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<oembed><version>1.0</version><provider_name>naked capitalism</provider_name><provider_url>https://www.nakedcapitalism.com</provider_url><author_name>Matt Stoller</author_name><author_url>https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/author/matt-stoller</author_url><title>The Fake Election: 10 Arguments The Republicans Aren't Making | naked capitalism</title><type>rich</type><width>600</width><height>338</height><html>&lt;blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="qFGJiZxX0A"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/10-arguments-the-republicans-arent-making-or-why-the-gop-doesnt-mind-losing-in-2012.html"&gt;The Fake Election: 10 Arguments The Republicans Aren&#x2019;t Making&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/10-arguments-the-republicans-arent-making-or-why-the-gop-doesnt-mind-losing-in-2012.html/embed#?secret=qFGJiZxX0A" width="600" height="338" title="&#x201C;The Fake Election: 10 Arguments The Republicans Aren&#x2019;t Making&#x201D; &#x2014; naked capitalism" data-secret="qFGJiZxX0A" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" class="wp-embedded-content"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
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</html><description>Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at&#xA0;https://twitter.com/matthewstoller&#xA0;and he can be reached at stoller at gmail.com.  Even authoritarian systems require legitimacy to retain the support of the governed, and the new authoritarian America is no exception. Since 2004, the brilliant public journalism advocate Jay Rosen has been asking, what is the point of a political convention? No news is made, yet over 15,000 journalists show up, ostensibly to cover the pomp. But everyone knows that coverage isn't so much the point; these conventions&#xA0;trade shows&#xA0;for the political class, where party insiders, journalists, politicians, celebrities, corporate types, and lobbyists mingle to organize political hierarchies. The public is simply irrelevant, a mass of jeering and cheering message imbibers or apathetic and cynical former citizens, people who are unseen behind their TV screens. The only fresh elements are protesters, and they are met by a police state, lest they disrupt the insider deal-making.</description></oembed>

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