Lovable Losers

This afternoon, my friend Mike noted that the Democratic Party, on which all of the hopes of the anti-war movement rests, is just a few short months from nominating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate least likely to stop the war in a swift fashion, to be their candidate for the presidency of the United States. It occurred to me at this point that perhaps my lifelong affection for the Chicago Cubs is actually very similar to my affection for the Democratic Party. Disappointment is both obvious and inevitable.

Going into 2008, the Democrats have a massive glut of cash: Democratic top fundraiser Hillary Clinton has out-raised Republican top fundraiser Mitt Romney by 50%, and a good amount of his money comes from himself (Congressional candidates in both houses are raising money at similar ratios). The Cubs payroll for 2007 was nearly $100 million, while National League Champions the Colorado Rockies have slightly more than half of that. Both enjoy massive popularity. The Democrats have support because they favor an end to the war in Iraq, they talk about restoring civil liberties, and have gotten aggressive on popular social programs like SCHIP. The Cubs enjoy popularity because Chicago has a massive population of post-fraternity buffoons with too much money who like paying $400 for a ticket to a place where they can sit in an uncomfortable seat and pay $6 for a can of Old Style, watch their favorite team lose, and then puke their beer up all over Clark Street.*

The talent is there too. In the running are Hillary Clinton, the wife of (and some say the brain behind) the most popular living president; Barack Obama could probably legitimately change his middle name to "Rock Star," given how frequently people call him that; John Edwards has the most popular wife in politics, and is rumored to have also had some experience in national politics. The bullpen, much like the Cubs, has skill but is unreliable: guys like Joe Biden and Bill Richardson have moments where they seem untouchable, and then they turn into walking gaffe-machines and give up six runs in the debates. The Cubs have real talent at the plate (Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez) and some decent starting pitchers (Carlos Zambrano) but have never in my entire life have they had a reliable bullpen to draw on to replace the starters. In 2004, we could've seen Wes Clark as a decent Secretary of Defense or National Security Adviser, but no one really looked at all of those mock turtlenecks and thought we could have pulled him up to mound as a presidential candidate: he's just there to pull a couple of innings on the campaign trail or something like that.

There was a time when we had some solid guys calling the game for us, too. But they got cocky: Steve Stone pissed off the players by pointing out their mistakes, and got fired, and Michael Moore pissed off too many of the fans by pointing out their leaders' mistakes and got relegated to wingnut status.

But then there are management issues. Dusty Baker, of course, was plenty reliable: he always used the same strategy for losing games, and always backed up Larry Rothschild when he wanted to run good talent into the ground until they need Tommy John surgery. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, are the same thing: they talk a good bit about stopping the war in Iraq, about cutting off illegal domestic spying, expanding positive government programs: all the day before the Washington Post reports that they've caved on any or all of those things. And it repeats ad nauseam.

But here's the thing. We know that the other team is tough. There's some real solid competition in this division (central division for the Cubs, partisan division for the Democrats), and we need to go with the roster we think is going to take us there. The Cubs don't feel that they have the luxury of time to go back to basics: over the course of a few years, build up a solid bullpen, get a catcher or two with a decent bat, and hire a pitching coach who doesn't put his best players in the hospital, and build everyone together, as a team, over a few years, rather than scrambling around for ringers before the trade deadline. The Democrats certainly don't think they have time to get together and build a strong, coherent platform and pull their members into lock-step to get it done. Instead, you have Jim Webb and Joe Biden and everyone else trying to push 50 different plans to make some small progess towards getting us out of Iraq. So we go with someone we think can get it done and keep things warm for now: John Kerry (Kerry Wood) in 2004 and Hillary Clinton (Alfonso Soriano) in 2008. We know, of course, that this is not the dream team. We know that by signing Clinton we're just pining for the 90's, when the world is a very different place, and that by signing Soriano, we're just pining for the player he was with the Yankees (and the team and management he had around him). So when the inevitable defeats come, when the Cubs choke one game shy of the Series in 2003 like John Kerry a year later, no one will really be surprised, they'll just hang their heads in disappointment and say, "I thought maybe it would've worked out differently this time around."

*Seriously, if you're going to be near Clark Street on a game day, wear galoshes. It's like Bourbon Street, but all the college girls have their shirts on.