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Wednesday, October 7, 2020

UPDATED: Again: This Has To Mean Something

And it's very hard to believe that that 'something' doesn't portend some effect on the election. Thomas Lifson has the story at AmThinker:


NBA caves! No 'Black Lives Matter' on courts and jerseys next year


Yes, the NBA's decision is about money, but the decision of the voters almost certainly reflects some gut level political attitude. Look at it this way, lots of liberals watch sporting events--despite the performance of the National Anthem. Doesn't the fact of precipitous drop in NBA viewership reflect a gut level disagreement with the politics that the NBA embraced?

Lifson has lots more, but this short quote from Sports Illustrated says it all:


The real issue is that the first game [of the Finals] drew seven million viewers while last year's Finals between the Warriors and Raptors averaged 15.1 million viewers.


I have to believe that this portends negative effects for the Dems.

UPDATE: This story seems to be getting some traction on the internet, so I'm adding what is the best commentary I've seen on the subject so far:




24 comments:

  1. zackly Mark! Between the increase in applications for concealed carry and the decrease in interest in "woke" sports, ya gotta hope (believe) that still waters are running deep...like a tsunami wave that moves across oceans without a clue to those on the surface above, before crashing ashore with devastating fury - methinks Trump voters are exactly that, but we'll see in a few weeks!
    Otherwise, keep up the good work...this site is one of the first I peruse each morning and I am the wiser for it

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    1. The DI video makes that point. Basham says, look, by every intuitive, cultural measure--yard signs, enthusiasm, etc., and you can add in sports viewership--Trump is winning. The only negative is polling. So he goes into the problems with polling to explain why we shouldn't trust it uncritically.

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  2. The BLM stuff only dialed up the Trump base to an 11 on a scale of 1-10. The Dems were probably hoping to motivate black voters to go out and vote, but they may have ended up eroding the margin they should expect to get from their core black voters and ticked off everyone else.

    I think that what the polls are capturing, perhaps, is an anger from Dems that will be reflected in poll results. Polls seem designed to capture the level of Democrat support because that's who they are designed to capture. So they could be double wrong this time around--counting even more Dems and fewer Repubs than they did last time around.

    Cruz said it best last night on Fox--this is a base election and not a persuasion election. That's the reason Trump kept goading Biden into distancing himself from the left wing of his party at the first debate. Ending the debate with everyone but the Trump base turned off was a win for Trump. Base elections are divisive things to watch--it's the type of election that won Walker the governorship and his recall election in Wisconsin. Trump probably could not win a persuasion election, but I still hold out hope he can squeak by with a base election win again.

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    1. "Trump probably could not win a persuasion election", unless he tried to persuade Normies, of the super-danger that a Dem win would lead the DS to make the US into a One-Party State.
      We needed Barr's busts of the DS to help show that danger, but (barring those busts) now we're stuck with a Base Election, the outcome of which (you now concede) hinges on your hope that DJT "can squeak by".
      It shouldn't have had to come to this, that we'd be stuck with a hope that he can squeak by.

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    2. If you watch the long interview with Basham he makes an interestingly counterintuitive statement. He thinks developments in the Russia Hoax would be a confusing distraction for most voters. He says Trump is on offense and has momentum--based on his polling--while Biden is on defense. His conclusion: Don't mess with a good thing. I'd still like more developments.

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    3. The Basham point is a good one. It is easy for us who follow the issue to think everyone else finds the information as important as we do. There has to be a breakout moment though for it to spill over into the rest of the population. Indictments would probably be the only thing that could do that, and I think we have to accept that will not happen in time. The information being fed to the public like it has been recently is good enough to keep the base fired up.

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  3. -->Doesn't the fact of precipitous drop in NBA viewership reflect a gut level disagreement with the politics that the NBA embraced?<--

    Alternative explanations are from the planet Uranus. (If you get my meaning ;-)

    It's called a preference cascade. It's what happens when people have had enough of the prodding, pushing, nudging--having been abused and aren't going to take it anymore (vis-à-vis, the movie "Network").

    The route to permanently lose loyal customers is to insult them. Loyal customers will endure inconvenience, but not insults. Cascading behavior results when the like-minded find themselves in agreement, and social affability and affinity takes over, with mass decisions following.

    Competitive sports, including spectator sports, are a respite--an escape--from everyday life. Once the NBA, etc., via their broadcast partners, incorporated political and partisan issues into the production, viewers make other preference choices. Hence, the cascade.

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    1. When you factor that it's a 15:7 drop while people actually don't have much to do besides watch TV, the cascade is even more pronounced.

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    2. 15:7 is only for the first game. It gets worse--much worse. Game 3 was down 70%. Not a typo.

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    3. I can only speak for myself, but I have no problem not watching TV. And if all it is, is passive entertainment for those watching, it doesn't take much effort to do something else.

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  4. To me the ratings loss for politicized sports shows the hidden anger and rejection of the lefts propaganda.

    Many people are afraid to say they support Trump. To show support for Trump in some locations and industries risks ostracism, vandalism, assault, Labeled a racist, being put on a black list, loss of business, search engine / social media black listing, and even job loss.

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  5. Afraid to say they support Trump, esp. to a pollster who will enter your name in an (eternal) database, this accessible to **any number** (?) of SJW *monsters*, incl. those with nothing better to do, than to tee off on Deplorables, as happened to Sandmann.
    I hate to say it, but any DJT backers who talk to a pollster, sorta deserve whatever befalls them.

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    1. ... In an (eternal) database, thus eventually available on the *Worldwide* Web.
      And, BTW, when Joe Blow calls, claiming to be from Pollster X/Y, how do you know that he's not really with the DNC, or BLM?
      To streetwise folk, the percentages here could hardly be worse.

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    2. "...how do you know that he's not really with the DNC, or BLM?"

      That would be a waste of time for those organizations because when their side wins, which they are confident they will, eventually, they'll just tap into all that data the NSA is warehousing on servers in Utah and get anything they need, as if the tech companies that the IC "partners" with haven't already. The Party neither forgets nor forgives. Everything within the Party, nothing outside the Party.
      Tom S.

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  6. I haven't watched any NBA this year...except for the Last Dance. Separate from the Marxist/Chinese bias, the game is just not what it was. Weak group of 'buddies and friends' who pretend to play ball, have a great time together, and make money hand over fist. Even my kids who watched Last Dance had to admit basketball was a real sport back then- not a series of exhibition games. Shaq and Barkley still reflect the older ethos, thank goodness, and act and speak like real men.

    Speaking of real ball, the hard kind, check out Flynn/Sidney Powell's motion to disqualify Sullivan!! It's got everything in it....and doesn't pull any punches. They're postering Sullivan and leaving him all over the floor. Great thing about it, being a pleading in a US D Ct case, it's there for posterity!

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    1. Yeah, I just finished reading it. Sullivan certainly asked for it, and Powell gave it to him good and hard. And forever.

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    2. some context for non-lawyers- mostions to recuse or disqualify a judge are usually couched in very careful terms, and soft-peddled, since people don't want to tick off a judge that they may end up with if the motion is unsuccessful. Also, the attorney and parties have to consider whether they may be in front of the same judge in the future on another case. Here, they have thrown caution to the wind!

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  7. Possibly a reflection of Breitbart's famous, "Politics is downstream of culture." Perhaps the Left miscalculated, panicked by the possibility of a repeat of the proletariat uprising of '16, into foregoing the strategy established by the Frankfurt School of influencing the current of culture and, instead, squandered the summer prematurely attacking culture directly. People may tolerate their culture being artificially contorted and shaped like a bonsai, but few will abide it being tortured outright.

    I found this an interesting read. The principal point is applicable to several instances we see in the news, not just the ChiCom croup.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/great-unreason-2020-curious-quite-authentic-jack-kerwick/

    and ties in with this:

    https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/06/the-privilege-of-the-ladies-who-lunch/

    Tom S.

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    1. I liked the "ladies who lunch" one quite a bit. It addresses some things that have long puzzled me. Or at least irritated me.

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    2. Perhaps the Left miscalculated, or perhaps they're counting, on their DS pals being able to Truncate millions of DJT backers from the rolls.
      To paraphrase the Man of Steel, the liquidation of one man is a tragedy, but the liquidation of a million is a statistic.
      Under *these* current circumstances, the next four weeks will seem like an eternity.

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    3. Yes, and it addresses the same problem for the ostensibly smart set as the Front Page article.

      "Thinking is hard, let's just buy a bumper sticker instead, or buy a rubber chicken dinner so all our smart friends can see we too are virtuous and then we can all sit around, sip the "right" wine, and talk about how much smarter and more virtuous we are than those icky proles. How dare they disagree with their betters"
      Tom S.

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  9. To all the comments about the possibility of indictments or reports and their potential effects on the election, I'm frankly surprised.

    I thought most of us were on the same page that the people who bought into this Russia Fraud were Bircher/MG Jack D. Ripper/Lyndon LaRouche type conspiracy theorists who would weave any new information discrediting their deranged theories into their deranged theories. "Oh the Danchenko interrogation transcript was obviously a GRU transcript put there by Graham and Radcliffe."

    Sure, plenty of low information voters are hanging out there who might like to know the truth, but the MSM isn't going to let these declassified documents or their import get through to them 1. And Russia isn't a significant issue to them in the first place 2.

    No. The only value--and it is the critical value, the same value the Polaris and Trident submarine patrols provided in the Cold War--CONVICTIONS in the Russia FRAUD will provide is deterrence against deep state actors trying this nonsense in the futures.

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    1. Russia isn't a significant issue to them in the first place, but a plot to frame the leader of a major party would be, esp. if this plot is linked to a bid to make the US a One Party State.

      "the people who bought into this Russia Fraud were Bircher...."
      No, many who bought it were otherwise normal folk, who presumed that the MSM were on the level.
      Barr had a huge opportunity, to dent the Normies' faith in the MSM before the election.
      Instead, the Const.'s fate still hangs much in the balance.

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