John Cole:
Why is it that all the people who claim to be the base turn out to be self-serving, self-promoting jackasses who have very narrow agendas and love to inform us that if the Obama administration does just what they want them to do right when they want them to do it, they will “keep the base.” Otherwise, if they don’t fulfill their agenda right then and there, they will “lose the base.” And strategically, it always works out so well- see demanding the public option be put in the Senate Bill and shutting down the Snowe negotiations.
John is a friend, so I say this with genuine respect -- yes, the Democrats have a base problem. And no, it's not because of Ed Schultz, me, Jane Hamsher, or anyone else. Let's be real, we're just not that powerful.
Daily Kos gets about 2 million unique visitors per month, plus maybe a couple more million reading other progressive blogs. Ed (and Olbermann and Maddow) probably get that many watching their shows every month. There's overlap, so let's say 3-5 million progressives reading blogs and watching MSNBC's prime time lineup -- a pittance compared to the 16 million or so that listen to Limbaugh every week, and the 2-4 million that watch Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck every night. Huffington Post is getting about 16 million unique monthly visitors these days, but 80 percent of that is entertainment, and the other 20 percent is split among business, sports, living, style, green, technology and finally politics.
Point is, our media machine is tiny. We don't have the power to move our base around.
And heck, we don't even reach much of our base. 18-29 year-olds, a key component of the Democratic base, don't read blogs or watch MSNBC. Neither do African Americans or Latinos, at least in significant numbers. Yet look at these voter intensity numbers:
In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?
Def/Prob Not Likely/Won't
Dem 54 43
GOP 82 17
White 67 32
Black 26 55
Latino 38 51
18-29 38 53
As you can see, our base is demoralized and tuned out, and plan on sitting out the 2010 elections at rates that will absolutely fuck us if they don't improve by November.
But again, African Americans, Latinos, and young voters aren't tuning out because we failed to build bipartisan concensus with Olympia Snowe, or because MSNBC or the blogs made them angry. Making such claims is patently absurd. They're tuning out because we wasted 2009 "negotiating" with bad faith actors like Snowe and Mike Enzi. The tools were available to quickly pass a health care bill, yet Democrats were too incompetent to do so. And on issue after issue, they've proven completely ineffective.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/18/826443/-Canaries-in-the-coal-mine
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