Years ago, while reevaluating the comics strips my newspaper was publishing, I chanced across some considerations about survey results that changed my perspective. It’s not just whether something’s popular or not, but also the intensity of the attraction — or repulsion.

The conventional thinking would look at the popularity of certain items and rank them by overall readership. In terms of a newspaper, that would ask: What was the most popular story? The most popular category? The most popular length? As if everybody essentially follows the same tastes.

Conventional wisdom would also tally complaints the same way. The more complaints, the fewer likes, right?

Hold your horses! The safest approach is not always the sanest.

I’d already heard about one newspaper where the cartoon strip Doonesbury came in as the most detested feature, at least in calls and letters to the editor’s office. Convention would order the comic be cancelled. The paper, by coincidence, was also looking at some professional marketing research results as the boss was pondering a decision, and those figures had Doonesbury as the most popular feature. Higher than Dear Abby or Ann, even.

It was what more readers wanted to read than anything else. Add to that the consideration that nobody was forcing anybody to read anything. If you don’t like it, move on. (Except maybe the folks who didn’t like it still kept reading it?) It’s one thing to dislike something yourself, but to insist it be taken from others? That line of reasoning would lead me to remove onions from cookbooks, menus, and dishes worldwide, if I ever had the option. (Lucky world.)

Back to the task at hand. While my research was hardly scientific – we were relying on readers who took the time to fill out coupons and mail them to us – I asked the respondents to rank their selections from 1 to 10, starting with their most favorite and moving down. It proved to allow me a crucial insight.

If I counted up all the votes for a particular strip, I got one result. As I recall, Peanuts was the leader in that tally.

But if I looked at only the top three picks from each respondent and weighted them for first-, second-, and third-place preference, Peanuts fell from the picture altogether. I was looking for spikes – for excitement, actually. Three new strips at the time – Garfield, Cathy, and the Far Side, if memory serves – topped the tally, something none of us counting the results would have predicted. We rearranged our page accordingly, and, no, we didn’t cancel Peanuts, though Spiderman and a few others gave way to new entries selected by our readers in some followup surveys.

Later, I learned of far more sophisticated work being done along these lines – and that some features, such as crossword puzzles or bridge columns, may have low overall numbers but be the overriding reason a reader buys that paper from day to day.

As one decision-maker told me, a fresh way of looking at the composite package would be to ask what is the last thing you could cancel before you lose that reader.

Hmm …

I suppose similar kinds of thinking occur in running, say, a supermarket, where you can at least test the results in actual sales day to day or week to week.

For me, though, the insights spring to mind when I look at the political scene. We could start with the polling or leap into the actual voting, but every candidate and party is a package of many issues, interests, and positions.

It’s that intensity factor I wonder about. How often do we go for the least objectionable over something that generates heat, pro and con?

Just what excites a supporter, no matter what, over simply going along or just sitting this one out?

Look at the number of Americans who don’t vote. Can that blandness be one of the reasons?

I keep remembering the Ron Paul supporters who stayed true to their presidential preference, election after election. Maybe deep down they knew he didn’t have a chance, but they turned out anyway with their time and money. Their intensity helped keep the message in the air, possibly influencing others.

So here I am, looking for intensity. Someone could possibly write a calculus of the point where a minority side’s intensity overrides the majority’s blander leanings and actually sways the outcome.

Maybe if we could keep some of that intensity rising, we’d get more people at the polls, even if it’s only to register their protest.

To me, it’s far more telling than the question of “likely voter.”

Examining the life of Fred Koch, father of the billionaires Charles and David, points to extreme right-wing activities in America’s Great Depression, a subject that deserves much wider public awareness. It’s not that the information isn’t out there – it just takes time to piece the implications together.

For starters, Al Carroll’s When the Right Wing Tried to Overthrow FDR in the Daily Kos, has one summary of an event that was news to me:

“The American Liberty League plotted to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt, sometimes referred to as the Business Plot. Some US businessmen were so opposed to the New Deal they planned to bring down Roosevelt by force using a private army and install a fascist government.”

That’s right. Overthrow the elected government by force. Not only that, but “The list of plotters included some of the most prominent businessmen in the country.” Household names, for the most part.

And that, in turn, leads to a remarkable but now largely unknown American hero, Smedley Darlington Butler, who not only refused to participate in the conspiracy but then boldly exposed a plan so insidious he was initially ridiculed before a congressional investigation found enough to lend support to the allegations.

That’s a lot to take in, even before learning of an actual attempted assassination on FDR in Miami, Florida, on February 15, 1933. The gunman missed the president but several shots wounded five people, including Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who died from the injuries.

A Koch Truths account notes that the German Reichstag was burned to the ground two weeks later, supposedly by a lone, unemployed bricklayer – an event Hitler used to consolidate his power and the ascent of the Nazi party.

As that entry continues: “In Florida, the FBI immediately claimed that the assassin, Giuseppe Zingara, also a brick mason, was a lone anarchist from New Jersey. Within two months, he was tried, convicted, and sent to the electric chair without any investigation into possible deeper political motives or financial connections.”

Anyone else feeling an eerie sense of foreboding here? Any parallels to the JFK assassination to come?

The blog then presents its own account of the Business Plot:

“By June 1933, a new coup attempt had been put in motion. The so-called ‘Business Plot’ involved the use of the 500,000 Bonus Army from WWI to encircle Washington and force the President to either repeal New Deal Legislation or abdicate. The plot was spoiled by retired Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps from Pennsylvania who at the time was a vocal critic of military policy and the most decorated Marine in U.S. History. In 1934 Butler testified to a Congressional Committee that he had been contacted by a group of wealthy pro-Fascist industrialists to lead the overthrow of the government.

“He claimed that he had been approached by representatives of the American Legion and an offshoot called the American Liberty League to organize the military for the coup. He was told they had a war chest of $15 million and they wanted him to give a speech at the Legion convention demanding re-institution of the gold standard. Butler turned down the bribe, but said he played along to see who was actually behind the coup and to gather evidence against the conspirators. He even brought in a reporter from the Philadelphia Record, Paul Comley French, to substantiate his story.”

So far, I’ve seen no evidence that Fred Koch was one of the industrialists, but he was hardly isolated in his views, either. How much his overlapped with theirs remains a question. The American fascist sympathies were more widespread than we commonly acknowledge today. As the blog continues:

“In the early 1930’s, the National Commander of the American Legion, Ralph T. O’Neill, and the Executive Committee openly praised Mussolini as a ‘great leader’ in a resolution. At the time the American Legion was accused of being anti-Semitic when it called for the end of ‘non-Aryan’ pollution of ‘American stock’ and an end to non-Anglo Saxon immigration as a way of controlling ‘anarchist’ infiltration.

“In 1934, several other pro-fascist organizations became active to combat the New Deal and the policies of FDR but the most prominent was the recently formed American Liberty League.”

It would be comforting if these currents had long vanished from the American scene, but it’s becoming obvious they’ve been festering. The fact that prominent citizens – some of the richest families in the nation, in fact – were willing to overturn the elected government and replace it with a coup is shocking. Is it safe to ask ourselves, What would stop them now?

The early reports have Jeb Bush as the top spender in the New Hampshire primary, at $1,200 per vote. I imagine that figure will shoot up as more bills surface, both for his campaign and his Right to Rise USA super PAC.

We’re a relatively small state. Places like Wyoming or Wyoming are geographically much bigger, with fewer residents. It’s a trade-off. Imagine what he’d rack up running in a big state like New York or California.

Well, I suppose $1,200 a pop isn’t out of line for what might be spent on a guest at a party in some of Jeb’s circles. As for a destination wedding in A-list society? We can only imagine. Maybe it would cover the flowers.

Even the most frugal of the Republican pack – Trump, at $40 a vote, and Cruz, at $18 – leave me shaking my head.

And this race is just starting. Remember, keep an eye on the money. The big donors consider it an investment, one they’ll get back.

As for the rest of us?

~*~

By the way, with Jeb and Marco Rubio, both from Florida, still in the running (more or less), anyone else wondering how’ll they fare in the primary in their own state? Would their support split (again) to allow Donald Trump and/or Ted Cruz to race to the top? Or for retired Buckeyes to swing it to Kasich?

What do the Floridians know about their guys that we don’t?

We’re all ears. And eyes.

The ballots for New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary listed more candidates than you’ve seen in the news. They always do. We’re bound to have fringe candidates who put up the registration money, garner some signatures, and wind up getting their names printed on the ballot.

For the record, they don’t do enough to prompt news coverage, so it’s not a matter of mass-media bias. You can’t report things that don’t happen. A rally? A town hall meeting? The opening of a campaign office? Nada, nada, nada.

On my way to vote, I reflected on a mailing we received from one wannabe who failed to meet the deadline in submitting his application and certified check and was dutifully rejected, so he was now appealing for write-in votes – along with a plea for $18 donations for his booklet.

Hey, this is as basic as it gets. Somebody who can’t manage a simple deadline thinks he can function in the Oval Office?

Next!

Still, you can’t keep up with them all. Maybe you knew of six or seven on the Republican side – maybe even nine or 10, if you add a few bounced from the televised debates. But 30? And then on the Democratic slate, if you expected just two plus the recently withdrawn Martin O’Malley, you were bound to do a double-take. I counted 28.

More jarring as I went down the list was my connection of first name Vermin with surname Supreme of Rockport, Massachusetts.

What?

After voting (for a more recognizable name), I checked in with my principal political advisor. Is Vermin Supreme for real? (It might have been a typo, after all – Vernon, maybe?) Who is that?

You don’t know? He always runs. He wears a boot for a hat.

Had to check that out. After all, I want to know how he stands.

Left or right, for starters?

Across the state, the voting stations are open for the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. For some campaigns, this is the do-or-die event. It separates most of the wheat from the chaff – or the other way around.

It will be a busy day for campaign operations. The effective ones will rely on their lists of likely supporters and see that these voters get to the polls. Knock on your door, give you a phone call, send a driver, if need be. As for the others?

The big hotels in Manchester are surrounded by camps of vans with huge satellite dishes – the television crews from across the country and around the world. They’ll cover the candidates’ big rallies as the results arrive in the evening, and then the winners and losers joined by their doting spouses on the podium. A few words, a wave, and they’re gone, off to the next game or at least the locker room, as it were.

Tomorrow will be a big letdown, especially for the campaign teams. For some it’s off to new assignments, and some newly formed, intense friendships will veer apart. For others it’s just curtains, without a bow. Packing up won’t be as orderly as you’d expect, as local offices close. The rush to the next campaign is already on.

It will be like the day after a wild party, with or without the hangovers. And then? The one thing I know is our phone will be awfully quiet.

Today brings the final push in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary season, drawing this unique trial in the American democratic experience to a climax. Even though I’ve already written of the state’s uncanny ability as a test market for White House hopefuls and of the event’s roots in the town meeting tradition each March – plus the widespread involvement of the public in political party work and decision-making – I’m still reminded of our editor-in-chief’s counsel all those years ago, You’ve never experienced anything quite like this.

The television camera crews try to relate some of the story, but I fear their very presence distorts it. It’s hard for a candidate to get close to the voters when there’s a convoy of nearly 100 video camera operators plus reporters in pursuit. I remember looking up in my nearly empty newsroom one Saturday afternoon and seeing their faces pressed against the hallway windows while a candidate was being interviewed by one of our own in a corner office, completely out of their sight.

This is my seventh round through the cycle – and my first thoroughly extricated from the newsroom. My first primary was a snowy one, and what I remember most vividly is the seemingly endless row of BUSH signs stuck in the white mounds down the middle of Elm Street through Manchester. For what it’s worth, we’ve had Bush signs for the majority of my presidential primaries here.

One change I’m seeing is a shift away from face-to-face campaigning, the kind that presents a fairly level playing field. Apart from a few big donors’ homes – and a very select guest list – the GOP has largely eschewed the living room presentations this season. The Republican candidates essentially have relied on broadcast advertising and phone calls (often of the robot variety) to bombard potential voters with canned messages rather than live, candid interactions. Let me add, the phone calls have been relentless since before Thanksgiving. Those that identify themselves on caller ID tend to be from out of state – California, Las Vegas, Louisiana, Washington state, Utah, and so on – or from Cell Phone NH. Some evenings, in the midst of our Advent devotional reading, we’d have to pause for three calls to go to voicemail, if they dared. (They didn’t.) And that was before the campaigning really heated up.

As I’ve previously mentioned, the primary encounters have taught me to take a close look at a candidate’s campaign organization. How well does it operate? Is it all paid staff or instead include a significant number of interns and welcome volunteers for canvassing and phone banking?

It has felt a little strange not having campaign volunteers camping out in our house this time. We’re in the midst of some major renovations – starting with the bathroom – but we have memories, mostly positive, of our guests from previous primaries.

Today, of course, is a candidate’s last day to sway undecided voters or to at least cast doubt over the rivals in an attempt to weaken their support. Things are likely to rise to an emotional pitch, perhaps even including tears.

And to think, we’re still nine months out from the national election, November 8.

It will be interesting to see how the races continue from here.