For the Niners and the Giants, nothing succeeds like failure

From Scott Ostler in yesterday's SF Chronicle:

How bad are the 49ers? A sampling of power rankings on seven different national media outlets shows the 49ers rated anywhere from the worst team in the 32-team league, to the fifth worst.

From a Chronicle story earlier this month:

They have three consecutive nonplayoff seasons, have won a combined 15 games in those years, and will begin play this year with their fourth head coach in four seasons.

So it stands to reason that the 49ers are considered by Forbes to be one of the 10 most valuable sports franchise on the planet, right? According to the magazine’s annual rankings, the 49ers and the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers tied for ninth on the list — each worth an estimated $3 billion. Forbes ranked only the top 50 franchises (which wound up being 51 because of ties), and the cutoff to make the list was $1.75 billion. Sorry, A’s fans, Oakland didn’t make the cut...

The 49ers’ value is emblematic of the economic wave NFL teams are riding: With record-setting television revenue pouring in — and half of the teams playing in stadiums built since 2000 — 29 of the league’s 32 franchises made the list...Forbes said the most valuable team in the world — for the second consecutive year — is Jerry Jones’ Dallas Cowboys, worth an estimated $4.2 billion...

Despite enduring one of their worst seasons in decades, the San Francisco Giants’ value jumped 18 percent to $2.65 billion — good for 19th place...

Rob's comment:

Of the 30 teams in major league baseball, only the Philadelphia Phillies have a worse record than the SF Giants, leaving them 33 1/2 games out of first place.

But manager Bruce Bochy is pleased that the Giants are having fun, yukking it up in the clubhouse. For the Giants, that's what losing sounds like.

Why the Repugs failed

From Nate Silver:

...Health care reform was never going to be easy for Republicans. About two-thirds of Americans are happy with their current health care coverage, so they’re inherently nervous about changes to the system. But the GOP chose a course that was massively disruptive — under BCRA, 22 million people would have become uninsured within 10 years — in a way that was out of all proportion to the narrow mandate that President Trump and Republicans received last year.

It’s worth bearing in mind that Trump lost the popular vote and won the decisive state in the Electoral College, Wisconsin, by less than 1 percentage point. He’s also historically unpopular for this stage of his term, with a 38 percent or 39 percent approval rating. Meanwhile, Republicans lost seats in both the House and the Senate last year, and Republicans are in a significant deficit with Democrats in voter preferences for control of the next Congress. Special election results so far also suggest a potential backlash against Trump and Republicans, with Democrats having run well ahead of how they typically perform in those districts.

Nor were AHCA and BCRA the sorts of policies that Trump had promised to voters. Instead, Trump had pledged to protect Medicaid and to replace Obamacare with “something terrific” that provided more coverage at a cheaper price.

It’s not a surprise, therefore, that AHCA and BCRA were massively unpopular. The five most recent polls on BCRA had shown an average of just 24 percent of voters in favor of the measures but 53 percent opposed, the sort of lopsided numbers that are rare in this highly partisan era...