Matt’s Marvelous Mailbag seeks to provide marginally adequate answers to much better questions about politics, economics, social life, theology, or any potpourri you see fit to have answered. Send questions to mailbag.bereans@gmail.com.  

Well, the good news for the mailbag is that I’m beginning to get nudges throughout the week asking me about when the mailbag is coming. I actually had one person give a little stronger nudge just a few minutes ago asking where the mailbag was, so at least I know people care enough to check in. So, let’s not keep you waiting. To the mailbag!

Q: Mr. Henderson asks: ” Do you think Republicans should strategically and/or philosophically pursue making marijuana legalization a states issue?”

A: More or less, yes. Marijuana legalization has always been one of those things that ranks pretty low on my list of concerns, not because I am in support of it at all, but because there are simply far more pressing issues at hand for me. Then again, I probably would have made this a states issue from the start, but I’ll settle for a course correction.

This is one of a bundle of issues that I think Republicans (and conservatives more specifically) should probably reorient away from to focus more intensely on issues such as abortion, the spending problem, and religious freedom. One other issue that I would lump into that bundle (and I suspect this will prove to be a bit contentious) is gay marriage. To be blunt, we lost that battle. It’s time to move on, and I think we largely have at this point. Now it’s a religious freedom issue as we keep the fight up for protecting churches and individuals from being pressed into service for that agenda.

Q: Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman asks: “With Hillary Clinton seeming to distance herself from another Presidential run, is there any chance she finds herself in a Democratic administration in the future? What will her role/influence be on Democratic politics from now on?”

A: Much as I know the Democrats would love to see Hillary of Benghazi: Part Two, I think she is simply a power broker at this point. You would think that she’s got a pretty sweet deal. Her party and the media have bent over backwards to absolve her of guilt in the 2016 loss, and she’s still making millions of dollars from books and speeches and whatever else she wants to do basically. Were I in her position, I would be just fine with riding into the sunset, but she is obviously cut from a different cloth than I am. That being said, I think she’s probably done at this point by necessity. She may want to be back in politics, and the Democrats may be playing nice in public to her, but I can’t imagine they particularly want her too closely associated, just close enough to rally a couple of voters and shake hands, that’s all. It’s likely also that there is a mismatch between offices the Democrats would offer to Hillary and those she would accept. I doubt she is desirous for the Office of Bibelots and Knickknacks.

Q: Henry also asks: “Significant percentages of Democrats are polled as favoring electability over ideological agreement according to Five Thirty Eight. How could this influence the potential winner of the Democratic primary and the course of that primary?”

A: I’m a little surprised that the article says the percentage of Democrats who prize electability of the candidate has actually gone down from earlier. This could just be normal fluctuation, but we’ll have to see. As I’ve said before, 2020 is probably going to be the Democrats’ version of 2016, and it will test how well they can unify around a bad candidate to face what they think is an existential crisis. As it stands for now, the Democrat front-runners are moving increasingly to the left, and unless they course-correct, I really don’t see a moderate getting the nomination. Assuming Biden joins the race, he’ll be immediately pressured to the left as we have already seen in recent weeks with his decision to apologize for calling Mike Pence a “decent guy.” Seriously? As I will repeat until they fix the problem, the Democrats have done a horrible job policing their party, and they are reaping the harvest of weeds now. Their front-runners include a Soviet communist sympathizer, an open anti-Semite sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, several fresh faces of their party are calling for outright socialism, and the party is becoming increasingly lax on blatant infanticide. Democrats may say they want an electable candidate (which anymore just seems to be code for ‘moderate’), but I will believe that when I see it.

Q: Henry finally asks: “According to the article above, more Republicans are identifying themselves with the party, rather than with Trump. Is there a leader influencing this trend, or just a general distancing from Trump?”

A: Back around the election of 2016, I would have had an easy “general distancing from Trump” answer for you. Anymore, I’m not quite as sure. Trump is still very Trumpy, as he is want to be, but the party seems to have pretty much accepted this. I still chuckle at how much Lindsay Graham seems to back Trump; it’s a political rendition of The Odd Couple. But, in all seriousness, Trump has settled down in recent months, so I think it’s likely that he is no longer directly causing this trend. I would need some data to back this up, but we may actually just be seeing a return to normalcy. Trump was his own brand during 2016, but I think now that he’s settled into the party he’s just one of the team, and Republicans are getting back to being general party supporters. The fear in 2016 was that Trump would radicalize the party, but I think the party has actually mellowed and straightened him out. What we really need is to see how this stat compares with the next Republican leader, but we may not have that for a while.

Q: Daniel asks: “Any wisdom to offer on March Madness brackets?”

A: Oh, I find throwing darts at a list of all the teams usually works out pretty well. I can’t even tell you to always pick the #1 seed over the #16 seed anymore since Virginia laid that egg last year against UMBC. So, yeah, just do whatever you want.

Well, maybe not quite that; there is some logic you can apply for better success. I’ve tried a couple of different options in the past, and I have found that, contrary to my above snarkiness, completely random picking usually doesn’t work out too well. Usually I make my allotted 25 brackets on ESPN’s Bracketology using a couple of different methods. There’s one bracket with all higher ranked seeds winning, one where I choose using my personal thoughts (usually works out pretty poorly), a few completely randomized ones, and a few that are randomized but weighted using power indexes (those usually fare much better). Beyond that, I have found that it’s usually worth looking for the upsets around the 12-5, 11-6 and 10-7 seed games, and I tend to look for obvious mismatches in the seedings as well. But, even with all that, you’ll probably miss something, so perhaps the best advice I can give is to resign yourself to that fate and simply enjoy the games for the annual spectacle they always are. And who knows? Maybe you’ll hit gold this time around.