Game of Inches: U.S. Presidential race as ‘competing commodities’.

Al Pacino is nuanced in his famous speech in ‘Every day is Sunday’, when he talked about “dying for inches” and “we can climb out of hell one inch at a time” or when he said, “the inches we need are everywhere around us”.

The Game of inches, whether it is in a football game or the Presidential Election or the running of the country with a polity around is the same everywhere. And you have to move inch by inch as the opposition to your movement mounts with every covered inch, no one is going to give that inch without a fight.

While the weight of opposition is waiting to pounce on you, you have this sudden question on you, who are you fighting for? For a football game, perhaps could have some different answers, it could well be that the game’s purpose is to win for yourself and your team, your coach or your club or fans. But when it comes to the country, the answer would not be that simple.

When it comes to the country you are fighting for a cause, isn’t it, not for yourself? But even cause could take different shapes otherwise what cause could Trump fight for (investing his own money) or Cruz drifting off the center far to the right and could you compare that with Sander’s zeal raging through the campaign with so much shift off the center to the left, while Hillary holds the center as solid as ever?

The fight for the inch here is on principles and promises, but here the party you are representing stands as a symbol of solidarity, while you could pitch for attention in any different way you can to reach the critical number for the nomination. The focus is on making the right connection with people with the ideas that the people could resonate with.

Harold Hotelling, the Stanford Mathematician in March 1929, in his seminal paper, “Stability in Competition”, unraveled the secrets of “excessive similarities of competing commodities”, which effectively explains why it makes a great strategy for a Democratic Presidential candidate to be as close to center as for a Republican candidate, thus they mitigate their risks of going too far away from what the majority of the electorate would like (similar is better than being far away); too much right off center or too much left makes a losing case by this argument.

 

The rhetoric of “less government” is the dominant strategy for any Republican candidate when the democrats have returned their last President to power. A verbiage against ‘Washington’ helps to bring all those demotivated and generally ‘left out’, not necessarily by design, a wee bit closer. But there are far greater variety of spoils up for grabs, as the “inches are everywhere”, the most potent of them are middle-class sentiments, white ‘evangelical’ promises, the areas where democratic strongholds could be on shaky ground.

The sobering influence of policy & delivery over the rising rhetoric of ‘less government’ is where attention gets focused by the democrats. By straying away from what Hillary Clinton is strong at and keeping strategy to woo people as far away from the center is where Sanders campaign is directed, while it will make great sense for Hillary to hold fort at the center, as she dare not move any bit into the right where Cruz is bound to be range-bound; Hillary cannot move either way.

When the economy is in reasonably good shape with almost 2.4 million jobs added in the last four years and with markets in general showing the resilience that no other economy in the world could demonstrate, economy is not the hot topic of elections in any case. The ‘inches’ are therefore made up of omissions and lapses, directed at segments which did not get the deal they thought they would be getting.

Sanders finds the best section, the young, the students and those who have landed up with part-time jobs or general job-seekers, who want to re-enter and be part of labor force participation rates. This is a formidable body of people and many of them would be voting the first time. Data shows the deepening inclination of the university students towards social questions like, fairness and equity and Sanders finds resonance in them. This is like “anchoring” on a base. But he and Cruz have something in common that they want to get the angry votes against the establishment.

Ted Cruz is on familiar ground as expected moving to the GOP base of conservative, white males, who have some stories that did not go well in Obama years, some of them could be simply more local than national and some could be more recent happenings that could strike a chord. The immigration question comes at the center of the debate and no wonder Cruz made Steve King the co-chair of his campaign as he had been notorious with his antics of painting unregistered entrants as ‘drug-mules’. It would be interesting to see his real evangelical support base as he never minced his words against abortion, the recent being his stand against abortion from even rape. The standard menu of tax-cuts particularly corporate tax, spike in defense spending, annulling the Iran Treaty, etc, notwithstanding, Cruz finds little support from any of the current body of Republican Governors.

The limit of American politics is entrenched in the color of the States and no democratic President will have the luxury of a house majority or a Senate majority to take every step to its farthest end; at best the inches will have to be nuanced and here Hillary could actually score better with her long association with people on both sides. But what is best for the delivery of democracy is not necessarily the best that the electorate is looking for. With such a shift in support base amongst the less aged, which actually took Obama to an unassailable position, is not for Hillary to enjoy or nurture.

She remains vulnerable at every inch she chooses to take.