goats is on hiatus until further notice• read my new webcomic scenes from a multiverse
january 05, 2005
carefully orchestrated visceral reactionsPhillip Karlsson's random thoughts, musings, and mindless pabulum.
January 05, 2005
Expanding the base
Words of obviousness (mmm...ness-monster) from Ezra:
We don't need to turn out our base, we need to enlarge it. We need to make liberalism safe and attractive, and we need more Americans to demand more progressivism in their candidate. When Barry Goldwater turned the hell out of his base, he lost by one of the widest margins in American history. His base was too small. When Reagan turned out his base, he won repeatedly. Reagan made conservatism attractive, he made his base -- theoretically the same one Goldwater had -- huge. Which is why the whole idea of bases as monolithic groups is dead wrong, they're amorphous, they fluctuate in size. And they're not the answer. When liberalism is ascendant and its spokesperson appealing, our base will be huge. Until then, it'll never be large enough.

