Consider the choke, the inelegant — but descriptive — term for failing to produce under pressure.
Most often used to describe collapses in the sporting world, the choke also is a regular visitor to the real world, particularly in politics.
Let us begin with sports and the ongoing choke of monumental proportions as is being authored by the New York Mets.
These Mets managed to blow a 10 1/2-game lead over Atlanta and lose the NL East Division on a tiebreaker.
The Mets then slinked into the NL wild-card round, where they were blown out in Game 1 by San Diego and could see their dog of season end with a loss in Game 2 of this best-of-3 series today.
There is irony in this Mets collapse because the 1969 “Miracle Mets” saw Chicago’s Cubs lose a 9 1/2-game lead in mid-August. This time the choke was quite satisfying to the Mets and their partisans – the stuff of legends.
Many years later, the Mets won Game 6 of the 1986 World Series when Boston first baseman Bill Buckner choked and let a ball roll between his legs, allowing the winning run to score for the Mets.
The Mets then won Game 7 to complete their Series comeback and produce a world championship.
But the Mets do have something of a pedigree of being the chokers, having blown late-season division leads in both 2007 and 2008, becoming the first Major League Baseball operation ever to squander September leads of at least 3 ½ games in consecutive seasons.
At least when sports teams choke it doesn’t put the nation in peril. Not so when it is politicians having difficulty rising to the occasion.
Begin with Clueless Joe Biden grasping at straws to try to buy votes for Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections.
Biden’s fist-bumping Saudi buddies are leading a cut in OPEC oil production, despite the Clueless One’s much ballyhooed promise that he’d reached a deal on the matter – for greater production, not a cut.
Biden’s response is to make noises about further draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by feeding oil into the markets to attempt to hold down oil prices by government intervention. Good luck with that.
Biden, who formerly was making the rounds taking credit for declining gasoline prices, now takes no credit for prices being once again on the rise.
Instead, he tries to deal with rogue state Venezuela, freeing convicted felons in order to get some Americans freed and, dare we suggest, more Venezuelan oil shipped here.
Yet Biden hectors American petroleum companies by denying them the ability to expand production and threatens refiners and gas station owners should they raise gasoline prices, despite rising oil costs. Biden seems to be unable to comprehend that private companies, unlike federal governments, can’t just expand the deficit to paper over operating losses.
Inability to function well under pressure, that’s Clueless Joe’s second most notable affliction.
Those looming mid-term elections have produced a shotgun approach to pandering to voters from Clueless Joe. Student loan forgiveness? You got it. Marijuana legalization? Stand by.
Hunter’s shady dealings? Nothing to see here.
Just vote the Big D, says The Big Guy.
Clueless Joe has a lot of company on the choking front from his Democratic comrades, particularly on the subject of porous borders and illegal immigrants.
All of a sudden, mayors in New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as high-profile twits such as AOC, and the elite at Martha’s Vineyard, find it impossible to deal with small numbers of those illegals being transported to their locales.
Imagine if they actually had to deal with thousands of illegals streaming across the border daily.
Now that the lack of border security is their problem, not someone else’s alone, they are long on hyperventilation and short on solutions.
They are gagging like so many present-day Bill Buckners.
Sam Ross Jr's site 