Death Blows

The one really smart thing I learned over all the summer internships of my youth is that the press coverage that really makes a difference for politicians is the coverage that happens in media outlets that aren't about politics. People who read New York Times articles about congressional negotiations tend to have firm opinions about politics. People who get all their political information by accident tend to be swing voters. Thus, Bill Simmons on Minnesota and the draft lottery: "Nobody deserves a stroke of lottery fortune less than Glen Taylor and Kevin McHale, the NBA's version of Bush/Rumsfield for 8-10 years."

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/05/death-blows/42625/