It has been a truly incredible week. For some.
Some places measure election losses in percentage points. Kansas City should measure them in how long you sit in your car crying before you can drive home.
After last week’s blue wave, Republicans may need somebody to toss them a life raft. Or an anchor.
Around here, “a tough night” barely gets you admitted to the support group. We have standards. Some of us were trained by the pre-Mahomes Chiefs.
Platte County elected Democrat Mary McKenna presiding commissioner and Democrat Hans Peter county clerk. That’s worth three 2014 Royals heartbreaks. Platte County has traditionally been so red, its maps have been written with two entire red ink cartridges.
It was a historic beating for the Republicans, but here in Kansas City, it was nothing shocking. We’ve seen this movie.
Fortunately, we have a scale for this.
At the lower end, there’s Sporting KC. Three straight seasons without the playoffs. That’s disappointment you can put on a calendar. By August, you’ve started telling people you really go for the atmosphere. By October, you’re researching whether the atmosphere accepts trade-ins. That’s the House of Representatives. A beating, but not an unexpected beating.
The 2014 Royals offered a more concentrated dose: Game 7, Alex Gordon at third, 90 feet from tying it. Kansas City has spent 12 years mentally sending him home, usually from a couch occupied by somebody who gets winded putting on socks.
That’s the election-night stage where you keep refreshing the results because perhaps the next batch contains a different ending. In the end, Madison Bumgarner was the James Talarico of history.
For the sudden-collapse experience, there’s the Chiefs blowing a 38-10 lead against Indianapolis in January 2014. Comfortable leads are wonderful until you discover they were apparently a rental. This would be the equivalent of losing a Senate seat in South Carolina.
Or take last year’s KC Current. Best regular-season record in the league, then a quarterfinal exit against Gotham. All that work, all that confidence and your reward is extra time to think about it. That sounds a lot like Abdul El-Sayed dumping the R’s at the last minute.
KU football even supplied a Northern Illinois installment in 2012: a 10-point fourth-quarter lead became a seven-point loss. Our regional commitment to this material is impressive. Flipping nine Senate seats blue instead of crimson certainly ranks right up there.
Eventually, though, you reach January 1996. Lin Elliott. Three missed field goals. A name that still makes people stare into the middle distance like they’ve just heard the opening notes of a very sad song.
Tuesday night equals approximately 7.65 Lin Elliotts.
That’s when the campaign consultant starts explaining that no matter how much of Elon Musk’s money you spend, unfortunately, the kicks went left. Very left.
There is a lesson here for the winners, too. Enjoy the celebration. Then do the job. Indy went on to lose the next week after the Lin Elliott game. Northern Illinois was bumped out in the next round. Handily. But the Royals went on to win the World Series in 2015. The Chiefs went on to win multiple Super Bowls decades later after the scars healed.
Voters still need potholes filled, clerks who know what they’re doing and a human being on the other end of the line who doesn’t put you on hold until the next ice age. And Republicans might review the game film before deciding the problem was the refs.
You can blame the coverage and complain about the opponent, but eventually somebody needs to ask why your entire offense consisted of admiring people’s butts and reminding people how much you dislike the other team. Nothing about that is going to lower the price of gas.
Kansas City fans will endure decades of heartbreak and still wear the gear.
Voters can change teams for free. And did.
