Tag: Michael Jordan

Opinion Modal Trigger As a kid growing up in Nashville, I had three sports posters on my bedroom wall: Michael Jordan in mid-flight dunking from the free-throw line in the 1988 slam-dunk contest, a black-and-white photo of Bo Jackson posing with shoulder pads and a baseball bat across his shoulders, and Eric Davis at bat in his Cincinnati Reds uniform. The 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s and the early 2010s were an era epitomized by Michael Jordan who reportedly said, “Republicans buy sneakers too,” when he was asked why he didn’t speak out on political issues. Jordan understood that the best way to unite the country was to appeal to everyone, regardless of their personal backgrounds. Often these tribes self-segregate based on their identities and their identities slowly infect everything, serving daily doses of affirmation designed to buttress whatever existing opinions and prejudices you already had. Social media, especially Twitter, the media’s drug of choice, is always convinced everything is evil. Thanks to social media, we’ve moved from trying to pick the person we hoped the other side would like to picking the person we knew would upset the other side most. Rather than recognize that Twitter, which only around 20 percent of Americans use, was not remotely representative of the larger American marketplace, sports media began to use the platform as a barometer of what people cared about. And Twitter — and other social-media sites — loved nothing more than dividing sports fans by politicizing what had once been apolitical. According to a CNN poll, 87 percent of Republicans said players taking a knee during the national anthem were doing the wrong thing, while 72 percent of Democrats said the opposite. We’ve gone from “Republicans buy sneakers too” to “We don’t care about Republicans” in the space of a few years.

Donald Trump won Ohio's 12th Congressional District by a 53/42 margin at the 2016 election and a defeat for his party could signal grave implications for his presidency. Again, our markets are currently calling it a roughly even split. In the absence of more numbers, bettors must decide whether that poll was an outlier or if the Democrat campaign is really cutting through. That said, this historically Republican district is not ideal Trump territory. A very different brand of moderate, inclusive conservatism, exemplified by popular governor and long-term Trump critic John Kasich, has been the key to winning those suburban voters. Latest polls for that once ultra-red district show Lamb double-digits ahead. Turnout is pivotal in these lesser elections and Democrats were predictably well ahead in terms of motivation according to that latest poll. I expect they will outperform the polls again here, aided by another suburban backlash against Trumpism, and that will be enough to at least get O'Connor very close to the winning line. I must reiterate that the better bet lies in the more popular House market. Back then, victory relied upon 'Blue Dog Democrats' just like Lamb and O'Connor taking traditionally red seats.

A self-help book tells us that “buying or purchasing items can be understood as a metaphor for accepting uplifting beliefs about the self or circumstances ... consider ‘buying into’ thoughts and ideas to improve yourself, [such as] ‘I buy into the principle that abundant finances are good for me.’” A government official told The New York Times that the only way to make political change is to first gauge “the public buy-in” for reforms. If a fundamental belief in American goodness and effectiveness and power—the belief inherent in Marco Rubio’s “number one” answer to Kasky’s question, the enduring usability of the Constitution—could no longer be sustained, what could take its place? A belief in the market! Politically, we seem to have no real way, now, of asserting the value of a proposition—to defend it to the hilt—except for noting that it’s popular. Of course, we know, deep down, that just because lots of people support an idea doesn’t mean it’s right. And just because lots of people support an idea doesn’t mean, as Adam Smith noted, that they are doing what’s most reasonable, nor even that their personal reasons are clear-cut. After the town hall, Rubio defended himself further on Twitter: “Banning all semi-auto weapons may have been popular with the audience at #CNNTownHall, but it is a position well outside the mainstream,” he insisted. That would make the world, to the left, comprehensible, instead of peopled by a whole bunch of voters whose consumer choices on the political marketplace appear not only incomprehensible, but, more importantly, reprehensible. The entire town hall exchange was heartbreaking. I’d ask whether Rubio’s would have been, too.