David Rees:
"... The point is, I know ten times more about Trump’s delegate count, and the numerological path that leads to his nomination, than I know about anything regarding his economic plan. And before you say, “That’s because he doesn’t have an economic plan,” I should emphasize that the same sad state of affairs applies to all the candidates...
We know elections are important. We know policy proposals are helpful in gauging a candidate’s priorities. We know policy proposals often involve numbers. We also know that if we knew as much about the candidates’ actual policies vis-à-vis numbers as we know about their electoral chances vis-à-vis numbers, we could have a useful, numbers-based debate about policy. Our friends in cable know something else, though: that a lot of those policy-related numbers are hard to parse and somewhat less than visceral. So they give us different numbers: delegate numbers, which are basically exciting numbers to make us feel smart, even though those numbers are dumb. But at least we get to feast on some numbers...
So here’s this week’s cartoon: ... and at the top of the cartoon, the title says: “EVERYBODY LOVES THE NUMBERS” and then when you look closely you realize the cartoon is actually made entirely out of numbers and that’s when you realize your hands are made out of numbers and that the numbers have driven you insane, and you are just another number."
"... The point is, I know ten times more about Trump’s delegate count, and the numerological path that leads to his nomination, than I know about anything regarding his economic plan. And before you say, “That’s because he doesn’t have an economic plan,” I should emphasize that the same sad state of affairs applies to all the candidates...
We know elections are important. We know policy proposals are helpful in gauging a candidate’s priorities. We know policy proposals often involve numbers. We also know that if we knew as much about the candidates’ actual policies vis-à-vis numbers as we know about their electoral chances vis-à-vis numbers, we could have a useful, numbers-based debate about policy. Our friends in cable know something else, though: that a lot of those policy-related numbers are hard to parse and somewhat less than visceral. So they give us different numbers: delegate numbers, which are basically exciting numbers to make us feel smart, even though those numbers are dumb. But at least we get to feast on some numbers...
So here’s this week’s cartoon: ... and at the top of the cartoon, the title says: “EVERYBODY LOVES THE NUMBERS” and then when you look closely you realize the cartoon is actually made entirely out of numbers and that’s when you realize your hands are made out of numbers and that the numbers have driven you insane, and you are just another number."
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