Dem
47
GOP
53
When teaching history (and presumably other subjects, though history is the subject Z happens to know), it is often helpful to explain things via analogy. For example, when talking about the humiliations that the Germans visited upon the French at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, (Z) asks students to imagine a hypothetical Canadian-American War, in which Canada conquers the United States. He then poses this question: "If Canada really beat the U.S. badly, and wanted everyone to know it, in what building and room would they force Donald Trump to formally surrender?" It usually doesn't take long for the students to correctly guess "The Oval Office in the White House." And that parallels the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, which is where the French were forced to surrender in 1871, thus helping lay the groundwork for what happened at the end of World War I.
Anyhow, it would seem that the presumptive Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine, Graham Platner, picked up this lesson at some point. Among the planks of Platner's platform is that private equity is evil and needs to be reined in. But "private equity" is a bit abstract for most voters, so the Platner campaign found a way to make it accessible, posting a video to eX-Twitter talking about how private equity has ruined the Boston Red Sox.
The Red Sox are owned by the Fenway Sports Group, with billionaire John Henry as the managing partner. The Henry years got off to a good start, as far as fans were concerned, with some serious investment in talent and some World Series championships. However, sports ownership is built on a tension between what owners want (profits) and what fans want (wins). Some teams are better at balancing that tension than others (or, at least, keeping the tension out of public view).
In the past several years, the management of the Red Sox has done a pretty terrible job of hiding the fact that they are there to make money, and winning is, at best, a nice bonus. Red Sox fans are among the most devoted in the majors, but the fact is that the media market is on the smaller side, and so is the stadium. So, the franchise can't exactly compete dollar-for-dollar against teams like the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. And the Sox have let several popular and/or talented players go in the last half-decade, as a cost-saving measure.
The most notable case of putting profit before winning came in 2020, when the Red Sox traded their best player, Mookie Betts, to the aforementioned Dodgers. It was a wildly imbalanced trade, in which the Dodgers got a superstar and AL MVP, and the Red Sox got three prospects. The Red Sox simply didn't want to pay the hefty contract that Betts was due for (he eventually signed an extension with the Dodgers for $365 million). Since joining the Boys in Blue, Betts has won three World Series, and, for those who know their advanced stats, has been worth 32.2 wins above replacement. By contrast, the three players the Red Sox received (Alex Verdugo, Connor Wong and Jeter Downs) put up a total of 11.6 wins above replacement. Only one of the three (Wong) is still in the majors.
The point is that Red Sox fans, including Red Sox fan Platner, know all of this. And so, in his ad, he uses the Betts trade as an exemplar of the harms wrought by private equity. Platner promises that, if elected, he will "reverse the curse" of private equity (a reference to the "curse" that supposedly kept the Red Sox from winning the World Series from 1918 to 2004), and he ends the spot by decreeing: "I am Graham Platner, and I approved this ad because I miss Mookie Betts."
Note that we do not presume to judge the validity of Platner's message—that's beyond our pay grade. We are just very interested in new and different ways of communicating with the voting public, and Platner is certainly giving us some intriguing things to think about on that front. Oh, and the Red Sox' privately owned sports network, NESN, has banned the ad, which certainly seems like a gift to Platner, from where we sit. Apparently, the White House isn't the only entity that doesn't understand the Streisand Effect. (Z)