Brazil Nut Effect
Who’s going to be the savior of the Democratic Party? I get this question a fair bit, since traveling around the country, engaged in writing a book titled “How the Democrats Lost America” which can be pre-ordered (!) here:
https://www.scottferson.com/
Extra-Constitutional dreams of the current White House occupant aside, it is a riddle both parties will be dealing with as we barrel toward 2028. But for Democrats, the nominee in 2028 will probably chart the direction of the party moving forward for a generation, if she or he is successful in winning.
Our history has seen a succession of party systems, every generation and a half or so, and we are overdo for a new order. Kamala Harris told us we’re not going back. But who will lead the Democrats forward?
I don’t want to discourage sales of my book, but I do address this very question in Chapter One, without providing a satisfying answer, I’m afraid. In it I confess that my presidential preferences: John Anderson, Walter Mondale, Dick Gephardt (twice), Hillary Clinton (twice!) make me a poor predictor of what the voters want at the presidential level.
But I have worked on, and watched, enough campaigns to know that the process of selecting a Democratic nominee is like picking one out of a bowl of mixed nuts.
Credit: User:Melchoir - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=839893
We all have our favorite nut, unless allergic. I met a voter in Cincinnati, a recently retired statistics teacher, who had never voted, ever, not even once in his life. He told me the odds were more likely that he would be killed on his way to the polls than his vote would determine the outcome of an election. His wife thinks he’s nuts. But he’s just allergic.
The most consumed nut is the peanut, followed by the almond, walnut, cashew, pistachio, hazelnut, pecan, macadamia, brazil and pine. Of course, the most consumed shouldn’t be confused with the most popular, were a national contest where every person could sample every kind of nut, and vote. Personally, I’m a pistachio fan if I don’t have to dig them out of the shell, but you can’t really eat them by the handfuls, like peanuts, can you?
The late Harvard Business professor Clay Christensen’s “The Jobs to be Done Theory” argued that everything has a job. A handful of peanuts can satisfy a variety of jobs. It’s a filling snack, it accompanies a beverage at the local drinking establishment, and it’s a good pick for any gathering, not too fancy and acceptable to most.
We will start off, day one, after next year’s mid-term elections, assessing the field of potential candidates for president - and please do not allow the implied double entendre to extend the metaphor to my appraisal of the nascent field as a collection of, well, nuts.
One or more may excite one or more of us. For me, it’ll be the pistachio of candidates (unshelled!), appropriately in the middle of the list of those getting attention. Traditionalists will attempt to put a shine on the popular but unexciting peanut, despite the baggage of having an entire collection of allergies named after it. And backers of the pine nut candidate will urge on their non-traditional, or new age entry.
The assemblage of candidates, from the serious to the nutty, will be displayed in the primary bowl, if you will, arrayed on an early debate stage in Iowa, perhaps. And this is where physics comes in to play. It’s OK. I’m qualified to opine on this. I’m a scientist……..a political scientist, or at least I play one on TV.
When we stare into a mixed nut bowl, hoping against hope no one with a germy hand has dipped in, we scope out our favorite among the lesser nuts and pluck our choice, me snatching three or four pistachios hopefully floating on top. To stick with this analogy, the primary bowl in early states is full, with a variety of choices.
By the time the primary bowl is delivered to my Massachusetts door however, midway through the process, the choices are fewer, and the pecan nut candidate looks pretty good to me. So while I like pecans, particularly in pie, I’m disappointed my pistachios didn’t make it out of New Hampshire.
But what’s with the Brazil Nut? Even with a thinning selection it is ever present, right on top, daring you to pick it. You don’t want to. Who the fuck would want to? But there it is, even when you shake the bowl, hoping for a better choice.
Our presidential selection nut bowl is subject to the phenomenon of granular convection, according the the scientific tome, Wikipedia, “when the largest of irregularly shaped particles end up on the surface of a granular material containing a mixture of variously sized objects.” The more you shake, looking for something better, the pecans now gone, the Brazil nut comes out on top.
In the nut world, the smaller ones fall when shaken, particularly when all are irregularly shaped, and positioned now below the larger item, prevent the larger ones from sinking. Democrats don’t always win, but science does. The party snacker can abandon the nuts for the trail mix bowl across the room, or accept the inevitable, eat the Brazil nut, and knock doors for it in Pennsylvania in October.
And that’s how, right now, we will pick the savior of the Democratic Party. It’s called, “The Brazil Nut Effect.” Unless you’re in Switzerland, then it’s called “The Muesli Effect.”