Wednesday, May 21, 2008

National Review solves Fermat's Last Theorem

Let's say there's a football game between the Bears and the Giants. The linescore reads as follows:

Team        1st      2nd      3rd      4th
Bears 0 6 14 7
Giants 3 7 0 10
Which team won? Well, the thing most of us would do is to add the score from the four quarters together, which yields Bears 27, Giants 20. Rex Grossman must have had a good day and thrown only two interceptions.

But Byron York of the National Review would declare the Giants the winner. Why? Although losing the game, the Giants won more quarters. And as we all know, that's the way any good, red-blooded American scores a football game.

Yes, he really did make this argument about Hillary Clinton and the primaries:
There have been four quarters in the Democratic presidential nomination battle. We’re late in the fourth quarter now, and when it’s over, Hillary Clinton will likely have won three of the quarters — and won the most votes overall — but lost the game.
Mr. York? Mr. York? There's a Mr. Wolfson for you on line four.

27 comments

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I saw that myself, and felt my jaw drop. I mean sure, it's the national review, but it's almost like there's some memo going around saying, "You know all that stuff you accused Obama's supporter's of? The adulation, the emphasizing of the candidate's symbolism as well as his electoral appeal? Well, copy all of it and yell about the popular vote really loudly, and mebbe throw in some feminism so nobody can hear the counterargument."

El Cid said...

One is truly moved by the absolutely open, honest, and well-intentioned support by prominent Republican pundits which Hillary Clinton is receiving, since when they say that they are keeping in mind the best interests of the Democratic Party and liberals in general, they must be, because, like, why would Republicans lie about that sort of thing?

rilkefan said...

That argument is silly, but the argument that later voters have more information and should be weighted more heavily might be sensible.

Re the previous comment - do you really want to own the crazy arguments the VRWC makes against Clinton, and maybe throw in some racism so nobody can hear the counterargument? So what if that's Little Green Footballs' POV?

rilkefan said...

... previous anon comment...

538/poblano said...

rilkefan,

The two problems with that are that:

1) Obama's lead has been expanding rather than contracting in the national polls.

2) Democratic rules actually do weight the later contests more heavily in terms of delegates.

Josh said...

I am sure a lot of eggheads and political junkies read this site, but how many people actually know what Fermat's Last Theorem is? I love the obscure reference.

vosh said...

rilkefan, I personally don't think giving any voter more weight than another is ever sensible but it's certainly true that later voters have more information and that is one reason among hundreds why the "popular vote" is fraudulent. Voters in later states have a big advantage. Imagine if the general election were decided over the course of five months, with a vast majority of voters being required to vote 3-5 months before the race is over.

California and New Jersey didn't get to see Clinton's Obliterate Iran/Gas Tax Holiday side. Maybe that is why recent Survey USA polls show Obama would now defeat Clinton in those states.

Iowa and New Hampshire voters were presented with a Clinton who said Florida and Michigan "wouldn't count for anything." Now they know the truth.

Clinton has outperformed Obama slightly - by about 3% - in the "4th quarter" because she's had the home-field advantage. Aside from those two rough patches during the establishment media's flogging of Jeremiah Wright, Obama has consistently mainted a 6-85 lead on Clinton nationally. Currently he's up 12%.

Clinton's veer to the right to capitalize on the primary calendar's trip through Appalachia appears to have come at the cost of losing a lot of liberals, as evidenced by Obama trouncing her in Oregon.

And it makes me sick to admit it but the reality is that Operation Chaos was also a factor.

AJ said...

Thanks for doing a piece on this-- I read it and thought, where can I write a criticism of this weird math? And how can we get so upset about the injustice of not counting Florida and Michigan (therefore include them in the popular vote totals), but leave Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington out because it's just too hard to know how many votes were cast there?

Maybe Hillary should start using Mike Huckabee's line-- "I didn't major in math, I majored in miracles."

MUSIC BLOG said...

It's mind-blowing to me how absolutely ridiculous the rationalizations coming from Clinton's campaign and supporters are now.

What ridiculous metric will they come up with next. "If the game was scored this way, we'd be winning!"

Anonymous said...

The Continental Basketball Association used to award quarter points, one point to the team that scored the most points in each quarter, plus three points for the team who won the game. A winning team was guaranteed between 4 to 7 points per game. Too bad Mr. York is not clued in to sports enough to pick the more appropriate analogy.

Anonymous said...

Wow -- what a moronic way of taking a perfectly good idea and messing it up. There is one league out there that does take the quarterly scores into account. The CBA (minor league basketball), in order to keep everybody interested in a blowout, gives 3 points in the standings for winning the game overall, and 1 point for winning each quarter.

Note that this is much different than the proposal. Since the overall game winner has to win at least one quarter, the overall winner gets at least 4 points, and the overall loser gets no more than 3. If there is only one game (sorry, no carry-overs to 2012), the game winner is still the game winner.

What a tangled web we weave when first we try to make up for coming up short.

Anonymous said...

Poblano -- the link to York's artice is broken.

Anonymous said...

re rilkefan
heh, that did sound sort of paranoid/generalizing, didn't it? Yeah, I can see the nuance, and it took me googling VRWC to find out what it was, but I certainly wouldn't want to stand anywhere near, much less shoulder to shoulder with such people. I'm just frustrated with people taking Senator Clinton's drive towards the center as the birth of her own inspirational movement, or evidence of a supreme irony about how campaigning against Sen. Obama made her a stronger candidate, but too late - instead of the typical mad dash to the center of an election end-game, combined with realpolitik acknowledging the reddish hue of most Democrats that were left to vote.

Mac Zilber said...

What I also find hilarious about that line of reasoning is that she didn't win the majority of the "quarters." In terms of press coverage, albeit not actual delegates, here's how the quarters would be divvied up:

1st Quarter: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina
Obama won this quarter by 35 delegates, tying or winning the delegate battle in every state.

2nd Quarter: Super Tuesday

Obama won this "quarter" by 3 delegates, finishing far better than anybody expected him to due to his caucus state dominance.

3rd Quarter: The time from Super Tuesday to March 4th

Obama wins this quarter by 129 delegates, losing only Ohio and Rhode Island

4th Quarter: Mississippi, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oregon, South Dakota, Montana, Puerto Rico

Clinton currently leads by 13 in this quarter, and will likely finish the quarter with a 10-17 delegate lead. This is the only quarter that she has "won," and, to continue the sports analogy, most of those points were scored in garbage time. If a basketball team loses by 5 points in the first quarter, 1 point in the second, and 20 in the third, then the fact that you win the fourth quarter by 2-3 points while the other team's bench is in the game is not exactly something worth bragging about.

Anonymous said...

As you suggested in your other thread, you are correct that the CLintons have run an increasing ly irrational campaign. What's disturbing is the sheer number of irration kindred spirits they've accumulated along the way.

Who can blame Obama of speaking about getting past distractions. The Clintons and their supporters have thrown dozens of useless metrics in the path.

I'm embarrassed for them. Bill Clinton's legacy is irreparably damaged and will never be the same.

Anonymous said...

Seems to me that the right wingers really fear facing Obama. Why else would they be fighting so hard for her.

Redshift said...

"Seems to me that the right wingers really fear facing Obama. Why else would they be fighting so hard for her."

It's pretty simple -- because if the Dem nomination isn't clearly resolved, there's a lot more chance the losing side's voters will stay home, benefiting the GOP. They "supported" Obama and attacked Clinton a lot more when she was the frontrunner. Based on turnout numbers, they have a lot to fear from either one; I don't think they're sincerely favoring either one, they're just serving their own interests.

Matthew said...

Thanks, Mac, for pointing that out, although I have different numbers for how many delegates Obama netted in each "quarter." For example, current counts have Obama netting not 3 delegates on Super Tuesday, but 33. No matter, though.

I had to go and read the article to find out exactly how this guy could even argue that Clinton had won any quarters at all. I guess this guy was using a meaningless metric to draw his conclusions: the popular vote, which conveniently includes MI and FL, and excludes IA, NV, WA, and ME.

If we want to further the football analogy, his argument is more like Clinton gaining more _yards_ in 3 quarters, no matter than Obama scored more points in two of those. Never mind that Obama has clearly gained more yards if you don't count the ones