In the past few days, I have gone around counting political campaign signs in my neighborhood in Philadelphia. The purpose was to see whether the number of signs in the neighborhood would predict the election. Now - this was shoddy science - I know that this is a big country, and that a small sample of signs in the windows of some streets in Philadelphia is no way to call an election. But that was going to be my point.
But understand: I live in South Philadelphia, home of the Phillies Stadium and most of the neighborhood consists of hard core Phillies fans, the type who go to the games even as the Phillies are losing, which they have a long history of doing.
However, this year, the Phillies are most decidedly NOT losing - in fact, last night, they won the world series - the first time in 28 years. I walked to Broad Street after the win, where tens of thousands of fans literally were hooting and hollering well into the night, and woke up this morning to overturned newspaper boxes and almost every passerby wearing Phillies sweatshirts. It was an electric experience, and perhaps a once or at most twice in a lifetime event.
But in walking around, looking for campaign signs, I found that if I didn't know better, there was a third candidate for the general election for president, someone with the name "Phillies" who must be running in the election because his signs are literally everywhere. So the final tally of signs resulted in the following:
Obama signs: 135
McCain signs: 17
Phillies signs: 197
That's it. Sorry, distinguished senators from Arizona and Illinois - this guy Phillies has won in an electoral landslide! Who would have thought that a third-party candidate would have struck such a home run in this largely democratic section of the city of Brotherly Love? Maybe Chase Utley?
