Listen, Democrats, I Don't Want to Say ALL Hope is Lost, but...: A 2021 Election Post-mortem
PLUS: A review of "I Don't Live Here Anymore" by the War on Drugs AND a World Series wrap-up
Two months ago, I wrote an article previewing this fall’s gubernatorial elections. I predicted Phil Murphy winning comfortably in New Jersey, and put the over/under on Terry McAuliffe’s margin of victory in Virginia at 7.5%. So, um, my bad: Murphy eked out a victory in a state Biden won a year ago by 16 points, while McAuliffe was defeated by Republican Glenn Youngkin by about 2% in a state Biden won last year by 10 points.
In that article, I predicted McAuliffe would win because a.) The Democratic lean of the state would provide enough cushion for McAuliffe if the environment turned bad for him, and b.) Youngkin would have a hard time attracting the MAGA crowd while keeping Trump at arm’s length and running as the second coming of Mitt Romney. It turns out Virginia’s Democratic lean wasn’t enough to save McAuliffe (although I did say if Biden’s numbers continued to fall, McAuliffe could end up in trouble, which yeah, but I obviously didn’t foresee it getting that bad for Biden.) Furthermore, Youngkin was able to thread that Trump-Romney needle by running hard against critical race theory and other school-related culture war issues. (When I wrote my article, I thought abortion would have been the more contentious cultural issue in the race and that it would have worked to Democrats’ benefit. The critical race theory stuff was on neither mine nor Youngkin’s radar at the time.)
I also wrote this:
If McAuliffe loses, anticipate utter disaster for Democrats in the 2022 midterms.
The advantage of having written that in September is now I don’t have to go looking for a silver lining in the cumulonimbus that just bore down on the Democrats. Let’s just hope I’m as wrong about that prediction as I was about the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.
So, yeah, the Democrats are pretty much doomed in the 2022 midterms. Since the end of World War II, there have been nine midterm elections with a Democrat in the White House and the magnitude of Democratic defeat in those elections has ranged from “wrist slap” to “carpet bombing” in all but two of them: 1962, following the Cuban Missile Crisis, and 1998, when Republicans were revving up to impeach Bill Clinton. The historical lesson is clear: Biden needs to either win a nuclear standoff with China over Taiwan or initiate an affair with a White House intern. (I never said these were optimal solutions.)
The word of the week is thermostatic. That’s a term political scientists use to describe the way the American electorate responds to the ideological temperature of presidential leadership. When the public senses the president (as the focus of political leadership in the United States) is leading the government too far to the left or too far to the right, it will react at the polls by voting for politicians who will counter that ideological lean, the same way a thermostat works to keep a room from getting too hot or too cold.
That sure seems to capture the dynamics of off-year and off-off-year elections, but I don’t think it quite accurately explains the way midterms work. To begin with, the thermostatic theory never really establishes what the nation’s “room temperature” is, which would be important when trying to figure out how “hot” or “cold” a president is and what it would take in terms of an electoral response to bring the room back to its “just right” temperature. Second, it doesn’t really explain why presidents get re-elected, since the easiest way to counter a president who swings too far to the left or too far to the right would be to replace them too. Yet presidents are pretty frequently re-elected. Finally, it suggests the millions of people who cast votes in an election are working in unison to produce a finely calibrated ideological balance on Election Day when you and I know voters don’t coordinate with anyone before casting their votes.
A more straightforward explanation for what happens in midterms (which have lower turnout than marquee presidential elections) is that members of the opposition party grow alarmed by the ideological direction of the president’s leadership and turn out in force at the polls. Fear is a powerful motivator in politics, particularly when voters feel they are on the verge of losing something, which could very well happen with a member of the opposition in power. As for the members of the president’s party, they may sit out a midterm because they’ve grown complacent (the president’s job isn’t on the line) or disappointed with the president because POTUS hasn’t governed the way they expected (imagine this year a veteran frustrated with Biden’s handling of Afghanistan or a climate change advocate disappointed Biden hasn’t done more to address global warming.) Add to that anxious independents and a handful of hard-to-please swing voters, and what you’ve got is a pretty deep hole for the president’s party to climb out of.
Early analyses of the results based on exit polls indicate that’s pretty much what happened in Virginia. For a midterm, there was actually pretty high engagement from the bases of both parties with little crossover, but Republicans really turned out. Meanwhile, swing voters swung Republican, although the size of that swing was probably relatively small. (The most notable swing, though, may have been among non-college-educated suburban women.) Ultimately, what I suspect mattered most was the intensity with which Republicans came out for Youngkin/against Biden. Just consider this: Once all votes are counted, McAuliffe’s total will be at least a not-shabby 66% of Biden’s vote in 2020, but Youngkin’s total will be at least 85% of Trump’s vote in 2020. In an off-off-year midterm! That’s crazy high! (So high, in fact, that it almost seems—dare I say—fraudulent. Perhaps an audit is in order?)
So yeah, pretty bleak for Democrats whether you’re talking about races for governor, the House, or the Senate in 2022. David Wasserman at the Cook Political Report has calculated if Republicans outperform the 2020 Biden/Trump results in 2022 by the margins they did this year in Virginia and New Jersey, they’ll gain between 44-51 seats in the House. Consequently, Democrats are doing quite a bit of soul searching right now. Even if the electoral terrain looks to be unfavorable for them, is there something Democrats could do between now and November 2022 to stem the losses or even save themselves?
Some have argued Democrats could have avoided Tuesday’s drubbing if they weren’t quarreling with themselves over the reconciliation and infrastructure bills on Capitol Hill. It’s possible that may have been enough to get McAuliffe over the line, particularly if he could have pointed to aspects of the bill as proof of what Democrats do when they’re in power (although nothing was stopping him from claiming the unpassed bill as evidence of Democratic intentions either.) Of course, passing multitrillion dollar bills could also have provided Youngkin with proof Democrats are reckless spenders. (There’s some evidence parties actually lose popularity after passing big components of their agenda.) I guess I’ve always assumed passing those bills helps congressional Democrats in their elections more than it helps in state races. That said, had Democrats passed their bills in mid-October, they may have helped change the narrative about how hapless Biden and the Democrats in Washington are at the moment. I think that’s the main reason McAuliffe was calling on Congress to act: He just wanted good news to come out of Washington for once to give his campaign a boost (and maybe it would have forced Republicans to pay something of a price for their opposition, too.) But would that have been enough to change the public’s approval of Biden, which has soured as a result of the Delta wave and pandemic-induced inflation/economic woes? Possibly; maybe all McAuliffe needed was a well-timed bump, not a total reversal of Biden’s fortunes.
A lot of people are putting the blame for what happened Tuesday night on liberals and progressives, but that’s a bunch of bunk. In the first place, Biden hasn’t enacted the Democratic wish list as president; if anything, liberal ambitions have largely been stymied. He did get a stimulus package passed earlier this year, but that got zero mention in the Virginia campaign. If voters have been paying any attention to what Congress has been doing, they’ll know the reconciliation bill has been pared down from $6 trillion to $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion and that progressive priorities keep getting cut from the bill and that much of the stuff that both remains in the bill and that has been cut is actually popular not only with Democrats but with Republicans and independents. Not only did Republicans not run against the reconciliation bill, but McAuliffe actually kept begging Democrats to hurry up and pass it and the infrastructure bill. The whole “Democrats are the party of big government” schtick never really manifested itself in this cycle, and, despite the best efforts of Joe Manchin to keep the media’s attention on the price of the bill rather than its policy benefits, Democrats have done a pretty good job keeping the accusation from getting out of control.
Secondly, if anyone was inoculated against the “damn liberal” charge, it was McAuliffe, the old school Clinton Democrat who always advises his party to cater to the middle rather than its base. McAuliffe’s whole brand is built around making sure accusations of liberalism do not hurt him. Yet it appears McAuliffe couldn’t convince enough swing voters to support his centrism: Exit polls suggest McAuliffe was only able to pick up about 2% of Trump voters while Youngkin nabbed about 7% of Biden voters. It’s also possible McAuliffe’s centrism may have limited his appeal to base Democratic voters (although, again, he did pretty good with the base for a midterm election.)
By the way, McAuliffe turned out to be a terrible candidate when it counted. He expected a coronation and ran a fairly decent campaign early on, but he faded badly down the stretch. No matter the context, that debate gaffe—“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”—is all on him. The race was starting to narrow by the time McAuliffe dropped that one on the commonwealth, but that was the fuel Youngkin needed to turn a race for governor into a single-issue statewide school board election. After that, McAuliffe just kind of rolled over and waited for CNN to call asking for their pundit back. And still, he only lost by 2.0-2.5%. All he needed to do was win by 1 vote. I’m not saying a win would have been pretty, but like Dom says:
“But what about critical race theory?” you scream. “Youngkin and the Republicans hammered McAuliffe over critical race theory! Liberals’ obsession with critical race theory absolutely kills them with mainstream voters!” But was McAuliffe running in support of critical race theory? No. Is critical race theory taught in Virginia’s schools? No. Was it a hot button issue in Virginia two months ago? No. Was Youngkin featuring it in his campaign commercials two months ago? No; he was mostly focused on economic issues up until about three weeks ago. His Romney act was only getting him so far with voters when the whole “CRT in Virginia’s schools” thing kind of fell in his lap. It was exactly what he needed in crunch time: A way for him to whistle to the MAGA crowd without overtly mentioning the Once and Future President. (It helped that FOX News tilled the ground for CRT by talking about it incessantly.)
Did CRT actually swing the election to Youngkin? That’s a good question. Marginally, I’d say maybe, but remember that support for Republicans surged in New Jersey, too, where CRT wasn’t really an issue. Republicans were just really geared up to vote. Maybe CRT built excitement among the Republican base, kept Youngkin’s momentum going, and helped get GOP voters to the polls. But be skeptical of claims CRT brought waves of undecided voters into Youngkin’s camp.
Still, Democrats need to be better prepared when Republicans attempt to turn a bunch of House races next year into referenda on critical race theory. The lesson here isn’t that Democrats need to quit talking about critical race theory or disavow it. Why? Because Republicans are going to link Democrats to CRT no matter what Democrats do. Here’s a truth bomb from Mayor-Now-Secretary Pete:
It’s true that if we embrace a far-left agenda, they’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists.
Democrats can’t really counter a charge like that because as soon as they start saying, “No, I’m not a socialist” or “No, I don’t support critical race theory” they’re engaging Republicans on GOP terrain. And Democrats can’t call them out on the move either because then they only waste time lecturing voters about visceral campaign tactics, and when you’re explaining on the campaign trail, you’re losing. So what are Democrats supposed to do?
Allow me to broach a subject that hasn’t really been brought up much in all the election post-mortems that have been circulating recently: California. The Golden State held a recall election back in early September this year, and you want to know how that turned out? Recalled Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom basically triumphed in that election with 61.9% of the vote, which was 1.6% less than Joe Biden won in 2020. That’s a whole lot better than the 6 points McAuliffe shed from Biden and the 7 points Murphy declined in New Jersey. Consider the margin of victory, too: Compared to Biden in 2020, Newsom’s margin dropped by about 5.5%. In Virginia, the Democrats’ margin went from 10% to -2.5%, or a 12.5% swing. In New Jersey, it’ll be around a 14.5% swing in the wrong direction.
“But that’s California,” you say. “It’s a very liberal state!” But I’m not dealing here with whether Newsom was in danger of losing but rather how states swing in an off-off-year election when the president’s party is less motivated to go to the polls than the revved-up opposition party. We’d expect to see some sliding in the midterms even in California toward Republicans with a Democrat in the White House and we did, but not nearly as much as we saw in Virginia and New Jersey. And remember, California’s election was a Republican-devised recall election of a not-very-well-liked Democratic governor held shortly after Labor Day when Biden’s approval rating had already slipped underwater. Those are circumstances practically designed to juice Republican turnout. What happened?
Well, the main Republican alternative to Newsom, Larry Elder, embraced Trump on the campaign trail, and Newsom made sure Californians—especially Democrats—knew Elder embraced Trump. Consequently, Democrats came close to matching Republicans’ enthusiasm on election day.
In Virginia, only half of that happened. McAuliffe tried to tie Youngkin to Trump, whom 54% of Virginian voters disliked. (It also happens 54% of Virginians disapproved of the job Biden was doing as president.) And there were plenty of ways to tie Youngkin to Trump, from his red campaign hats to audio of Youngkin praising Trump. But Youngkin was more disciplined than Elder and for the most part kept his distance from the former president when the mainstream media was looking by not appearing with him on the campaign trail nor asking him to serve as a surrogate. (It turns out Youngkin and Trump were in fact in regular contact with one another.) Early on, Youngkin signaled to Trump’s base he shared their concerns by raising the issue of election security, and when critical race theory blew up as an issue in October, Youngkin used that to wind up the MAGA crowd without ever having to mention the word Trump.
As a result, Youngkin was able to portray himself as a harmless, run-of-the-mill Republican while playing footsie with the segment of the Republican Party that wants a rerun of 1/6. (I don’t know if Youngkin is leading the MAGA crowd on or if he foolishly assumes he can keep them under wraps as governor, but history has shown he’s playing a dangerous game.) In turn, enough voters inclined to vote Democratic stayed home while enough swing voters—including many who had voted for Biden with Trump on the ballot—felt comfortable voting for the Republican because none of them saw Youngkin and the Republican Party as a Trump-level threat. After all these years, voters can still look at the Republican Party and say Trump was an aberration rather than a reflection of the larger party.
Absent a candidate like Elder who openly declares himself a Trump ally, the problem isn’t that McAuliffe did a poor job linking Youngkin to Trump or put too much emphasis on that task, but that Democrats, after everything that’s happened over the past half-decade (Check that: After the deceitful invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Recession, nominating Sarah Palin for vice president, birtherism, climate change denial, Trump, the corruption of the Trump era, child separation, the Ukraine scandal, their catastrophic handling of the pandemic that resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, the Big Lie, and an insurrection they stoked and continue to try to sweep under the rug, among other things) after all that, Democrats still have not made the Republican brand toxic to voters beyond their core base.
The Democrats are dealing with a branding issue. Ever since the 1968 Democratic Convention, Republicans have effectively branded the Democrats a party of dangerous liberals. Democrats, though, have not effectively branded Republicans even though Republicans keep handing them the raw material to work with. That’s why McAuliffe, despite a personal brand that kept liberalism at arm’s length, still got hammered with critical race theory, while Youngkin, despite his association with a party whose leaders are complicit in an insurrection and his own flirtation with the Big Lie, could just brush Trump off. It’s why Democrats have to answer for the Squad, but Republicans have yet to answer for Matt Gaetz. Until Democrats effectively brand Republicans and make them pay the price for their abysmal record, Democrats will always bear the burden of proof when it comes to the mandate to govern.
If Democrats want to counter CRT, they need to turn the insurrection and everything else Republicans tried to get away with under Trump into rage fuel as potent with their base (and hopefully beyond) as CRT is with the Republican base. I know, it seems like people should know a political party increasingly comfortable with insurrection and election subversion is more of a threat than CRT, but these days you kind of got to scream it to make it stick.
I worry Democrats are running out of time when it comes to this task. Despite Trump’s unpopularity, it isn’t hard to see him becoming normalized over these next few years. It looks like he’ll be hitting the campaign trail in 2022, though, so Democrats have a chance to hold Republicans—not only those willing to campaign with him, but also those willing to caucus with those who do—accountable for their party’s association with their profoundly rotten leader. And there is this very important fact to remember: Youngkin was afraid to appear with Trump because he had concluded Trump would do more to harm to his campaign than help it. If Trump remains as unpopular as he is right now, Democrats could turn that to their advantage.
Maybe Trump’s return to the news along with a (fingers crossed!) improved economy, the end of the pandemic, and some legislative victories will give Democrats a chance a year from now. Or maybe it’s hopeless and Democrats are simply bound to lose seats. (Sorry, but I told you I wasn’t looking for silver linings.) It would be one helluva time to crack the midterm code, though. Regardless, there are things the Democrats can do right now—actually, things they should have been doing years ago—that could at least keep a bad night from turning into a total wipeout.
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Top 5 Records Music Review: I Don’t Live Here Anymore by the War on Drugs
One of pop culture’s oddest touchstones is Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks”.
I think it’s safe to say by the time that song came out in 1981, Rod Stewart was washed up. One of the iconic artists of the early 1970s, Stewart had developed a reputation as a sell-out by the end of the decade following the release of the easy listening ballad “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” and the full-on disco track “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (It probably didn’t help that the title of the latter song was a rhetorical question that prompted more reflection among the listening public than Stewart had probably anticipated.) Now, with the disco craze about to crash, Stewart came across as a sleezy old guy out chasing tail in the clubs.
“Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” still hit #1, so despite all the grief he had taken, Stewart probably figured he and his voice could ride the next musical trend to the top of the charts, too. Hence “Young Turks”, an oddly-titled pulsating synthpop track that peaked at #5 in the States. It’s a weird song: Its tempo feels like it’s moving a little too fast; the verses are more spoken than sung and delivered in an oddly affected tough-guy manner, while the chorus is strangely breezy; and the song’s subject is actually kind of heavy. For audiences accustomed to hearing Stewart’s soulful, raspy vocals digging into rootsy rock and roll, it had to be disorienting to hear his voice cruising over a bed of synths. As kooky as the song may be, though, it’s definitely got a distinctive 80s vibe to it and one that’s almost all its own. You can’t mistake it. Which is why every time you hear the 2019 song “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd you’re immediately transported back to 1981, or at least your impression of that year.
“Blinding Lights” was the biggest international hit of 2020 (what a year!) but it wasn’t the first song to channel “Young Turks”. That honor goes to “Burning” by the War on Drugs from their 2014 album Lost in the Dream.
Lost in the Dream was one of the best albums of 2014. A dive into the suffocating, isolating haze of depression, the record has an ocean-size sound that draws on the indie guitar rock squall of Sonic Youth and krautrock beats but is more immediately identifiable by its nods to 80s-era classic rock. Listen to the album and out of the ether you’ll detect traces of Tom Petty, the smoky guitar of Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, the synth lines from Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., and, of course, echoes of Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks”. Initially, spotting the dad-rock references tickles our senses and triggers a fond sense of nostalgia, particularly if you can remember hearing these songs when they popped up on the car radio when you were a kid. Listen more closely to the album, though, and these references float into the songs like debris adrift in the dark and endless and stormy sea, something vaguely familiar the War on Drugs’ frontman Adam Granduciel might grasp at to keep from drowning. It’s a musical game of association whereby a song element is linked in some way to some sort of childhood mood or memory that may be comforting or unsettling or traumatic. With Lost in the Dream, Granduciel seems to be saying he’s trapped in the past, dealing with issues from his youth that still rush at and wash over him.
The War on Drugs have a new album out this month titled I Don’t Live Here Anymore and it is also very good. Like past records, this album also makes allusions to the brand of music baby boomers listened to in the 1980s that seemed to prove to them at least that the heroes of their youth and the inheritors of that tradition were still hip in an age of synths and glossy pop rock. The song “Victim” sounds like something Lindsey Buckingham tossed off Tango in the Night, while the title track channels solo Don Henley and features the sort of guitar part you might expect to hear from Eric Clapton when he’s busy shilling Michelob beer. “Old Skin” recalls a stripped down U2 ballad (an inversion of the way the band usually goes big on their influences.) While the opening drum beat of “I Don’t Want to Wait” may be way too obvious (Phil Collins is the sound of 80s drums, but come on; at least they don’t appropriate the drum break) the surprise in that song is detecting a whiff of 80s-era Bryan Adams.
Granduciel drops hints in the lyrics, too. In case you struggle to connect “I Don’t Wanna Wait” to Adams, a quick mention of “heaven” and “running to you” should clue you in. On the previous song “Change”, Granduciel sings about living on the “run” and things that “bind” and how he’ll “rise” above; if you don’t know who that’s a reference to, know that his son is named Bruce. Springsteen is one of Granduciel’s two main touchstones. The restlessness and striving Granduciel is constantly singing about is right out of Springsteen’s songbook (even though Granduciel lacks the lyrical gifts that could make his songs more vivid.) The propulsive drum beat that fuels so many of these tracks also owes a debt to the Boss (and Neu! for that matter); anytime that Weinbergian backbeat kicks in, you can’t help but think their music is just one big riff on “Dancing in the Dark”.
In 2011, music critic Simon Reynolds published a book titled Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. Reynolds argued in the new millennium, when we have easy access to pop cultural artifacts that would have been harder to come by decades ago, we have become obsessed with our immediate past. That trend, which has only grown stronger since the publication of his book with YouTube and streaming services like Spotify growing in popularity, can be seen in the preponderance of cinematic and televised sequels and remakes, nostalgia traps like Netflix’s Stranger Things, and the way musicians have repurposed the sonic textures of the 1980s rather than chase the Next Hot Sound. Writes Reynolds:
At a certain point the sheer mass of past accumulating behind the music began to exert a kind of gravitational pull. The sensation of movement, of going somewhere, could be satisfied as easily (in fact, more easily) by going backwards within that vast past than by going forwards. It was still an exploratory impulse, but now it took the form of archaeology.
You could see this syndrome starting to emerge as far back as the eighties, but it’s really escalated in the last decade. The young musicians who’ve come of age during the last ten years or so have grown up in a climate where the musical past is accessible to an unprecedentedly inundating degree. The result is a recombinant approach to music-making that typically leads to a meticulously organised constellation of reference points and allusions, sonic lattices of exquisite and often surprising taste that span the decades and oceans. I used to call this approach ‘record-collection rock’, but nowadays you don’t even need to collect records any more, just harvest MP3s and cruise through YouTube. All the sound and imagery and information that used to cost money and physical effort to obtain is available for free, just a few key and mouse clicks away.
The War on Drugs embodies this trend. Even when we can’t quite place the origin of that guitar riff or even after convincing ourselves it may actually be an original creation, we are still transported back in time to the 1980s, soothed by a vaguely familiar drum and synth sound Yet on I Don’t Live Here Anymore, there is also a sense that Granduciel is trying to escape his past. He’s not riding that big 80s drumbeat anymore but attempting to outrun it. There’s the recognition that the past is something he’ll never shake, but he might be able to transcend it or morph into something new. As he sings on “Change”
How can I replace, babe
What can’t be lost?
I don’t wanna change
I’ll rise above it
Later, on the title track, he admits he’s moved on (“But you’d never recognize me babe/ I don’t live here anymore”). Even if he’s still carrying the past or if it continues to hound him, maybe it no longer defines him.
The other major touchstone for Granduciel should be apparent by his penchant for the use of the word “babe” and that all-too-distinctive nasally voice: Bob Dylan. Dylan’s influence is all over the album: The acoustic opener “Living Proof” begins with a Dylanesque guitar jangle, while “I Don’t Live Here Anymore” references dancing to “Desolation Row” (really? That must have been one miserable slow dance) and cribs the “creature void of form” line from “Shelter from the Storm”. As that suggests, Dylan’s 1975 divorce album Blood on the Tracks is a big influence here, which only adds intrigue to the rumors that Granduciel has broken up with his girlfriend, the actress Krysten Ritter (Breaking Bad, Jessica Jones).
But let’s not obsess over the personal. What’s more interesting about this album is how a band grounded in the past seems to be negotiating a separation from a past that’s ultimately impossible to shed. As the past fades, it becomes hazy; the sound of this album by comparison is a little clearer, a bit more forward-facing. One wonders if they’re ready to drop the references entirely for their next album, just fill the record with an 80s mood rather than specific callbacks. As Granduciel suggests on the closing song, if the past (whatever that may be) is a cloud, he knows how to find his way around or above it now, and when he can’t, he’s found peace knowing all that means is an “occasional rain.”
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Garbage Time: A World Series Wrap-Up
(Garbage Time theme song here)
So when I published my MLB postseason preview a month ago, I wrote “I don’t give Atlanta much of a chance,” which looks pretty foolish now that Atlanta has won the World Series. But then maybe my commentary about how the current postseason format favors teams that get hot in October over teams that are built to come out on top at the end of a six month season looks prescient in retrospect (although I’m sure Atlanta’s fans would remind me you don’t get a trophy for finishing with the league’s best record.) Still, of all postseason teams, Atlanta was the only one that didn’t manage to crack 90 wins. They also finished with MLB’s 12th best record, behind both Toronto and Seattle, neither of whom made the playoffs. Maybe they’re not one of the greatest teams to ever win the World Series, but they still managed to close out the Brewers, the Dodgers, and the Astros before the clock struck midnight.
So now that they’re world champions again for the first time in 26 years, maybe they could do us a solid and change their nickname? “Braves” isn’t quite as offensive as “Indians” or the Washington Football Team’s old name, but it’s still clearly associated with Native Americans. Fans, including the nation’s former troll-in-chief and first lady, reveled in doing the tomahawk chop this postseason even though everyone involved knew exactly how distasteful that was. (Trump, who called for a boycott of MLB earlier this year after the league moved the All-Star Game out of Atlanta due to Georgia’s restrictive voter laws, lied about being invited to the World Series.) I don’t know if this is brought up all that often, but it also seems extra offensive that a state that served as an origin point for the Trail of Tears would have a professional sports team whose nickname refers to Native Americans. The Cleveland Indians are now the Cleveland Guardians; can’t the Braves become something new, too?
Now, when the city has tremendous goodwill for the team, would be an opportune time to retire the name. Let everyone buy their World Series Champion paraphernalia to cash out on the name one more time, then say next season will be the last of the Braves, then start marketing a new batch of paraphernalia at this time next year just in time for the Christmas season. I’ve even got a nickname for you, selected in honor of the greatest baseball player to ever play for your team, Henry “Hank” Aaron: The Atlanta Hammers. Replace that tomahawk on the jersey with a club hammer and change out the tomahawk chop for a hammer swing. After “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, they could play “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer (“Hammer time!”) It’s perfect! Let’s get this done tomorrow, Atlanta!
Thanks for reading.
Exit music: “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie B. Hawkins (1992, Tongues and Tails)