>
> On Sun, 9 Nov 2008, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>>> I honestly don't see why this new style electoral base should be any
>>> less effective as a governor.
>>
>> All O has to do is throw 'em a few bones, like stem cell research and
>> high-minded rhetoric, and they'll click away in '12.
>
> Assuming arguendo this is true, this is different from the union model
> of a base exactly how? They got more than a few bones?
>
> I think you guys are nostalgizing. Electoral bases never got huge
> amounts. They always got some, they had to be taken into account, you
> couldn't piss them off too many times without depressing your next
> campaign. But it's often been bones. That's a lot of what the right
> wing electoral base has gotten from their presidents, and they really
> are an organized social movement.
It's less a question of how many bones than of whether the bones are fake. Fake withdrawal from Iraq, fake right to health insurance, all covered up with pretty rhetoric. (These are just illustrative examples.) Policy is complicated. A real organization has people whose whole job is to distinguish real from fake, then take a position and explain it to the base. The resulting campaign of protest might win or might lose, but whatever happens an organized interest is less likely to get snookered.
SA