"Build-up" has two meanings in this context. 1)Politicians could send a series of signals to win small groups of voters. 2) Politicians could send a series of signals to large group of voters who need repeated re-assurances that the politician really means what he says. Ie, build up of votes vs. build up of perception. My claim is that the adoption of campaign issues a) does not build up the # of votes because the class of people for whom this is the most pressing issue is small and b) if you try to build up perception on the adoption issue, there is a very good chance you will get whacked because adoption workers can easily mobilize to change public opinion, since they are recognized experts on adoption.
> And the point of sending that low cost signal is to ... get more votes! > And if you send a lot of them, that adds up. > > care if you bash a rap musician. Same for the community investment > > act (I forget what this even is). I'd guess that few people > > are explicitely against it, and it's a cheap way to signal to > > political moderates that urban issues won't be forgotten by > > either Gore or Bush. > > So do the political moderates care or not?! A little. You claim Gore/Bush made a big deal over the Community act, although I see very little compared to other issues. I think they could care less. > Translation: Pre-public debate, the median voter wants a different > policy; post-public debate, the median voter will want the status quo? > That's an interesting story, but it's different from your earlier ones. > Prof. Bryan Caplan Incorrect interpretation of what I said. My claim was that adoption workers are well established authorities over adoption, thus it requires effort to combat them. I also claimed that because they are well established experts, they can smear politicians, imposing high costs over them. They change the terms of the debate from "does the child have a home?" to "are we breaking up black families and damaging the child's identity?" This is NOT a claim about changing preferences, it's a claim that adoption workers are quite able to change the terms of the debate. I know economists are genetically incapable of understanding the role that rhetoric plays in politics, but adoption is a great example. If you ask a voter if a black orphans should have white parents when there aren't enough black parenets, they'd say yes. If you ask a voter whether black orphan's personality be messed up because his white parents can't relate to him, then many will say no. A lot of politics is jockeying for the median voter, but remember that the median voter is defined by preferences defined over a set of issues. But of course, you can always try to argue with what the choices are, and that's what I'm talking about. Fabio
