Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t good at her job. While President Joe Biden’s historically low approval ratings have many Democrats looking for an alternative, somehow, Harris’s poll numbers are even lower.
How is this possible?
Perhaps it is because Harris has a habit of saying obviously false things for transparently political reasons that make her look like a total idiot.
For example, yesterday, during an interview with a local North Carolina television station, Harris said, “Do you know, a bit of a history lesson, do you know that women were not, the women’s teams were not allowed to have brackets until 2022?”
“Think about that,” Harris continued. “And what, talk about progress, ya know, better late than never, but progress, and what that has done because, of course, when, you know, I had a bracket, it’s not broken completely, but I won’t talk about my bracket. But, you know what, just that how we love, we love March Madness and even just now allowing the women to have brackets and what that does to encourage people to talk more about the women’s teams, to watch them, now they are being covered, you know, and this is the reality.”
The political point she is trying to make is obvious. Women’s sports would be just as popular as men’s sports if only the bigoted white men in charge would have let the women “have brackets” sooner.
And there is a very tiny nugget of truth here. The men’s tournament first expanded to 64 teams divided into four sixteen-team regions in 1985. The women’s tournament didn’t expand to a similar 64-team format until 1994. But even then, women have had their own smaller tournaments of at least 32 teams with regional brackets since 1982. That’s over 40 years ago.
And someone with even a passing familiarity with college basketball should have known that 2022 number was wrong. For as long as there has been an internet where you could fill out and print brackets, you have been able to print both men’s and women’s brackets.
Heck, President Barack Obama filled out a women’s bracket every year he was in office starting in 2009.
So what the heck was Harris talking about when she said, “Women’s teams were not allowed to have brackets until 2022”?
The answer appears to be on the NCAA women’s basketball tournament Wikipedia page, which says, “As of 2022, the tournament follows the same format and selection process as its men’s counterpart, with 32 automatic bids awarded to the champions of the Division I conferences, and 36 “at-large bids” extended by the NCAA Selection Committee, which are placed into four regional divisions and seeded from 1 to 16.”
A person completely unfamiliar with college basketball might read this sentence and think that it means that the women did not “have brackets” until 2022. But that is not what the sentence, which is badly written, is trying to say.
The sentence means to say that up until 2022, the women’s tournament consisted of 64 teams divided into four regions of 16 teams, just as the men’s tournament did from 1985 through 2010. Then, in 2011, the men’s teams added four “play-in” games, extending the field to 68 teams.
The women did not have this additional four-team format, for a total of 68 teams, until 2022. But they’ve had brackets since the women’s tournament was first created in 1982. And yes, the men’s tournament did have 64 teams for a whole nine years longer than the women’s tournament, but that is not the reason why the men’s tournament is so much more popular.
Harris could have said, “Did you know the women’s tournament didn’t have a full 64-team field like the men did until 1994?” But that wouldn’t have been as dramatic.
Instead, what likely most happened, is some junior staffer was preparing talking points for Harris, saw that sentence on Wikipedia that the women’s tournament didn’t have “the same format and selection process as its men’s counterpart” until 2022, and then ignorantly translated that into “women’s teams were not allowed to have brackets until 2022” which is completely false.
But anyone with even a passing familiarity with college basketball should have known that claim was false. Anyone with any memory of the Obama administration should also have known it was false.
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And yet there is Harris confidently giving a completely fake history lesson to a local television station.
So what’s the matter with Harris? The answer appears to be a solid mix of grotesque ignorance and bad staffing.
