It was just a few weeks ago, that, this piece in the New Republic about Barack Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe, I thought: hmm. This sounds familiar. Plouffe is the sober, focused advisor, while Obama is the incredibly gifted face of the franchise, as it were. I didn't give it too much deep thought, but it sounded like Moneyball-era Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta. Turns out, that whim wasn't far off the mark. Today, The Politico has a story about Barack Obama's "Bill Jamesesque" delegate counter, Jeffrey Berman. By quietly dealing solely with delegate math, Berman has helped the Obama campaign cut through the mess of competing all-or-nothing primaries, winning the nomination where it really counted: the delegates. The symmetry to sober-minded sabermatricians using new math for insightful, predictive baseball analysis is kind of eerie:
A glimpse at Berman's, and the campaign's, detailed, Bill-Jamesesque approach to the game of politics came in a spreadsheet the campaign sent to Bloomberg reporters, it said inadvertently, on Feb. 5. The spreadsheet had estimates of the outcomes and delegate counts in every state; it has called the winner wrong just twice.As Craig Calcaterra writes, the Bill James parallels run deep, even down to James's trademark beard. One more similarity: winning. Obama's done it. The A's have done it (in the regular season). The Red Sox have done it. It's probably not all that coincidental.
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Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. Uhhh, that all sounds great.
Except for the fact that Obama hasn't won any nomination.
In fact, he CAN'T. Not without superdelegates.
Posted at 6:52PM on May 12th 2008 by Kustie the Klown
2. Barack will get the nomination since the media is his cheerleader. There are ways to be successful in any chosen profession by knowing the secrets of getting things done.
Posted at 11:51PM on May 12th 2008 by George B Vieto
3. Dear God, the Hillbots have made it to Fanhouse. I thought they confined them to Political Machine.
Posted at 12:00AM on May 13th 2008 by Shane
4. Please don't accuse me of being a "hillbot". To the contrary, i love my country and thus could never vote for either Obama or Hillary.
But the fact of the matter is that Eammon Brennan, author of this Obama advocacy article (masquerading as some kind of witty sports insight) is inaccurate and dishonest in its assertion that Obama has won the democrat nomination.
He has won no such nomination.
I guess we could take the article at face value, and feign amazement that WOW! a candidate employs people who are experts in delegates!!! Wow Eammon, i'm sure nobody's ever thought of that before St. Barack did (or should we say Imam Barack??).
Posted at 10:06AM on May 13th 2008 by Kustie the Klown