You can make anything connect if you try hard enough

December 16, 2016

According to this piece from the Washington Post, there’s a “book about baseball that explains Donald Trump’s win.”

And that book is…

Drum roll, please…

https://i2.wp.com/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Moneyballsbn.jpg?resize=219%2C336&ssl=1Moneyball.

Really.

Writer Sonny Bunch compares Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s attempt to win games as cheaply as possible with Trump’s victory in the presidential elections.

If there’s anything that the political market is full of, it’s inefficiencies. And the Trump team, to its credit, understood just that. The easy story to tell about Trump is one of a billionaire bully who preyed on prejudice to push the first female president out of the White House. But there’s another story to be told, one about an underdog campaign that raised about half as much money as its opponent and managed to win anyway, in part by disregarding common campaigning strategies and focusing on the inherent inefficiencies of the electoral college.

(Too bad the name is Albert or Arnold; then admiring readers could say, “Thanks, A. Bunch.”)

Frankly, I’m not buying this. As the title of this entry says, “You can make anything connect if you try hard enough.”

Bunch writes about the way the two major campaign spent their money, including TV ads. “[W]hen Trump’s team did advertise over the air, it did so smartly; perhaps the cleverest thing Trump’s team did was target viewers of “The Walking Dead,” a show that preys upon anxieties of invasion and collapse.” Or maybe it’s just that a lot of Trump supporters just watch that show, without delving into the existential meanings from either the campaign or the viewers. Frankly, I think this piece gives the trump team too much credit for their strategy. They cam on in the right places at the right time against the right opponent, creating a perfect storm.

If I thought there was any connection between Moneyball and voting trump into office, I doubt I could ever look at it with the same admiration.

Politics, stay away from my baseball enjoyment.

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