Tony Blair On The Two Electorates

I have written on numerous occasions on Room 8 about my “theory of the two electorates” – that because of the internet and cable TV, people like us who live and breathe politics (let’s call us the informed electorate) know much, much more about it than ever before and that everybody else (let’s call them the vast majority) know much less than before for the same reasons.

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/jerry_skurnik/the_theory_of_the_two_electorates.html

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/jerry_skurnik/the_two_electorates_the_media.html

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/jerry_skurnik/more_on_the_two_electorates.html

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/jerry_skurnik/not_so_important_after_all.html

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/jerry_skurnik/cable_news_the_two_electorates.html

I was pleased to read in the Sunday NY Times Book Review that at least one extremely successful politician agrees with me. Of course, he is not an American pol (too many of whom think that a cable new controversy or a video that is only seen on website is galvanizing the voters, but it is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/books/review/Zakaria-t.html?emc=eta1

“The single hardest thing for a practicing politician to understand,” Blair writes, “is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long.” Their days are spent “worrying about the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, sex and rock ’n’ roll.”