| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, the best game-day tradition of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. On Sundays, we look at the major themes of the week past and how they will define the week ahead. Sign up for the daily newsletter here . I hate numbers. Admitting it is probably not a smart career move, considering I work at one of the most data-heavy journalism operations on earth. But I dislike digits for three reasons: First, I am terrible at math. Second, I think almost all polls are nonsense. And third, I have devoted far too much of my brief time on this planet to watching the NFL draft. I’m currently 150 miles down the road from Green Bay, Wisconsin, where this weekend 257 talented young men had their entire futures decided by a bunch of numbers. Numbers that, for the players who heard their names called on Thursday’s night’s first round, will add up on average to eight million. Dollars, that is. The numbers come largely from the NFL Combine in February, and include vital statistics such as how long it takes the potential pro to run forward five yards, back 10 yards, then forward another five yards, just to end up having gone nowhere. A young man named Omarion Hampton executed this exercise in futility in a nifty 4.4 seconds, and will get paid around $18 million by the Los Angeles Chargers for his efforts. In fairness, he’s a running back, so he is going to get his bell rung repeatedly over the next four years. The most interesting figure to me right now, however, is 200,000. That’s the number of poor misguided souls who have invaded Green Bay, [1] a city with a population half that size, just to spend three days standing around watching the most interminable and tedious event in all of professional sports. Also inexplicable is the TV audience, largely on ESPN “In 2024, 12.1 million viewers tuned into the first night of the three-day National Football League Draft,” Adam Minter tells us. [2] “That’s more people than watched the men’s and women’s US Open tennis finals, all but two regular season college football games or the National Hockey League Stanley Cup Finals that year.” But ESPN needs a Hail Mary. “Over the last several months, other companies, including Google LLC, Amazon.com Inc., Netflix Inc. and Fox Corp., have expressed interest in taking it over,” writes Adam. “But ESPN is ‘optimistic’ that it will retain rights, according to Sports Business Journal. The network has a reason to feel this way because of its nearly half-century record of boosting the event, but the way it currently does things would need a facelift.” So does Frozen Tundra Man, but that’s another story all together:  Source: Pinterest Back to numbers. While the the 20-yard shuttle run may or may not be a solid indicator of a running back’s potential, it at least has an objective result — the stopwatch doesn’t lie. Whereas people responding to polls do. I particularly love this Harris poll which asks whether people lie to pollsters. Shockingly enough, the answer is a resounding yes. Especially Gen Z. Which brings us to the poll featured in David M. Drucker’s latest column: “What happens when American teenagers get stuck at home, prevented from experiencing the coming-of-age social milestones that most adults took for granted? They become Republicans, apparently,” he writes. “That is perhaps the most striking nugget in the Yale Youth Poll, a survey conducted April 1 – 3 and released last week that examined the political proclivities of voters ages 18 – 29. The pollsters discovered a crucial difference between voters ages 18 – 21 and those ages 22 – 29: The older subgroup plans to vote for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections by a margin of 6.4 percentage points, but the younger set prefers Republicans by 11.7 points.”  That’s fascinating. But also … mostly made up? After all, half of Gen Z admits to having lied to pollsters in the past. And since anything Yale can do badly Harvard can do worse, here is what the Harvard Institute of Politics came up with this week in a survey of people ages 18 to 29: “When asked to compare the current state of America under President Trump to the Biden administration, just one in four (25%) 18- to 29-year-olds say the country is better off now. In contrast, 41% believe America was better off under President Biden.” Who you gonna believe? Actually, one polling result is hard to argue with: About three in ten Black male voters under 45 cast their ballot for President Donald Trump. That may not seem like much, but it was twice what he got in 2020. However, as Nia-Malika Henderson points out, Trump isn’t exactly returning the favor. “A true Black MAGA contingent has yet to emerge,” she writes. “Trump’s cabinet has just one Black member, at Housing and Urban Development, typically thought of as the ‘Black job.’ Trump has no prominent Black staffers. And although Congress has a record number of Black elected officials, only five are Republicans.”  Nia-Malika thinks the mood of the nation, and the administration, may be setting back politicians of color: “Typically, Black Republicans have been quite conservative, embracing Black respectability politics. Think former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. This political aesthetic has fallen out of favor in the Trump years, at least for some White Republicans. Think Pete Hegseth and Marjorie Taylor Greene.” Also being set back: people in the country illegally. “Sizable minorities of Americans, and majorities of Republicans, believe undocumented immigrants should be deportable without due process (39% overall, and 65% of Republicans) and that President Donald Trump’s approach to immigration is ‘about right’ (38% overall, and 75% of Republicans),” writes Erika D. Smith.  Yet a different poll gives her hope. “For the first time in decades, Americans have been asked how they feel about the last time a president invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which was during World War II. Then, as many as 120,000 Japanese people, including children, were rounded up and incarcerated without due process,” Erika explains. “At the time, 93% of Americans supported such treatment for Japanese non-citizen immigrants and 59% approved of it for the many US citizens of Japanese descent. Today, only 26% of Americans say it was right to lock up non-citizens; 17% to imprison citizens.” Those are numbers that even I can appreciate. Bonus Numbers Reading: - I Guess Elon Musk Doesn’t Remember Econ 101— Gautam Mukunda
- The ‘Trump Put’ Makes an Entrance, Up to a Point — John Authers
- A Nebraska Republican Could Be the New John McCain — Patricia Lopez
What’s the World Got in Store ? - Conference Board consumer confidence, April 29: What Would You Be Willing to Pay for an iPhone? — Dave Lee
- German coalition vote ends, April 29: US Chaos Is an Opportunity Europe Should Seize — Lionel Laurent
- US PCE, April 30: America, Our Long Inflation Nightmare Is Over — for Now — Kathryn Anne Edwards
The best thing about the NFL draft is that I get to partake in one of the best game-day traditions in football: Wisconsin beer-boiled bratwurst. It’s not just a sausage; it’s an almost-holy ritual. And as mankind often does with sacred things, eaters of brats have divided themselves into warring sects. My branch (pictured left) takes a sort of Church of Scotland approach: no finery or embellishments, just a little yellow mustard to bring out the sausagey goodness. But there are misguided folks (pictured right) who gild the lily with sauerkraut, pickle relish, guac, red onions, mayo and, sin of sins, ketchup. Ugh.  Heavenly perfection vs an unholy mess. Photo: Tobin Harshaw About the only departure from divine minimalism I approve of is topping a brat with pico de gallo, on occasion. The trade war, however, may soon make that a costly condiment: “Most tomatoes from Mexico will face a 21% tariff effective July 14, the US Department of Commerce said last week. Ironically, the ‘love apple’ may be the perfect illustration of how trade contributes to economic prosperity — and of the folly of President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies,” writes Jonathan Levin.  The history is fascinating (at least more fascinating than Day 3 of the NFL draft): “The tomato trade has survived many prior protectionist pushes, including the Supreme Court’s Nix v. Hedden decision of 1893, which unanimously held that tomatoes were vegetables (despite what the dictionary says) and were therefore not eligible for the fruit exemption under the Tariff of 1883,” explains Jonathan. “Like clockwork, every half-decade or so the US has gone to the brink of restarting anti-dumping investigations, only to reach an 11th-hour deal that broadly maintains the status quo. Americans who love fresh tomatoes with their pasta can still hold out hope that this spat will get resolved in a similar fashion. And all Americans, even those misguided few who don’t like tomatoes, should hope that the Trump administration soon comes to its senses and realizes that trade leaves both parties better off.” Those folks who made the trek up to Green Bay this weekend are gluttons for punishment. I’m OK with simply being a glutton. Notes: Please send Usinger’s samplers and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.net. |
