NUMB3RS

Those seeking to extract order from chaos often turn to mathematics. Both baseball and elections generate loads of numbers to analyze and parse and sort and ponder. One doesn't need to be a math-type to find useful ways to view statistics as a method to determine "what happened?" and "why?"

I sat down with a pile of results from last week's elections and I'm ready to share something with you that has just occurred to me. (I've told you before that I am sometimes very slow at recognizing the forest amidst all the trees.)

Hillary Clinton, and Darrel Aubertine, and Eliot Spitzer received votes from Republicans. John McHugh, and Jim Wright, and Dede S. received votes from Democrats. This isn't just my speculation. These folks received more votes than all of the voters from their party, plus all the voters from the third parties, plus the voters without parties. At some point, and in some instance, both Dems and Reps crossed the aisle to vote for the person on the "other" party's side of the ballot.

I think that many of us on the inside of the workings of the political process tend to think of our party as a club, or maybe more descriptively, as a religion. You're baptised as a Democrat or as a Republican, or in a fit of rebellion, you sign on to some single-issue third party thacross-endorses enough of your "birth-party" candidates to make you comfortable. Or you wish to withdraw from the system by cursing both houses and becoming a non-affiliated BLANK/NEUTRAL, sort of a political atheist.

However, I'm beginning to see that for many voters, Democrat and Republican are nothing more than brand names; the Pepsi and Coke, Ford and Chevy, Tide and Cheer, Hanes and Fruit of the Loom of politics.

The reason for their choice of party may be so esoteric, so obscurely buried in one's deep past that it can't be determined. They just go out on election day and buy their regular brands.

So it's a big thing, a bigger thing than I ever realized, when so many folks switch brands as they did on November 7.

That is all.