Optimism is a bad way to go

One of the more amusing (or disturbing, depending on your perspective) images on ESPN several weeks ago was cell phone footage of one of their New York based personalities going ballistic when he learned that the New York Knicks did not get the first pick in the draft, thus losing out on drafting future superstar Zion Williamson.  What were the odds that the Knicks, who had the worst record in the NBA last season, wouldn’t get the first pick?  Astronomical, right?

Well, we know the answer: 86%.  Because of the bizarre use of ping pong balls to determine draft order instead of teams’ records, the team with the worst record does not get the first choice in the draft; in fact, it is unlikely that they get the first pick.  This supposedly deters teams from tanking in order to improve their draft chances (the efficacy of this tactic is certainly debatable).  Knick fans were sure that they would get the first pick in the draft.  But in reality, the chances that the Knicks would get the first pick were only 14%.

Move ahead to the NBA finals, a battle between Goliath Golden State Warriors and Lilliputian Toronto Raptors.  Warriors’ superstar Kevin Durant had been out for a month with a lower leg injury, but with the series in the Raptors’ favor by 3-1, Durant was ready to come back and lead Golden State to another title.  The medical staff of the Warriors said that Durant re-injuring his leg was “impossible.”

Those medical personnel might want to buy some lottery tickets, as the impossible happened and Durant tore his Achilles tendon.  This not only took him out for the rest of the season, but also for most, if not all, of next season.

What were the odds of such a disaster?  Unlike the ping pong balls, we can’t put an exact number of the probability, but judging from the medical staff’s prognosis the answer should be “very small.”  I would argue that despite the medical staff’s assurances, the chances of an Achilles injury would never be zero for a basketball player playing in an NBA game.

In both instances, something perceived to be an unlikely event by fans turned out to be a very, very likely event in retrospect.  Both the Knicks and the Warriors fell victim to an age-old curse that befalls of fans of a professional sports team; they were far too optimistic about something that was actually very unlikely, or very likely to occur.

The old adage is that in spring training every baseball fan thinks his or her team will make it to the World Series, no matter how bad they were the season before.  That journeyman pitcher you acquired as a “player to be named later” will win 20 games; that kid shortstop who’s been bouncing between AA and AAA for 10 years will be Rookie of the Year; that manager with the lifetime sub-.500 record will turn into George S. Patton overnight.  

I seem to recall Bill James writing in the late 80’s about how fans think a single player will improve a team’s win total by 10 or 12 (or more) when in fact a superstar barely moves the needle more than a couple of wins.  In his best seasons Mike Trout (who has been so consistently phenomenal that we have stopped talking about how he is the greatest player of all time) is worth maybe 10 wins to the Angels, but no one else is even close to that.

In sports, all fans are optimists.  I heard one wag on ESPN say that if Lebron James hadn’t gotten hurt, the Lakers would have made the playoffs as an eight seed, beaten the Warriors in the first round, and then gone on to the NBA finals.  Way to bootstrap a team that lost 55% of their games during the regular season and that hasn’t been to the playoffs in six years.

People say I am a pessimist, but I am a realist.  Not that I resist the pessimist imprimatur.  Studies have shown that pessimists are more well-adjusted, cope with loss better, have a more realistic assessment of their circumstances, and are overall better at dealing with reality than optimists.  Pessimists are better at preparing for stressful events because they anticipate everything that might go wrong.

What could go wrong?  Your best player could blow out his Achilles in an important game.  Your team might lose a lottery it had a 14% chance of winning.  You might not pay off your debts by buying a lottery ticket. 

My favorite sports quote is attributed to Damon Runyon, who said, “Remember my son, the race is not always to the swiftest, nor the battle to the strongest, but that the way to bet.” 

There is a reason why Han Solo never wants to know the odds; they’re always right.

The US Constitution is Broken

The US Constitution is permanently broken

The American form of government has been amazingly resilient for over 230 years.  It has withstood economic panics, world wars, depressions, do-nothing Presidents, Presidents with delusions of grandeur, incompetent leadership and dazzling leadership.  It has vacillated between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, and has always, seemingly intuitively, course corrected when it seemed on the edge of going too far in any direction.  It is a testament to the genius of the Founding Fathers who drafted the Constitution with the zeal of academics grounded by a solid understanding of human nature.

But the Constitution is broken, and it can’t be fixed, at least not easily.

This is the result of a number of cultural forces in American life, coming to a head in the early 21^st century.  The Founding Fathers were (I sincerely believe) geniuses, but even James Monroe couldn’t have envisioned the impact of social media and Fox News.

When the Constitution was formed, the Founders were skeptical of pure democracy and so put a number of safeguards in the document to avoid a “tyranny of the majority” from throttling minority rights.  One of these safeguards was the composition of the US Senate, where each state got the same number of senators despite the state’s relative population.  This was to protect states with smaller populations from having their opinion over-ridden by the more populous states.

Back at our country’s origins, everything was smaller, including the size difference between states.  Let’s look at data from the 1810 census (the third census done after the nation’s founding) to give them a couple of tries to get it right (and only looking at the original thirteen colonies, to exclude newly created states from territories).

state	pop	% of NY
New York	959,049
Virginia	877,683	91.5%
Pennsylvania	810,091	84.5%
North Carolina	556,526	58.0%
Massachusetts	472,040	49.2%
South Carolina	415,115	43.3%
Maryland	380,546	39.7%
Connecticut	262,042	27.3%
Georgia	251,407	26.2%
New Jersey	245,555	25.6%
New Hampshire	214,360	22.4%
Rhode Island	76,931	8.0%
Delaware	72,674	7.6%

The largest state was New York with 959,049 inhabitants, and the smallest was Delaware with 72,674, or 7.6% of New York’s total.  The second smallest state was Rhode Island with a population of 76,931, or 8.0% of New York’s; the third smallest was New Hampshire with 214,360 people, or 22.4% of New York.

Obviously, the spread has gotten wider as the population grew, but the gulf between small states and large states is now a chasm.  In the 2010 census the most populous state was California with 37,253,956 people.  The smallest state is Wyoming with 563,782 people, or 1.5% of California.  To find a state with a population that is 7.6% of California’s you have to go all the way up to Kansas, which is the 33^rd largest state population.  So, the United States now has 17 states with a percent difference in population from the biggest state that is larger than the difference in 1810.  And 1810 had two unusually small states; using the figure from the third smallest (New Hampshire’s 22.4% of New York), in 2010 you’d have to go all the way up to #12 Virginia.  There are now 38 states with a relative population to the largest state that is larger than the spread between the biggest state and third smallest in 1810.

Now the United States has a plethora of teeny tiny little states.  But each of these states has as many Senators as California or New York.  The population of the 26 smallest states, which controls a majority of the Senate, is a little under 51 million, or 16.5% of the nation’s total population.  Yes, 17% of the country’s people control a majority of the Senate.

But wait, as the ads say, there’s more!  Given the fact that there is a correlation between population density and political leaning, then the Senate is effectively gerrymandered for Republican control.  According to the FiveThirtyEight article linked to above, 31 states lean to the right, mostly small, homogenous ones.  The Democrats made large gains in the more representative House of, um, Representatives in 2018, but even with a hugely unpopular GOP President and a motivated Democratic Party, it seems unlikely that the Democrats will take the Senate in 2020.

The skewing of the Senate towards small states also skews the Electoral College, where votes are apportioned by the number of Representatives and Senators. This gives small, conservative states extra influence, which has manifested itself in two Republican Presidential candidates winning despite getting fewer popular votes than their opponent.  Quick, name the last non-incumbent Republican candidate to win the most votes in a Presidential election: if you said Ronald Reagan in 1980, you win the prize.  No GOP candidate has won a Presidential election without the benefit of incumbency in 38 years, yet the GOP have controlled the White House for 22 of the past 40 years.

Maybe you consider this good news.  Maybe the though of permanent Republican control of the White House and the Senate makes you chortle with joy.  Fine.  But it’s not sustainable.  Given the partisanship that currently exists, and is likely to continue to grow, a Democratic Party permanently subjected to minority status by an increasingly radical Republican Party, despite being favored by a majority of American voters, will lead to . . . well, I don’t know what.  Democratic Party control isn’t regional so there can be no secession like the Civil War (unless the coasts can secede from the mid-west and south).  But at some point, and soon, there will be a breaking point.

What is the answer?  I have no idea.  The problem lies deep in the heart of the US Constitution, a document conceived before social media, mass communication, and leaders without souls or morals.  This will take a fundamental re-thinking of the structure of the Government, more than tinkering with the composition of the Supreme Court.  And it will have to be done by leaders who care more about creating a valid system of government than winning political advantage.

The three people in Washington, DC, that qualify can meet in a phone booth, if DC still has phone booths.

Update: A quick clarification based on one of the comments (thanks for the comment!).  George HW Bush won in 1992 as the incumbent Vice President running to succeed a termed-out President, so he was the incumbent in that election.

And while Bill Clinton won in 1996 with less than 50% of the vote, he did get more popular votes than George HW Bush.  So, in the past twenty years, the number of Republicans who won the Electoral College despite getting fewer popular votes = 2, Democratic winners in the Electoral College despite getting fewer popular votes = 0.

And by the way, Clinton got fewer than 50% of the popular vote largely because of third party candidate Ross Perot who, contrary to myth, did NOT cost Bush the election.