Dave Zirin Gives Worst Take Of All Time On Football And Politics

In light of Tim Walz’s big, manly Get-Out-The-Dudes-To-Vote-For-The-Airhead-Feminist Tour, it’s time to revisit a real column a real liberal sports writer wrote in response to a real problem Democrats are facing this election cycle: how to win over young voters.

In August, The Nation’s sports editor, Dave Zirin — and before we continue, let’s marvel at the fact that this left-wing rag, which is made up of Vassar grads and employs an actual clown named Elie Mystal as its “Justice Correspondent,” even has a sports editor, let alone anyone willing to write about sports un-ironically — lamented Democrats leaning into Walz’s football coaching history at the DNC in Chicago. Embracing the one sport all Americans love, whether rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, gay or straight, to make a vice presidential nominee seem more relatable and down-to-earth, could literally “cost Harris and Walz the election,” Zirin warned very seriously. (Click HERE to sign up for Mr. Right’s weekly newsletter)

“This rightward shift could repel the young, left-wing voters more interested in policy changes than who wins the football wars. Young people care about racism, the economy, climate change, Palestine, and a host of other issues given short shrift at the convention. Football not only won’t be enough to satisfy them. Its embrace may send a signal that the big tent isn’t big enough for them. This championing of conservative symbols like football, in other words, could cost Harris and Walz the election, and it will be their own doing,” he wrote.

Yes, because what all young voters, and young men in particular, really care about is not their fantasy football team, SEC tailgates or “College Football GameDay,” but whether the polar bears in the Arctic Circle have enough ice caps to walk on. And all those left-wing activists who wear keffiyehs to their gender theory classes, they don’t care about the fact that Harris is a blatant tool of the neoliberal establishment, a Wall Street empty suit, who, along with President Joe Biden, green-lit Israel’s atrocities in Gaza for the past year. No, no, no, it will have nothing to do with that at all: They won’t pull the lever on the Harris-Walz ticket because all those hideous “Coach Walz” signs waved around at the convention are super right-coded. (RELATED: Democrats Bud Lighted Their Entire Brand, And It’s Too Late To Save It)

We’ve seen plenty of bad takes over the years from left-wing columnists, but this one from The Nation’s sports guy is an all-timer. At least he used the correct word “coach,” though, in the context of football, and not “teacher.”