I’ve always found it apt when the everyman supporters of a political movement are called “the base”. As a coastal elitist snob, I often heap scorn on the base elements of our society which also happen to be the bases of both parties—indeed, the bases of all successful parties in a democracy.

For a democracy to properly function, however, the base base must not be agitated with populism and demagoguery. If it is, ugliness ensues and democracy is threatened. Witness this WaPo report:

Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

Sow the seeds of discord, reap the whirlwind. Something like that.

Brad DeLong shits a brick over the Washington Post’s editorial page this morning. Citing Kevin Drum’s take on it, his headline screams “Shut Down the Washington Post Today!”

Having read the WaPo page, I have to say I disagree with Drum’s and DeLong’s strident readings of it. Here’s what the page actually says:

President Bush yesterday vowed to continue pushing for international sanctions. But Democrats and some Republicans are arguing that now is the time for the Bush administration to begin a broad dialogue with Iran—and drop a precondition that the regime first suspend uranium enrichment. It’s an odd time to recommend such a concession: The latest European Union talks with Iran last week were a disaster, in which a new hard-line envoy of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad withdrew the previous, inadequate Iranian compromise proposals. Were the Bush administration to abandon its insistence on a suspension of enrichment, Mr. Ahmadinejad would declare victory over the relative moderates in Iran who have recently criticized his uncompromising stance.

While one hopes that American strikes are off the table, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea to further ratchet up the pressure on Iran. The NIE doesn’t exactly transform Ahmadinejad into an interlocuteur valable. Negotiations are the art of extracting maximum advantage from your adversary without using actual physical force. One gets the sense that people are forgetting this amid the euphoria.