At first, I thought this was satire, but then I remembered I was reading The Nation, a left-wing publication that wouldn’t know humor if it punched them in the face. To be fair, some authors here were skeptical of the Russian collusion antics that have engulfed the Democratic Party, but this take on the party’s “dark embrace” of football is why the archetypal liberal repels people at parties. Talk about a piece that goes way too deep into the pseudointellectual realm. The warning offered has no impact on the 2024 race, and it embodies everything that James Carville said could be poisonous for Democrats.
The piece talks about how conservatives view the sport as theirs, some nonsense about masculinity in America, and the Harris-Walz ticket trying to capitalize on the Minnesota governor’s assistant coaching days or something. All of this to set up how this move could alienate Kamala from young voters—try not to laugh:
The platforming of football as a patriotic totem cannot be separated from the sport’s embrace of hypermasculinity and violence. These two pernicious parts of the game connected smoothly with the themes in Harris’s red-meat convention speech: nationalism and a shift to the right alongside a bellicose declaration of war-readiness—having the most “lethal fighting force.”
[…]
It may seem like the Democrats are playing offense. That certainly fits a sports cliché, but it gets the underlying political dynamic backward. Football—and the reclamation of patriotic symbology—is pulling the Democratic Party to the right. While the left never had a coordinated plan to sink pro football, the last decade’s exposure of the sport’s corrosive nature is a good thing. People have the right to know the negative physical and psychological effects that can arise from playing the most popular sport in the country. Football and medical whistleblowers have exposed a right wing willing to look away from public health if it means pats on the back and campaign dollars from the reactionary billionaires that run the NFL.
Claiming this sport and the NFL means claiming all the violent detritus that comes with it. When Colin Kaepernick took a knee in protest of police violence and racial inequity in 2016, he was banished from the league; a reminder to all players that any kinds of resistance politics would not be tolerated. This is what the Democratic Party is buying into—and it comes with risks. Democratic Party leaders clearly believe that the left is sewn up, and they are therefore free to roam the political wilderness for votes on the right. They’ll use football as a way to get their message out—there are already plans for Walz to attend Friday night football games around the country—but embracing this sport could send the campaign lurching even further to the right.
This could repel the young, left-wing voters more interested in policy changes than who wins the football wars. Young people care about racism, the economy, climate change, Palestine, and a host of other issues given short shrift at the convention. Football not only won’t be enough to satisfy them. Its embrace may send a signal that the big tent isn’t big enough for them. This championing of conservative symbols like football, in other words, could cost Harris and Walz the election, and it will be their own doing.
And the sports editors for this magazine wrote this, folks. First, no one cares about Colin Kaepernick. Colin who? —the league has moved on; it moved on years ago. Second, given where this race stands now, young people aren’t going to save Ms. Harris. It all comes down to the Rust Belt voters, and embracing football might be the better move here for Democrats than going gung-ho appeasing the antisemitic and pro-Hamas hordes that are pro-Palestine. Also, liberals watch and play football, too. The slapper is this part about how Democrats embracing football could signal to young voters that “the big tent isn’t big enough for them.”
If we’re going to sports references here, talk about a ‘wide right’ moment, an epic muffed punt that drills down into areas of this topic that either no one cares about or thinks about. And liberals wonder why people view them as weirdos—it’s nonsense takes like this. Carville said his side needs to stop being preachy, adding that the messaging had become too female-oriented. Voters don’t like being told what to do, and attacking hamburgers and football is a great playbook if you want to lose middle America.
Even Nate Silver couldn't believe this piece, adding that it might be the worst take for 2024.
Worst Take Of The Year is an extraordinarily competitive category in an election year but this will be hard to top, basically the Aaron Judge of Bad Takes. https://t.co/I3gk8ffII3
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 4, 2024