Happy Birthday to Davey Johnson, 70. Best manager of his generation, in my view. Anybody know why the Braves released him in 1975, right at the beginning of the season? His fluke year had been 1973, and he returned to normal in 1974, but his normal was still a whole lot better than what Marty Perez, who replaced him, could do. And Perez was 29, so it's not as if there was any question about what he could do. Of course, without the full year as a regular, maybe the Braves couldn't have managed to snag Willie Montanez from the Giants the next year for Perez. Oh, except they also tossed in Darrel Evans. Oops! Perhaps I've answered my question.
Just a bit of the good stuff:
1. You want to know about the 2016 nomination process. Josh Putnam gets us up to date.
2. Speaking of 2016, David Leonhardt is exactly right in this tweet: "Resolved: Talking about who may run in 2016 is less silly than constantly asking the potential candidates whether they're running."
3. Dylan Matthews runs down what economists think about immigration.
4. And, yeah, that Beltway Deficit Feedback Loop is still functioning, as Greg Sargent reminds us.
Davey went to play in Japan for the 1975 season... maybe he wanted to, and asked the Braves for his release? I don't know.
ReplyDeleteI am currently busy writing comments to blogs and have no plans to run for president for 2016.
ReplyDeleteWould you consider accepting the vice presidency?
DeleteTrying to dig into the Putnam piece, and just having a disgusted reaction to the formalization of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada being the first states to have caucuses/primaries.
ReplyDeleteAre there four more un-representative states? (Well, probably there are, it could be Alaska, Wyoming, Louisiana, and say Maine or Vermont or South Dakota ...) But still, I guess folks on the East Coast just don't have any idea of how sick and tired some of us left-coasters are of the quadrennial New Hampshire media love-fest (and how the NH voters always seem to help out the most "old establishment" member of the GOP field). And Iowa and South Carolina are getting just as tiresome, although their self-selected role is to boost the hard-line "old reactionary" member of the GOP field.
And the prospect of having a Democratic candidate selected by these over-played actors is even more depressing.
Again, what's needed IMHO is a national rotating primary season occurring between April 1 and June 30, and no formation of campaign committees or fund-raising (and actual enforcement banning thinly disguised non-profits acting as campaign committees) before Jan 15 of the Presidential election year. Fight back against the eternal campaign !! The eternal campaign is good for ambitious officeholders and sleazy consultants, it's bad for the public as a whole and our participation in our political process.