Welcome to Margin of Error, a politics column from Tom Scocca, editor of the Indignity newsletter.
On Saturday, the Baltimore Orioles, with a lineup featuring three players batting under .200 and no one with 20 home runs, lost 6–1 to the New York Yankees, their 86th loss this season. Also on Saturday, Politico reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries planned to join their Republican majority counterparts at the White House at the start of the week to try to negotiate an agreement that would prevent a government shutdown. Donald Trump, meanwhile, posted on social media that he would be sending "Troops to war ravaged Portland" and "authorizing Full Force, if necessary," to which Jeffries responded by posting "Here’s a thought. Focus on protecting the healthcare of the American people."
What makes a loser a loser? Six months ago, the Orioles were in camp with a young roster that the front office believed it had fortified by adding Tyler O'Neill, Charlie Morton, and Gary Sanchez. And Schumer's Senate Democrats were letting Republicans push through a continuing resolution to delay the then-impending government shutdown till the end of September, for fear that a shutdown would give the Trump administration the opportunity to wreak lasting damage on the federal workforce and government capacity.
Well. Yes. Rather than letting the government automatically go over the cliff all at once, on Trump's watch, the Democrats left Trump to heave whatever individual parts of it he most disliked over the cliff, until the new deadline arrived.
In what was received, in context, as a clarion call, Ezra Klein used his Sept. 7 New York Times column to suggest that the Democrats might want to consider handling this deadline differently:
I’m not going to tell you I am absolutely sure Democrats should shut the government down. I’m not. At the same time, joining Republicans to fund this government is worse than failing at opposition. It’s complicity.
I’m not a political strategist. I hope somebody has better ideas than I do.
Here was a familiar register of discussion, and one that goes beyond politics: I'm not going to tell you I am absolutely sure ... I hope someone has better ideas than I do. Klein felt the pressure to show that he was humble about second-guessing Chuck Schumer, to confess that he personally did not have a superior plan to offer.
To hell with that! Long, long ago, when Syd Thrift was running baseball operations for a chronically terrible incarnation of the Orioles, he summoned me to his office in the B&O Warehouse to give me a chewing-out for writing about how badly run the team was. I don't remember many of the specifics of his complaint, just the general tone of aggrievement—delivered with the drawl and physical posture of a real-life Foghorn Leghorn—that some kid who didn't know anything was refusing to respect how hard the veteran baseball experts were working on their job. The one really indelible detail I absorbed was the way his walls were covered with vertical columns of nameplates, physical depictions of rosters, of the multitude of specific knowable and moveable players who make up professional baseball, all around.
The image might have convinced me that baseball was too complicated for an amateur to grasp. But down through the years—into this listless and mediocre seventh season of what was supposed to be Mike Elias' brilliant rebuilding project—the lesson I've taken from it is more or less the opposite: A sports executive is a professional, paid to spend all their time knowing the difference between good and bad players, understanding what moves to make and how to fit a winning roster together. If the team stinks, they did a bad job.
Chuck Schumer threw Donald Trump a six-month lifeline to keep the government running, and Trump spent those six months looting the country and trashing things. The United States is further outside the rule of law than it's been in my entire lifetime. Chuck Schumer fucked up! Ezra Klein doesn't have to demonstrate that he personally has a better idea of how to manage a Senate minority under fascist assault than Schumer does. He can still tell the Democrats they screwed up last time. To his credit, after the apologies, he did that:
But it’s been about six months since Schumer decided that it wasn’t the time for a fight, that neither he nor the country was ready. Democratic leaders have had six months to come up with a plan. If there’s a better plan than a shutdown, great. But if the plan is still nothing, then Democrats need new leaders.
When the experts fail, no one is under any obligation to explain how they personally might have been a superior expert, themselves. Who should the Orioles have signed instead of Charlie Morton or Gary Sanchez? I don't know, somebody who wouldn't get shelled in his first seven starts or break down for the year after 29 games with a -0.4 WAR. Mike Elias is getting millions of dollars a year to identify which players are going to be healthy and successful and which ones aren't. After seven seasons at that job, he's won zero playoff games and currently presides over a last-place team. Mike Elias is a bad baseball executive!
Pundits nowadays all think they're really political strategists, and fans think they're all general managers, but they aren't, and they don't need to be. It's fine to judge leaders and institutions by their results. In 2019, I thought Joe Biden was obviously too old and washed-up to be president. For a while, it looked like I had been wrong, but then, unfortunately, it turned out I was right.
Who should the Democrats have nominated in 2020 instead? I don't know! Not my call! The primaries were over before I ever got to vote. All I know is Joe Biden was not the guy. The people who thought he wasn't too old, who invested in his candidacy as the safest way to get rid of Trump, were wrong. Trump is president now because they picked Joe Biden!
Second-guessing is a perfectly legitimate form of analysis. It was wrong for George W. Bush to invade Iraq. It was wrong for the Kamala Harris campaign to back off from calling Trump and JD Vance weirdos. It was wrong for Sam Hinkie to tank the Philadelphia 76ers season after season on the claim that only a stack of premium lottery picks could bring championship talent, while leaving Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic on the board in favor of Michael Carter-Williams and Elfrid Payton. You're allowed to say that even if you, personally, did not eat tape from the Greek A2 National Division or the Adriatic League. Not your job! Sam Hinkie's job! Which he did worse than his competitors did.
What's the winning approach to a government shutdown? I don't know. But if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries do know, they haven't shown it yet.
