Looking at RS colleague Erick Erickson’s deconstruction of supposed ‘grassroots’ site The Other 95 to reveal yet another Left-astroturf 501(c)(3) organization (in this case, Democracy in Action), I am struck with an errant thought: this must be exquisitely frustrating for professional Lefty operatives. They have almost everything that they need. They have a solid majority in both Houses of Congress; an Executive branch run by a Democrat and which contains all sorts of people willing to quietly do them favors; a media that largely takes their claims at face value; a plethora of funding; and even a broad outline of goals. They have all these things, but they lack one thing – one thing – and that’s actual warm bodies. They can’t even fill a coffee house reliably, let alone a field.
The really funny part? They’ve never needed to pack the room or the field before; because the Right. Doesn’t. Do. Protests. We bragged about it: “We have jobs.” So they never had to worry about that, until now. And it turns out that being able to bring out the people is actually an absolutely vital prerequisite for having a successful populist movement.
Go figure.
Moe Lane