Dem
52
Ties
2
GOP
46
(Z) has played a lot of baseball, and has spent a lot of time at the batting cages. And every batting cage facility he ever went to had one cage set to 40 MPH, which is a very slow speed, and is well less than half of the speed at which a major league pitcher throws. Heck, it's less than half of the speed at which a decent high school pitcher throws. The 40 MPH cage serves a few purposes. Primarily, it's there so very young players—those who are 6 or 7 or 8 years old—can take a few hacks. Some older players use the 40 MPH cage to warm up, or occasionally to practice bunting.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the multimillionaire tech guy with absolutely no experience in elective office, decided that he really wanted to show Ohio voters that he's a "regular guy" that they should choose to be their next governor. So, he and his campaign decided to stage a video where he alternates between listing his policy priorities as governor, and swinging at baseballs in a batting cage. There were 10 policies, and thus 11 swings (as there was a swing before the first policy, and one after the last policy).
The video has gone viral, and not in the way Ramaswamy wanted. Here it is:
It's only 30 seconds, but if you don't care to view it, the issue is that Ramaswamy can't swing a baseball bat to save his life. It's amazing that nobody involved with the campaign figured out that he looked ridiculous, and that the video was going to land with a thud. It has now been deleted from Ramaswamy's various social media accounts but once something's released into the wild, it lives forever.
When (Z) saw it, his impression—other than "that's clearly the 40 MPH cage"—was that Ramaswamy is a golfer and not a baseball player. You have to move your feet when you swing a baseball bat, and you have to keep them (largely) in place when swinging a golf club, and he definitely does the latter. The Washington Sun, which until this week was known as NOTUS, went so far as to check in with professional hitting coaches. They said (correctly) that he's putting all his weight on his front foot, which makes it impossible to drive the ball. Their advice: "Stick to politics."
Ramaswamy is an unusually obnoxious fellow; even most of his fellow Republican politicians hate him. And when he stages such a phony, pandering video and it blows up in his face? Well, then it's "Go directly to Schadenfreude, do not pass Go, do not collect $200." (Z)