Political bracketology
Later this week, the NCAA men's basketball championship tournament will begin. These days, it strikes me that the appeal of the "Big Dance" lies as much in the public's desire to figure out and then watch how a complex event will unfold, as in the quality of the actual basketball. In this respect, the NCAA tournament resembles this year’s Democratic and Republican nomination processes.
Here’s another resemblance. If your team is set to play the winner of, say, a 7 vs. 10 game, you ordinarily start out rooting for the number 10 team to pull an upset. But if the 10 team builds a double-digit lead, you often find yourself fearing that squad and pulling for the higher seeded team. But if the number 7 teams comes back, you regret not getting to play the lower seed after all.
Many Republicans have viewed the Democratic race in a similar way. When Obama seemed to be running the table on Clinton, some Republicans began rooting for Hillary to come back on the theory that Obama would be too tough to beat. Now that Obama is in trouble, many Republicans are starting to think he’s the one we’d like McCain to run against.
In politics, as in sports tournaments, you don’t get to play the loser. But maybe the Republicans will get the next best thing. Suppose Obama continues to lose his appeal to the point that he becomes an easier opponent than Clinton (not probable, but certainly possible). But suppose (as seems almost certain) he nonetheless has won more delegates than Clinton in primaries and caucuses, and the Democrats are simply too afraid to deny him the nomination under these circumstances (quite possible).
For McCain that would be like playing a bracket winner that’s lost its star player.
UPDATE: Throughout the 1950s, as the Yankees rolled towards the World Series, sportswriters would ask Yogi Berra which National League contender he wanted to play. Hoping for the maximum pot of money from which to take his Series share, Yogi would always respond: whose park seats the most?
As usual, Yogi had it right. It doesn't pay to over-think these things.
