Get ready to enjoy this with your weekend breakfast. They changed their policy and it won't be on line until after 8PM Saturday night.
The Note - This Sunday's New York Times Magazine offers a magnum opus by Matt Bai on the marketing of Bush-Cheney '04 in the heartland -- in this case, the particularly key battleground of Ohio. Bai likens the BC04 grassroots operation to a mulitlevel marketing scheme the likes of Amway, with a top-down culture Ken Mehlman hopes will invade the far reaches of the exburbs and provide an extra bit of traction in the closely divided state.
A peek:
"By descending the levels of this newly created Bush pyramid, from its headquarters in Washington down to the doorsteps of the exurban town houses sprouting up all over Ohio, you can see not just the outlines of the 2004 campaign taking shape but also the emerging portrait of politics in a new century. As steel and coal have faded, so, too, have the great political machines those industries created in Ohio's cities. These urban strongholds, hit hardest by job losses, are the places where Democrats have long ruled the streets. But Republicans believe they can control a new, more promising demographic: the fast-growing, conservative communities just beyond the suburban sprawl, where tony malls are rising almost monthly out of fields and farmland. For Republicans, this means a whole new market of potential entrepreneurs to enlist and mobilize. If Bush can harness the power of the exurbs, he can create a kind of organization the country has not yet witnessed - a political machine for the new economy." |
