As I write this, it’s presidential Election Day in America. And to help me get celebrate the end of the seemingly never-ending campaigns, I’m going to write about how it’s like…..bandwagon fans.
Last week, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908. I’m not a Cubs fan, and frankly baseball is at best my 4th favorite team sport behind football, basketball, and even hockey. (I’ve made blog entries in the past about how the baseball establishment has ruined baseball.) But the Cubs’ triple-A team, the Iowa Cubs, play in Des Moines, and I’ve seen many of the players in past trips to those games, so even I was sort of rooting for those lovable losers. (Also, it makes me feel better because I’d like to think that once in my lifetime, another perennial losing team called the Minnesota Vikings will win the Super Bowl.)
During and after the Series, there were somewhere between thousands and millions of people claiming to be long-suffering Cubs fans. And while many of them were, some of them were not. A lot of those so-called long-time fans couldn’t name even a couple of the players, nor had any clue as to how well the Cubs did in the regular season. They were bandwagon fans, trying to attach their sorry souls to a contender they really don’t care about, giving them an excuse act silly and feel good about themselves.
Those fans drive me nuts. They act like they care, but they don’t actually know enough to care.
In a way, it’s a metaphor for this year’s presidential election. Millions of people are going to vote today, and lots of them know virtually nothing about the candidates, nor the issues they’ve been campaigning about for the past year. They just know that a big contest is afoot, and they’re going to attach their sorry souls to a contender they really don’t care about, giving them an excuse to act silly and feel good about themselves.
Those voters drive me nuts, too.
