The trouble is that you don’t ‘buy’ the constituency; you just need the resources to successfully advertise to the constituency(which is why contemporary campaigns have really started to ramp up the importation of silicon valley user-targeting talent; and why a lot of the traditional political consigliere types you’d find standing behind successful career politicians had some mixture of work experience with or excellent connections to, advertising and marketing operations).
I can’t argue with the ‘all seems a bit naive in hindsight’ conclusion, though.
