Long ago, I watched a relatively unknown young basketball player named Julius Erving play at the University of Massachusetts. At that time, UMass was a member of the Yankee Conference, which meant Erving was teeing it up against conference powerhouses like Vermont and New Hampshire, and against non-conference opponents like St. Michael's and St. Anselm's. (To be fair, they also played the likes of Holy Cross, Providence, Syracuse, and Connecticut.) In many of these games, Erving appeared to be playing an entirely different sport than everyone else was

This was a lot like that. From CNN:

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Beto O'Rourke in Texas has earned the national press attention that he now enjoys, but Andrew Gillum, if he wins in Florida, will be the biggest new Democratic political figure to come out of the 2018 midterm elections. From the days when he was polling third among the Democratic primary candidates, Gillum has become a star. His performance against the overmatched Ron DiSantis, who has spent his career in Congress doing everything except shining the president*'s shoes, has made Gillum into a YouTube celebrity and, also, has allowed Gillum to show other Democratic candidates how to make the Republican party's four-decade long slow dance with the remnants of American apartheid into a powerful weapon. "I'm not saying you're a racist. The racists believe he's a racist," is a simple, but devastating argument that could have been leveled against practically every major Republican figure since Harry Dent first showed them the way in 1968.

This is Florida, of course. There are hybrid pythons breeding in the swamps and a thousand different rats to be fcked in every thicket. But, right now, there is no better dunking being done in politics than what Andrew Gillum is doing on his opponent's dome down there. Somebody messed up the recruiting big time. There's another Dr. J story that applies here. In 1970, UMass played Marquette in the first round of the National Invitational Tournament in Madison Square Garden. Marquette, under Al McGuire, was chockful of New York players and was heavily favored to win the tournament. In the first half, UMass was holding Marquette off essentially through the efforts of one player. McGuire noted that the New Yorkers on his squad were staring at that single player. Who is that guy, he asked Ric Cobb, who hailed from Brooklyn.

"Don't you know?" Cobb answered. "Man, that's Julius...Julius from New York."

Sometimes, you just miss on a guy.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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