The great writer Judd Legum sent out an excellent e-mail this morning (subscribe to his email list “Popular Information” right now. Go do it. I’ll wait.)
He makes a great point, one I have been banging on about for 30 years. It’s the “Norwood Effect” and it never changes. It comes from the 1991 super bowl, and Scott Norwood missing the game winning kick as time expired. Because the Giants were “Smashmouth” grind-out-every-yard football and the Bills were “west coast offense” there was a clear contrast in styles. After the game there was football punditry agreement that Smashmouth football was the future, and that the upfield passing game was going to take a backseat. All of this was couched in data, but really it was just a recency bias and an overcorrection to the happenstance of one moment of bad luck. If that kick is 3 feet to the right, those same pundits would have been telling you about how the west coast offense was here to stay and every team had to get on board.
You see where I’m going with this.
Per Legum:
For example, the 2004 election resulted in President George W. Bush winning a second term, a Republican-controlled House, and a Republican-controlled Senate. In the Los Angeles Times, columnist Ron Brownstein wrote that Democrats faced "a long-term disadvantage in future races for the White House and battles for Congress." He suggested that it would be very difficult "mathematically" for Democrats to regain control of the presidency or Congress because of their inability to compete in the south:
Compounding the problem was Kerry's inability to compete for any Southern state except Florida: That left him with few options for reaching 270 electoral votes, especially after his bid to open a new front in Western states such as Arizona, Nevada and Colorado fell short.
"Democrats face this terrible arithmetic in the Electoral College where if they don't carry any of the 11 Southern states [of the Old Confederacy] they need to win 70% of everything else," says Merle Black, an expert on Southern politics at Emory University.
The math is just as daunting in the battle for Congress…
Four years later, Barack Obama was elected with 365 electoral votes, including Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. Democrats also increased their margins in the House (which they recaptured in 2006) and took control of the Senate, winning races in Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, and North Carolina.
And on and on. Pundits have told us that demographically, the Republicans were doomed. That geographically, Democrats couldn’t win. It’s always based on What Just Happened, and it’s always Bullshit.
2022 isn’t 2021. We don’t know what the circumstances of that election will be. Go back to work on the issues you care about, and focus on making the world better. Turn off the bloviators on Morning Joe and their nonsense. And remember, it’s a game of inches and really most things could go either way.