John McCain plays underdog to Barack Obama
John McCain plays underdog to Barack Obama
When Washington Post editors recently told Ralph Nader the reason they weren't covering his 2008 election bid was because he had no chance to win, Nader quipped, "Then why are you covering the Nationals?" Now just four weeks away from the big election, both Nader and Washington's baseball team are forgotten players as John McCain leads the elephants against Barack Obama and the Donkeys.
Welcome to the real no-spin zone
It’s difficult enough for most of us to set aside our collective bias when we’re handicapping a sports event. I often find myself betting on exactly the same teams I used to hate when I was a boy. But in the end, a game is a game. The 2008 U.S. presidential election will affect billions of lives all over the world. If you’re going to place a sharp bet on the outcome, you’d better have the kind of objectivity that makes Walter Cronkite look like Bill O’Reilly.
The simple approach to betting on politics is to look at the election stock markets. This is where people trade “shares” in the political futures of the parties and candidates in question. At the popular University of Iowa electronic market, the Democrats were trading as high as 75 cents on Oct. 5 compared to a high of 27 cents for the Republicans – shares in whomever wins will be redeemed at $1 each. Those prices are pretty close to the actual betting odds, which have Barack Obama and the Dems at -340 to win the election.
There’s one problem with these markets: They seem to be completely out of touch with the reality on the ground. Remember when Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination? And then to become Barack Obama’s vice-presidential running mate? The markets – along with the polls and the pundits who fuel speculation – have been getting it wrong on a regular basis since the 2004 election, when John Kerry was believed to be ahead up until the day of reckoning itself.
In baseball, the chasm between conventional wisdom and what actually happens on the diamond is a godsend for handicappers. The betting public is easily led astray about the cause and effect of things. Just look at the players they vote into the All-Star Game year after year. Baseball, however, lends itself to cold, hard statistical analysis. We don’t have killer advanced metrics like VORP and pythagorean records for politics.
We do have trends, and there’s no question the trends are very positive for the Republican Party. They’ve won seven of the last 10 elections starting with Richard Nixon first taking office in 1968. Looking at their low price and their track record, it’s not difficult to conclude the GOP is a great value pick. Remember: There’s a difference between being good at running a country and being good at winning an election.
Recalling our no-spin mandate as handicappers, let’s step back and take a look at the strategies the John McCain candidacy is using. These so-called Hail Mary passes he’s throwing, like “suspending” his campaign and choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, are classic power moves aimed at controlling the tone of the election while flustering the opposition. They make little sense from an intellectual standpoint, but the Republicans are actively taking an anti-intellectual stance, a historically proven stratagem for seizing and holding onto power.
Now let’s look at the voting public. It’s fitting that 1968 marks the birth of the Republican Party as we know it today, because the cultural divide that we now recognize as red state/blue state really got on a roll with the proliferation of electronic media – television in particular. The Nixon-Kennedy debate gave the GOP an object lesson in using the power of this new visual mass medium to appeal to emotion rather than reason. Television may be on the wane thanks to the Internet, but it’s still the central piece of furniture in most living rooms.
It’s a fact that people act more on emotion than reason – it’s something all of us struggle with on a daily basis. If you’re a handicapper, or anyone else seeking gain, you minimize this weakness in yourself and you exploit it in others. Both the Republicans and Democrats are doing this, but history shows one party is more ruthless and successful at it than the other.
When Washington Post editors recently told Ralph Nader the reason they weren't covering his 2008 election bid was because he had no chance to win, Nader quipped, "Then why are you covering the Nationals?" Now just four weeks away from the big election, both Nader and Washington's baseball team are forgotten players as John McCain leads the elephants against Barack Obama and the Donkeys.
Welcome to the real no-spin zone
It’s difficult enough for most of us to set aside our collective bias when we’re handicapping a sports event. I often find myself betting on exactly the same teams I used to hate when I was a boy. But in the end, a game is a game. The 2008 U.S. presidential election will affect billions of lives all over the world. If you’re going to place a sharp bet on the outcome, you’d better have the kind of objectivity that makes Walter Cronkite look like Bill O’Reilly.
The simple approach to betting on politics is to look at the election stock markets. This is where people trade “shares” in the political futures of the parties and candidates in question. At the popular University of Iowa electronic market, the Democrats were trading as high as 75 cents on Oct. 5 compared to a high of 27 cents for the Republicans – shares in whomever wins will be redeemed at $1 each. Those prices are pretty close to the actual betting odds, which have Barack Obama and the Dems at -340 to win the election.
There’s one problem with these markets: They seem to be completely out of touch with the reality on the ground. Remember when Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination? And then to become Barack Obama’s vice-presidential running mate? The markets – along with the polls and the pundits who fuel speculation – have been getting it wrong on a regular basis since the 2004 election, when John Kerry was believed to be ahead up until the day of reckoning itself.
In baseball, the chasm between conventional wisdom and what actually happens on the diamond is a godsend for handicappers. The betting public is easily led astray about the cause and effect of things. Just look at the players they vote into the All-Star Game year after year. Baseball, however, lends itself to cold, hard statistical analysis. We don’t have killer advanced metrics like VORP and pythagorean records for politics.
We do have trends, and there’s no question the trends are very positive for the Republican Party. They’ve won seven of the last 10 elections starting with Richard Nixon first taking office in 1968. Looking at their low price and their track record, it’s not difficult to conclude the GOP is a great value pick. Remember: There’s a difference between being good at running a country and being good at winning an election.
Recalling our no-spin mandate as handicappers, let’s step back and take a look at the strategies the John McCain candidacy is using. These so-called Hail Mary passes he’s throwing, like “suspending” his campaign and choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, are classic power moves aimed at controlling the tone of the election while flustering the opposition. They make little sense from an intellectual standpoint, but the Republicans are actively taking an anti-intellectual stance, a historically proven stratagem for seizing and holding onto power.
Now let’s look at the voting public. It’s fitting that 1968 marks the birth of the Republican Party as we know it today, because the cultural divide that we now recognize as red state/blue state really got on a roll with the proliferation of electronic media – television in particular. The Nixon-Kennedy debate gave the GOP an object lesson in using the power of this new visual mass medium to appeal to emotion rather than reason. Television may be on the wane thanks to the Internet, but it’s still the central piece of furniture in most living rooms.
It’s a fact that people act more on emotion than reason – it’s something all of us struggle with on a daily basis. If you’re a handicapper, or anyone else seeking gain, you minimize this weakness in yourself and you exploit it in others. Both the Republicans and Democrats are doing this, but history shows one party is more ruthless and successful at it than the other.