New Mexico Political Journal

DUMBASS THINGS NM REPORTERS SAY: THE DUMBING-DOWN EFFECT of the MEDIA; No! You are not "Disenfranchised." Stop Claiming "Victim" Status when You've suffered NOTHING.

06/08/2018

One of the things New Mexico reporters engaged in this past Tuesday night was a series of pity party Twitter exchanges in which they whined about being "disenfranchised" due to New Mexico's closed primary system for nominating candidates.

Reporters and retired reporters/turned bloggers all joined in claiming to be denied their "right" to vote. Steve Terrell of the Santa Fe New Mexican, Dan McKay of the Albuquerque Journal, John Robertson, retired from the Journal, Heath Haussamen, retired (now blogger), and Milan Simonich, Marisa Demarco, Phaedra Haywood, Andy Lyman, Matthew Reichbach—reporters, retired reporters or bloggers all—have opined about how they have been disenfranchised by not being able to force their way into casting a primary ballot.

But this is simply not true. And not only is it not true, it is both insulting and offensive. Beyond those already grave offenses, these expressions by these reporters reflect tremendous ignorance of American history—real ignorance about true, historically significant disenfranchisement of Americans.

DISENFRANCHISEMENT ACTUALLY has OCCURRED in AMERICAN HISTORY: BUT NOT TO WHINING REPORTERS

After blacks were granted the right to vote by Reconstruction Republican legislatures in the late 1860s and early 1870s, Democrats began making an all-out effort to reclaim legislative control in every state where they could muster a majority. By the late 1880s, they had done so and had begun to wipe out all the electoral reforms the Reconstruction Era had produced.

By the late 1890s, it was nearly impossible for African-Americans to vote, or even register to vote in some 15 states.

THAT is disenfranchisement. THAT is an actual history of victimization, of the denial of a fundamental civil right.

NEW MEXICO REPORTERS CLAIMING to be "DISENFRANCHISED" is an INSULT to those who have Suffered true Disenfranchisement

Claiming victim status when you are not a victim at all cheapens, distorts, and even denies the very real suffering of individuals and groups that have been denied participation in the American Experiment.

Such claims, especially when offered in print, or in social media, by reporters—people who have greater access to all manner of media than average citizens—is harmful to political discourse and to the understanding of our history, which is a vital component of self government and decisionmaking on the part of the electorate.

Reporters, whether because they truly are ignorant of history (the case for quite a few, no doubt) or because they are cynical and simply want to impose their own public policy preferences (the case for some, for sure) actually dumb down the reading public. They make voters less informed, not more.

Native Americans and Women

American Indians were not even citizens until President Calvin Coolidge and the Republican Congress of 1924 corrected that fundamental flaw in our laws and made them eligible to vote. And New Mexico didn't even respond to that changing reality, as the Democrat-dominated state continued denying Indians the right to vote until 1962. THAT is disenfranchisement.

Women were not granted the absolute right to vote until 1919. Some states permitted it before then, but most did not. THAT was disenfranchisement.

REPORTERS LIE to the PUBLIC WHEN THEY MAKE THESE CLAIMS

To disenfranchise someone is to deny that person his or her actual right to vote, their right to participate in the electoral process. It is to deprive someone, or a group of people their access to democracy. None of these reporters fit that bill. They can easily vote in a New Mexico primary by simply registering in a political party. They have chosen not to do so. Such choices were not available to African-Americans or Native Americans for many many years in this country.

Additionally, they have every right to vote in a general election, in which the final decision is made. No such privilege was afforded those who have actually been disenfranchised in American history.

STOLEN VICTIM STATUS

Shame on reporters for claiming to be "deprived." Shame on them for trying to glom on to "victim status." It is reminiscent of those individuals—like Albuquerque Councilperson Pat Davis—who try to claim to be veterans. Claiming to be disenfranchised when you are not, isn't "stolen valor," but it is a stolen claim to having been victimized by the government when no such thing has occurred.

It makes liars of reporters—people who should be telling the truth.

OTHER APPROACHES—ALTERNATIVES to LYING TO NEW MEXICANS

People who don't want to belong to the Democratic, Republican, or Libertarian Parties of New Mexico have other avenues available to them. They don't have to resort to lying to themselves or to their fellow New Mexicans. They can petition the legislature to create primaries for all those voters who register as "Decline to State" or as independents.

We see no reason why such voters should not be able to nominate candidates who, like themselves, share no particular philosophy of governance, or at least do not view the existing parties as being representative of their worldview. Creating a primary system for voters like these would at least be a positive step. But lying about the system and lying about one's status does no one any good.

QUIT TRYING to JOIN the VICTIM PARADE

Nothing today is more fashionable than trying to reach victim status. If you can only present yourself as a victim, you can put on distinctive hats or uniforms and organize your own interest group, parade, and join in some sort of systematic expression of grievance. Maybe you'll get compensation. Maybe not. But certainly, you can garner attention for your own perceived plight and enter the American political scene with the "standing" of a victim.

Engaging in all this kind of folderol is not what our system is about. All the above simply continues the downward spiral of social and political discourse and intercourse. It makes us dumber as voters, and worse, as a people and a polity. It not only sends the wrong message to young voters, it tells young kids who are just learning about our system of government that we are a nation of whiners, gripers, and fake victims. What a way to prepare American youth for full citizenship! Stop it!

Email us (at nmpj@dfn.com) with your feedback, comments, questions and ideas.

Intelligent Political Discourse—for the Thoughtful New Mexican

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Jeb Bush gets religion.

"They said he got religion at the end, and I'm glad that he did." — Tom T. Hall. The Year Clayton Delaney died.

Well, it's official. Jeb Bush has changed quite of few of his positions on illegal immigration. The single most significant is that he no longer endorses the "path to citizenship" for those who came here illegally.

This is, after all, the key portion of any proposal aimed at "reforming" our existing illegal immigration situation.

No sensible citizen can see any point in trying to deport between 12 and 16 million people currently living in America illegally. And no candidate for any office that we know of supports that. What the average American wants is for the country to "get a handle on it." They want it stopped, our borders secured and future illegal immigration prevented. It is a national security issue.

The Path to Legal Status

The only way to accomplish the above goals, is to identify current illegal immigrants, get them accounted for, have them documented, and placed on a path to legal status. Neither they nor their children or spouses should live in a state of fear or anxiety.

But a path to "citizenship" is not the right course. It is not morally or legally correct. A merciful and compassionate nation can provide the safeguards of legal status without sending the message to the rest of the world that all you have to do is cross our border and you will eventually get to become a citizen, thus circumventing the legal framework scores of millions of Americans have followed, honored and respected.

If someone who is granted legal status eventually wants to become a citizen, that person should have to return to his or her country of origin and wait in line like 20 million people around the world are doing at any given time. Failing that, America will forever send the signal that anyone in the world can "jump the line," and that there is no reason at all to obey our immigration and naturalization laws.

We Like Jeb Bush

We are glad Jeb Bush has learned this lesson. He is a fine speaker, and can eloquently explain his positions on complex issue. If he were not named "Bush" he would be an actual top tier candidate—in all that that title would entail, including likelihood of acceptance and support of and from the American people in the primaries, and in any theoretical general election.

We also recognize that he already is a de facto top-tier candidate because of his fame and his fundraising.

If he were to be the nominee of the Republican Party we would heartily support him and endorse him. We hope, however, that he is not, as he does not give the center-right coalition the best chance of winning.

The Major League Baseball Playoffs are not realistic, and destroy the actual meaning of the sport.

Major League Baseball is unique in this respect—its postseason is markedly different from the way the game is played normally. No other major league sport suffers from this flaw.

Not that much is wrong with baseball. In some respects it's the most well thought-out sport there is. The "perfect game" many aficionados say.

But the Major League Baseball postseason experience is unique in the world of professional sports, and not in a good way.

In fact the playoffs are flawed in such a way as to detract from the sport itself and diminish the game and what it means to be the world champion of the sport.

Among the Big Four team sports of North America: football, hockey, basketball and baseball—and all the 122 professional major league teams competing in the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB respectively—it is in baseball alone that the postseason turns the sport itself on its head and makes it reflect something that it is not. This article will explain why that happens and why it is wrong-headed.

Background on the The Frequency of Play

The 30 teams in both the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association teams play a very similar schedule. On average, each team has a day off between games, sometimes two days off. Though there are back-to-back games, they are relatively infrequent. NBA teams play between 14 and 22 back-to-back games a season, and for the NHL it usually ranges between 9 and 19. The NFL has a full week between games, the exception being the new Thursday games that each team plays once, leaving them only four days' rest once a year.

But baseball players play every single day. Ten days straight, then a day off, then seven more games, then a day off, then ten more games. Typically a baseball team plays 27 games every 30 days. For the NHL and NBA it would be 14 per month, and for the NFL the number would be 4.

Getting to the Playoffs: It's a grind

In all four sports, getting to the postseason requires a total team effort—in fact an all-out total organizational effort. Teams must be deep, have bench strength and the capability of moving players in and out of the lineup, and on and off the roster, who can take the place of key players who go down for an injury, or who have to miss games for whatever reason. While this is true of the other three major sports as well, it is most certainly even more of a concern for baseball teams because of the sheer volume of games in which a team must field a competitive lineup.

Each league's regular season* is a marathon, not a sprint. NFL teams play for 17 weeks, 16 games. The NHL has an 82-game season over six months, paralleled by an NBA season of 84 games over the same timeframe. Baseball is the biggest marathon of all—a true test of resilience and endurance—162 games usually starting around the beginning of April and finishing about the end of September.

NHL teams carry 23-man rosters, of which 20 can be active for any particular game. The NBA is similar, with 15-man rosters of which 13 can be on the bench for a given game. In the NFL, the teams have 53 players on a roster, but only 46 can suit up on game day. In Major League Baseball, teams have a 25-man active roster, and all 25 are at the park every day.

The Postseason Playoffs: Sport by Sport

The National Football League:

Of the 32 teams, 12 qualify for the playoffs. The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season. Each team plays once a week, the exception being that the four top teams get the first week off. For a typical qualifier to reach the Super Bowl, the team must play three consecutive weeks. At that point both remaining teams have two weeks off before the Super Bowl.

In short, the playoffs, with a game each week, reflects the same means of advancement as is present in regular season grind.

The National Hockey League:

16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason. The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season: a game, a day off, a game, a day off, a game, a day off, and so on. Just as in the regular season, there are occasionally two days off. But the playoffs require the same stamina, the same approach as that required to make the playoffs.

The National Basketball Association

Major League Baseball

10 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason. (Although four of those teams qualify only for a one-game do-or-die play-in game.)

Here is where all similarity to baseball ends.

Unlike the other three sports whose playoffs mirror the test of the regular season, and whose conditions are the same as the regular season, Major League Baseball playoffs in no way resemble the sport itself. In hockey, basketball and football, the teams win playoff games and reach the pinacle of the sport in exactly the same way that they qualify to try to do so.

Not so in baseball. They are two entirely different concepts. Teams make the playoffs only because they have depth, five-man pitching rotations and can play day-in and day-out at a high level. But the baseball playoffs suddenly become a kind of "all-star" game within each team's roster. MLB playoffs are conducted in a way that more closely follows the NBA and the NHL. Teams have enormous numbers of days off.

Here's the key point: No Major League Baseball team could even qualify for the postseason if they played the same way during the regular season that they do in the playoffs. None.

In the regular season Major League Baseball teams have to use a 5-man starting rotation, with pitchers pitching every 5th day. There are not enough days off to have even a four-man rotation, let alone a team with three pitchers. Even the best team in baseball using only a 4-man rotation, would wear them out, and most likely end up with a record of something like 66-96, or 70-92—and that would be if they were otherwise teh best team in the sport.

The 2014 Baseball Postseason is Typical

As examples, last year's World Series teams the Kansas City Royals played only 15 games in 30 days, and the San Francisco Giants played only 17 games in 30 days. The 12 to 15 days off in the non-baseball fantasy world of the MLB postseason, means that teams can turn to three pitchers and give all of them plenty of rest. But it isn't the way baseball really works.

At one point, the Royals had 5 consecutive days off, and the Giants had 4. This never happens in the regular season. Even the All-Star break is only three days. Very rarely is there anything beyond a one-day break, and even that happens only a couple of times a month.

What this means is that neither team used the team that got them to the playoffs. (The NFL, NBA and NHL teams ALL used the very same teams that got them to the playoffs.)

Baseball teams use a three-man pitching rotation in the playoffs. Sometimes, they essentially opt for two pitchers only—conceding the likelihood that some of their games are going to be lost—when their third-, or rarely fourth-best pitcher has to face one of their opponents' two-man or three-man rotation members.

Imagine an NFL team using only one running back and three wide receivers, instead of rotating through their roster in the course of a playoff game—or using only 4 defensive backs and 4 linebackers, instead of rotating 8 or 9 DBs and 6 or 7 linebackers? In hockey, would a team use only two or three of their forward lines? Would an NBA team use only the starting five? They would never make the post season if they tried to present that product to their fans during the regular season.

Those are the equivalents of what Major League Baseball sets up every fall. No other sport drags its playoffs out in such a way as to completely change the playing field—completely change the dynamics of its game.

Why Does Baseball Do This?

MLB does this because the TV networks want to drag out the games so that they can try to have one game each day This requires an unnecessary staggering of games, and creates the phenomenon of 15 off-days in a month.

What about travel days?

What about them? Baseball has travel days constantly. A team may play in Chicago one day and in Miami the next, or in New York one day and Phoenix the very next day. Travel days as a routine part of the game are again, a phenomenon of television, and stretching out the playoffs.

In years past, travel days were employed only when necessary. The famous "subway series" games were played on seven consecutive days. Why? Because there was no "travel day" required to go from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Today, they would put in artificial travel days.

Even fairly long train trips didn't necessarily matter. The 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves was played in six consecutive days, October 6 & 7 in Boston, October 8, 9 & 10 in Cleveland, and October 11 back in Boston.

This reflects actual baseball, the way the teams play day-in and day-out, and the kind of unique test that baseball presents to its athletes, its managers and management, and to its fans.

In the modern world of charter planes, teams fly from coast to coast to play games on consecutive days. The artificial "travel day" should be eliminated so that teams can play in the playoffs in the same way that got them there in the first place.

*All these leagues also have pre-seasons and training camps, which add an additional 6-8 weeks to each player's year.

Email us with your feedback, comments, questions and ideas.

DUMBASS THINGS NM REPORTERS SAY: THE DUMBING-DOWN EFFECT of the MEDIA; No! You are not "Disenfranchised." Stop Claiming "Victim" Status when You've suffered NOTHING.

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