There is a quote from the gambling movie “Rounders,” that if you cannot spot the sucker at a poker table in the first few minutes of play you actually are the sucker.  To paraphrase, if you can’t spot the choir being preached to at a protest, you are probably part of the choir.

This conceit came to me while driving back from a “Tea Party” protest outside the Centreville offices of U.S. Rep. Frank Kratovil, the Democrat who took over the seat after a brutal electoral battle with Republican State Sen. Andy Harris. Kratovil is on hard ground as one of the “Blue Dog” Democrats, a group who fashions themselves as more conservative than their party colleagues. In the wake of stimulus spending and heading into a contentious overhaul of health care, Kratovil and others are going to have to carefully step between what the White House wants and how they can demonstrate ideological independence to their moderate constituents.

That dynamic brings us to the protest, attended by several dozen people on Friday. In the long run, outside of any policy arguments raised, these gatherings have to be examined as whether they are the expression of broad outrage or more niche grievances. Is Kratovil losing any votes at these rallies?

Well, when an organizer asked the crowd if anyone had voted for Kratovil, no one raised their hand or spoke up (or admitted it). That is not the sign of a rally reaching for an electoral majority, although the organizer was quick to note it was a summer workday afternoon and hard-core activists are the likeliest of attendants.

But what I saw really reminded me of the 2004 Iraq War/Republican National Convention protests in New York City, which I covered as a graduate student. Although coming from different sides of the aisle, both events had the same problem: scattered grievances distorted by emotional imagery.

The New York protest had snide t-shirts calling President George W. Bush an idiot or a war criminal while a smattering of people chanted “Long live the Intifada;” the Centreville protest had a button declaring “Rationing? Kennedy wants you dead too,” and a speaker calling Russia the “Soviet Union” and using President Barack Obama’s baseball skills as a referendum on patriotism.

These movements are faced with the difficult task of negotiating between being too weak and too strong, and how to get more voters without alienating an equal number. It is worth noting, however, that no amount of signs comparing Bush to a Nazi were able to sway Ohio in 2004, and it is highly questionable whether t-shirts declaring “Waterboard Pelosi” will do any better in Maryland’s First Congressional District next year.