I notice that when I talk about sports in this space, some of our grouchier commenters invariably take the opportunity to pronounce themselves happily rid of sports affections owing to the wokeness of the leagues or their being too sophisticated for the bread and circuses, or whatever.
And that’s fine. I do concur in the need for caution lest one allow oneself to live too vicariously through the exploits of college-aged, or slightly post-college-aged, total strangers. Perhaps the best lesson along these lines was delivered by Chazz Palminteri in A Bronx Tale. I give you the Mickey Mantle scene…
One salutary benefit of following sports, though, is that it will teach excellent lessons from time to time about organizational behavior, particularly in a competitive setting. And often, those lessons do carry over into politics.
I hadn’t really considered one of them until a few days ago, when I saw a flurry of social media posts like this one…
One understated reality of what Trump has done: He basically just nuked his Senate majority for the next six months. Rs have a 53-47 hold on the Senate.
– Sen. Tillis is retiring and already acting like an independent.
– Sen. Cassidy now has no reason to play ball.
– Sens.… https://t.co/OKWg60BIDR— Isaac Saul (@Ike_Saul) May 21, 2026
The sports lesson is one you’ll see in all the major sports leagues, usually more than once in a season or postseason: a team whose management believed was built to win or compete for a championship falls well short of that goal, and that team’s roster is broken up following a disappointing season. Or, in the case of an especially underachieving performance in which they don’t just fall in the playoffs but are out of contention midway through the schedule, the team might hold a fire sale before the trade deadline.
And there’s a classic pattern, too. Often, the team will fire its coach, but it will almost always go younger and cheaper on players in an attempt to rebuild the roster over the long haul. When the fire sale comes, the trades are usually for draft picks. The more, the better.
This applies to that Senate majority, which is now being eulogized with Bill Cassidy’s loss in the Louisiana GOP Senate primary and the impending loss of John Cornyn after tonight’s Texas GOP runoff. (RELATED: Bye, Bill)
And what’s not really understood is who the management holding the fire sale really is in this analogy.
The establishment narrative reflected in that X post above is that it’s Trump. Well, I have some thoughts on that, because while it’s true that the president did endorse Julia Letlow and Ken Paxton in the Senate and Ed Gallrein in the House, he didn’t vote in any of those elections.
And, though this is being written before the Texas runoff, the smart money seems to have it that in all three of those races, the incumbent wasn’t close to retaining his seat.
I take from those results that the real “management” dealing away overpriced and underperforming veterans for new faces amid a roster makeover isn’t Trump but rather the voting public. (RELATED: Senate GOP Needs New Leadership)
And to blame Trump for the primary fire sale is to intentionally miss the point.
Because what’s lost in this is we’ve had — how long? Four months? — three-quarters of the country demanding the passage of the SAVE America Act, which is as no-brainer of a bill as anybody could bring, and this “majority” wouldn’t pass it despite opportunity after opportunity to do that. (RELATED: The Abysmal Quality of the GOP Senate Caucus Is the Real Issue, and the SAVE Act Mess Has Made That Clear)
They could have brought it up as it was presented, coming from the House, which was a privileged motion immune from a filibuster.
They could have enforced a talking filibuster and worn out the Democrats.
They could have run it through reconciliation.
They could have put it on the FISA bill.
Did any of that happen? Did John Thune use any of those tools to force through one of the most obviously necessary pieces of legislation — with the widest consensus of support for a major bill in perhaps decades on a core issue of his party — and send it to Trump’s desk?
Nope.
I’ll actually take up for Thune here, if only very faintly. He’s said that he can’t get a majority for the SAVE America Act out of his 53-vote caucus. And I believe him. I also believe that John Thune exercised pressure, such as the mild-mannered South Dakotan is capable of exercising, on his caucus to move the bill, but he simply cannot get 50 votes out of 53 for the thing. Thune is no Harry Reid, to be sure — his arm-breaking skills are below average for a Senate Majority Leader. But Thune’s caucus is not obedient in the way Reid’s was.
And this has happened amid a ceaseless din of rhetoric from Trump, who has been howling about the importance of the bill’s passage and making the case that this is the bare minimum that the Senate GOP Caucus could deliver to the people who voted for them.
And what Trump got for his trouble was silence, until finally Thune shrugged his shoulders last week and said it can’t be done.
As if that’s good enough.
Well, you can blame this on Trump, but time and again these people forget that Donald Trump exists not because of osmosis or some cosmic accident but because HE REPRESENTS THE WISHES OF THE VAST MAJORITY OF REPUBLICANS. That’s where his power comes from.
But the establishment GOP, the Washington Generals (I call them that because the Washington Generals are the team that always, always loses to the Harlem Globetrotters, usually in the most painful and humiliating ways), look at what happened to Bill Cassidy, and they say it was Trump’s doing. And that what happened to Thomas Massie is Trump’s doing. And that what’s likely about to happen to John Cornyn is Trump’s doing. (RELATED: Grifters, Activism, and Thomas Massie)
When, as the smoke clears later this year, it’s entirely likely all three seats will still be in Republican hands, just different hands than the people habitually out of step not just with Trump but with the vast majority of Republicans.
It completely misses the point to blame Trump for Cassidy’s demise, as though Cassidy, rather than the president he voted to convict on a post-presidential impeachment under some of the hinkiest circumstances imaginable, is the aggrieved party. After all, three-quarters of the Louisiana GOP vote did go against Cassidy. Even more demonstrative is the fact that Cassidy didn’t just lose to Trump’s endorsed candidate, U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, but he was also bested by non-Trump-endorsed John Fleming. One way to see that is Cassidy didn’t just lose the hard-core Trump voters but the majority of Louisiana Republicans who weren’t swayed by Trump’s endorsement.
So who’s the team management, again?
Trump endorsed Ken Paxton, sure. Let’s remember that Trump held off on doing it for weeks while demanding that the Senate GOP Caucus save Cornyn by moving the SAVE America Act. They didn’t. Why didn’t they? (RELATED: Paxton Makes Thune an Offer He Can’t Refuse)
Cornyn said he was for the bill. Was he? Did he beg Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell to back the bill so Thune could move it and give Trump a reason to endorse him?
If he did, he wasn’t all that effective. That was the one bill that could have put this team in the playoffs, even despite a spotty record, and on gameday, they were routed amid a cacophony of their own mistakes.
Majority, my foot. This hasn’t functioned as a majority since the roster was built two years ago. Other than the Big Beautiful Bill last year, the Senate has done exactly nothing. People complain about the House, but its legislative accomplishments are legion compared to what Thune has managed with that team these people are so upset about losing two underachieving pieces of.
This business of Trump nuking the majority is a little hard to swallow. What majority? And why isn’t the majority being blamed for nuking itself in front of its own voters?
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