I mean, I’m not on her Christmas card list or anything, but you can’t expect me to buy that she said that. This statement of hers has to have been garbled.
“We’re in the best position,” said Hamsher, “when the person in the White House has to care what we think.” But making Obama care meant, basically, constant intensity.
Jane’s Old School: she knows as well as I do that you make a politician or political party care by scaring them. ‘Intensity’ uncoupled to anything merely makes them greedy and dismissive.
Seriously. Do you think that the Republican establishment was more attentive or less attentive to the Tea Party’s issues and opinions after Bennett got beaten in the Utah primary? Or when Rubio came from behind in Florida? Or Rand Paul in Kentucky? LePage in Maine? The answer is ‘more attentive,’ of course; which is why progressives tried themselves to impose their ideology on the Democratic primary. They of course failed – weak reeds, and all that – but the principle is sound; party leadership isn’t going to just give out respect. You have to take it, usually after laying party leadership out on the ground a couple of times.
Metaphorically, of course.
Moe Lane