Firing Up the Base(s)

Firing up the base(s): Eric Schmeltzer on the upsides and downsides of the conservative-friendly Palin pick.

But there's a flipside of firing up your base with attacks -- it fires up the other side's base too. For every hardcore supporter of the radical right that was jumping up and cheering at home, there was a progressive jumping up and shouting profanity at their TV.

Anecdotally speaking, this seems to be quite true—my Facebook newsfeed was enflamed with angry status updates all night long, and it's been a while since my comment threads had this many people arguing with Mike T.