Republicans may be evil and unethical but they are excellent handicappers, ones who maximize the terrain. That aspect has always stood out to me.
Incorporating fake news was a very logical extension of that, as no one saw it coming until it was too late. Likewise the suppression and Voter ID laws earn some attention but not nearly enough. Republicans know it's a safe cheat. The public hears terms like showing an ID to vote and will often support that type of thing, unaware of how far it's taken and the specific targets.
When I lived in Las Vegas and bet sports full time for 25 years, the guys who couldn't win long term always shared the same tendencies:
* They overreacted to the most recent result almost without exception. "That team won't win another game the rest of the season."
* They saw a strange ending and proclaimed it was a fixed game. That served to relieve the burden of their losing ticket. They picked the correct team but rationalized they had no chance to win anyway, due to the fix.
* Every day was a combination of those two tendencies. It was a bubble of today and yesterday while failing to anticipate tomorrow.
It sounds a heck of a lot like Democrats to me, the way we handicap matters. Wasted energy with pathetically low big picture focus.
Meanwhile the guys who won dependably in that setting were more like Republican political types. They recognized their weaknesses and therefore didn't pretend they could subjectively decipher every game perfectly. Instead they applied a systematic approach designed to twist the odds a few percent in their favor from the norm. It might be early football season but they had finished football season handicapping months ago. It would be all plug and play. They were well into basketball season already, even if basketball was months away. They shared private chuckles a how far ahead of the competition they were, since that competition was still whining about yesterday's fix, as if there were any remedy at all.
I criticize Rachel Maddow all the time for a very basic reason. She reminds me of every incompetent handicapper I ever knew. Forever obsessed with yesterday's outcome, while the upcoming opportunity wastes away.
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