The pre-election polling did nothing to reassure me. Sure, there were useful lessons to take from the results of 2016, and coming into this election, plenty of voters were demoralized after four years of an administration that exacerbated practically every problem facing the country, but money has rarely been lost on assuming the worst of white Americans. For months I was prepared to watch the United States re-elect Donald Trump, but last week, one tweet from the wrongest man in the world put me at ease:
That's when I knew it'd be a wrap. The accuracy rates of Nate Silver and Nate Cohn don't have anything on the opposite of whatever Clay Travis says. His knotted, little brain should be studied so humanity can learn from his mistakes. It should be statistically impossible to whiff as many times as Travis has, and yet he keeps it up.
Travis, who runs his own reactionary blog and pretends to be a gambling expert on a Fox Sports 1 show, once turned a 14 percent profit for an Ohio State blogger who bet against every single one of his college football picks for an entire season. He called the coronavirus "overrated" in February of this year, and for months said it wouldn't kill as many people as the flu does in a season. He took the Patriots and the under in Super Bowl 52, a game that had 74 combined points as the Eagles won their first NFL title since 1960. For all these reasons and more, it was heartwarming news when Travis decided to ditch his self-appointed and disingenuous position as an impartial, unfiltered truth-teller and hitch his wagon to MAGA, right as it veered off a cliff.
Travis spent the last four years cozying up to Trump supporters without ever revealing himself as one, and only decided to fully commit at the worst possible time. Here's just part of his overwritten defense of why he voted for Trump:
Hillary Clinton wanted Obama’s voters, but she lacked his political gifts. She tried to roll up black support by arguing Trump was racist. It’s the same choice being made by Biden today. I fundamentally reject the idea that America is a racist country. In fact, I think America is the least racist country in the history of the world.I don’t believe any other country could elect Barack Obama.I don’t believe Donald Trump is racist. I wouldn’t be voting for him if I believed he was racist. I believe we have to stop accusing people we disagree with of being racist, sexist, homophobic or whatever other personal insult you want to apply. Beat people on the issues, not with insults.
Travis straddled the fence until he found an opportunity that allowed him to get on a first-name basis with the White House director of specialty media and sell the bullshit. He must have been imagining the bounties that would come with a second Trump term, during which he could gain regular access to the president. But now he's left looking like a loser who voted for a loser. Forget the polling in battleground states: It was not an auspicious sign for the Trump campaign to be promoting the president's interview with Jason Whitlock, Travis's coworker, weeks before the election.
Where does Clay Travis go from here? He cannot gamble, write, edit, form persuasive arguments, or put together an original joke. The only readers who found him useful were the ones who wanted to be congratulated for loving their big, dumb president. Does Travis think those people are suddenly going to be interested in his sports takes? What is there to do for a man who is so useless? Most likely he'll continue to plow ahead with no shame, ignore or block anyone who points out his countless failures, and keep picking duds. That's the only thing he's ever been good at.
