Power runs from the barrel of a gun, said Mao. In the US, Jessie Unruh said money is the mother’s milk of politics.

I don’t see Obama’s power base, running from either. He does not have a cadre of people able to fight street battles nationally to intimidate and beat people.

His money-making in the campaign is formidable, but that’s different from doling out patronage. Politics is about assembling a winning coalition, and Dems there have massive weaknesses that are worse with Obama.

Obama’s core supporters are Blacks. That’s only 12% of the population. Next come Hispanic, really Mexican origin which is 13%, according to the 2000 Census. That brings him up to 25%. Suppose it’s 2010, and the economy is terrible, many foreign threats, lots of things that have people unhappy even worse than the Hostage Crisis, Obama appears as Biden says, “weak” and “wrong.”

Who is his base? Who turns out for him, votes, to carry him and his candidates over 50%? Nationwide? Who? You can add White Yuppies, that gets him to 35%. Then what?

Napoleon left with a huge Army, but much of it was of poor quality, not French but Poles and Germans and Italians and such like. With little stake in Napoleon, likely to desert at the first hardships, and not the core of his Army. When it came to standing and fighting, most of Napoleon’s Army simply left in the retreat from Moscow. Because had, as Obama has now, little to offer them.

If you are White, and Working/Middle Class, Obama will have you as long as Moscow is sunny, warm, and there is not much fighting, Biden’s words notwithstanding, and you get money and medals. If you have hunger, cold, disease, heavy fighting, you desert. And there is not much either General no matter how grand can do about it.

Every Pole and German knew, in Napoleon’s Army, that the patronage went to the French first. They would get some spoils, but not much. Whoever was the winner of the moment had their loyalty and desertion was always an option.