Split The Difference

There's an old statistician's joke that points out the average person has one breast and one testicle. Well, more likely it's a joke about statisticians. I'm sure the statisticians themselves hear that and go on about the difference between means and modes, and that not everything is a bell curve, do you even know what a distribution is, etc.

But the point is that we often assume that the average thing is a popular thing, when it may actually be exceptional. An example is in poor countries, where you might see the average income listed as $1000 a year. But that's because most people get by on next-to-nothing, while a small elite are millionaires, bringing up the average. In fact, there's virtually no one in the country who actually makes $1000 a year.

Elections follow a similar pattern. When you're electing a national leader or ruling party, the people are essentially finding someone whose views are the average of everyone in the country. That sounds easy enough, but you could find that, like that gender-ambiguous average person, the average politician is hard to find.

So far in the American political process, we're seeing anything but the average. From the perspective of winning the election, it seems bizarre that both parties are ignoring strong candidates and fascinating themselves with far-from-mainstream folks that wouldn't do well in a general election.

Hillary Clinton is the best-known on either side. And Republicans don't seem to have noticed that a Jeb!-Kasich ticket would have one centre-sellable candidate from each of the main swing states. Trouble is, those folks who would come close to representing all of America don't have the passionate supporters needed to get them into the White House.

That means the election would end up being an all-or-nothing choice of the candidates that have a vocal minority with passion. Some would say that’s a good thing, but I don’t like it. Sure, I’d like to see a left-leaning guy like Bernie Sanders win the election, but I wouldn’t want to bet Western Civilization on an apocalyptic election against Donald Trump. I’d rather have a boring old election between candidates nearer the centre. Such an election would also offer the more moderate majority of Americans a choice of candidates closer to their ideology. So the election system is really messed up if it’s threatening to give us candidates that no one will be happy with.

But seriously, remember: Bush-Kasich ’16, I called it.