“But I don’t get it,” the 11-year-old asks over cinnamon toast. “How many points exactly do you need to win?”
“More than the other guy,” I say, pouring coffee. “That, plus a mess of superdelegates — though not necessarily — and you get the nomination.”
No points for guessing our topic. It’s the morning after Mrs. Clinton’s resuscitation, and the children are trying once again to puzzle out the workings of the absorbing and mysterious national game that has all the adults around them talking politics like monomaniacs.
Children in the Greater Washington orbit see their parents obsessing at home about elections to a degree that I suspect is greater than in most other parts of the country. Fanatics and partisans are everywhere, of course, but here whole livelihoods depend on who’s out and who’s in, and children know it, in their hazy, childlike way.
Which Democrat will dominate the race for president of the United State (POTUS) — and who will become president — have become the twin leitmotifs of current kiddie chitchat. ABC News, in a spasm of news gathering, actually went to a bunch of 8-year-olds recently to get their opinions.
Yet while adults engage in smarty-pants statistics swapping, from what I can tell most children are still trying to figure out the rules. Do superdelegates get handed out on Super Tuesday? What the heck is the Texas two-step? Why is it called “winning” a state if other candidates get delegates, too? Is a political party like a birthday party, and do you get balloons and loot bags?
So we adults drag our eyes away from the newspaper or computer screens and try to explain. Political parties are like teams, we say. The candidates are like team captains — though really, they’re more like the captains of pirate ships, since they’re elected by their crew members and even have “planks.”
“You get plain old delegates based on how well you do in a particular state,” I am saying. “Last night Mrs. Clinton won Texas, and it’s a big state, so she got a lot of delegates from that. So did Mr. Obama, in Texas, but not as many. …”
“Wacka Bamba,” mispronounces the toddler, as she always does, to everyone’s amusement.
“… but he got Vermont, which is a small state, populationwise, so he won a few more from that. Superdelegates are like extra points, you get them at the end if you do well nationally, or if you can persuade them at the convention that you’re the best guy. Or gal.”
Later that morning, on the way to school, something clicks for the 11-year-old. “Now I get it,” he says triumphantly. “It’s like Risk! The more territory you conquer, the more troops you get. The more troops you get, the more territory you conquer. And then you take over the world! Mwaah-haa-haa!”
We both laugh. “In a way, the primaries are even more like Monopoly,” I realize, thinking aloud. “The more real estate you hold, that is, states and delegates, the more money you can collect, which means you can buy more properties — in this case ads to persuade people to vote for you — so that you can trounce the other guy and win.” The metaphor is pretty exact, come to think of it, and boy does Mrs. Clinton need to get Boardwalk and Park Place if she’s goingto win Pennsylvania Avenue.
It’s only on the drive home again that the full chilling ramifications of our light game-table analogy hit me. Perhaps in your household, as in ours, at the end of a long session of Monopoly when everyone is getting tired, two formerly warring players will put their money and real estate together. When they do, they almost always win. Uh-oh.
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
