(H/T: Instapundit) The Economist has the right idea about the problem that the Left is having right now:
The other reason to doubt whether Occupy Wall Street will become a tea-party movement of the left is its fixation on protest. But Zuccotti Park is not Tahrir Square and America is not Egypt. It is not even France. In France street demos are tolerated, sometimes glorified, as a way to blow off steam and win the attention of deputies who neglect voters or forget their election promises.
America is different. It is, indeed, the sort of democracy that some people in Tahrir Square lost their lives asking for. With endless elections and permanent campaigns, it is exquisitely sensitive to voters’ wants.
[snip]
The tea-partiers grasped all this. They, too, took to the streets. Some strutted about in tricorn hats. But at the same time they learned their way around the machinery of elections and how to scare the bejesus out of any candidate they did not like.