74. WHEN the curtain falls on the conventions, the nominations made by the rival parties have to be sub- mitted to the acceptance of the sovereign people. Up to this point not much has been seen of the people, although it has been talked of a good deal; everybody quoted its authority, acted in its name, took pledges on its behalf, but this everybody was made up almost exclu- sively of the class of professional politicians. Hitherto the contact between the party Organization and the electorate has been very slight; they were much less in touch with one another than is the case with the party representatives and the bulk of the electors in England. Here the action of the Organization upon the electorate is compressed into the efforts made during the brief space of election time, and it is hardly a figure of speech to say that the American party Organization snatches the verdict from the electorate at a single stroke, that it carries the position by a sort of furious assault. The result is not the less brilliant, on the contrary even; for the besieging army supplied by the American Organization is infinitely superior to the troops of the English party organization in point of generalship, recruiting, dash, and discipline.
The poli- ticians face the people.
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Publication Information: Book Title: Democracy and the Party System in the United States. Contributors: M. Ostrogorski - author. Publisher: Macmillan. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1910. Page Number: 161.
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