I say to you, thou art neither hot nor cold. I would thou wert hot or cold. But since thou art neither hot nor cold, but lukewarn, I would spew thee from my mouth--except that four more years of Bush the Younger is too horrible to contemplate.
Curtiss