Entitlement versus Reality

I read a brief overview of a book on the 2016 Clinton campaign recently. One paragraph struck me.

•  Stumped for months by how to explain why their candidate wanted to be president, Clinton staffers began toying with the idea of seeing how "Because it's her turn" might fly as a public rallying cry.

Seriously.

The book, (from mainly anonymous sources, but is not really being disputed too much) goes on to talk about how data was not used properly, how Mr. Sanders campaign was simply a bump in the road and not any sort of movement they needed to react to, how signals were noise, and how slow the reaction time was to what was really going on.

It's easy to stick the knife in when someone, or some team, or some horse loses. We live in a social media world where blame has to be assigned, and we have to club that person or institution into submission 140 characters at a time. But I think that one line - "because it's her turn" - means quite a bit.

When a business, or person, or whatever, expects something, or believes it is theirs, it can create a culture.

In racing this is, in my view, very prevalent.

Whenever a new competitor to racing surfaces, racing doesn't draft a plan to compete better, it expects to be given a piece of it.

When the handle numbers go down, that signal is not a rallying cry to change course; racing expects slices of the pie to be changed. Through whoever today's villain is - lately it has been the bad ADW people - purses will get more because it's owed and this is the way it is.

When California was raising takeout (one of life's great mysteries - how it takes only months to raise takeouts state wide in California, but years to pass 3rd party lasix) it was all about what is expected, and owed. The takeout hike would jump purses to $200 million per year, fields will be full and all will be well. That the data (even rudimentary data) said this wouldn't happen didn't matter. "We're owed this."

In Ontario, where there were signals for years that slots were going away, no one believed it.  In fact, the few people who did believe it tried to convince participants to give up 5% of purses to spur betting demand for when the day came. It failed to pass. Now, purses are about one third of what they once were. Strangely, many of these same people still believe they'll be made whole, because they're owed.

Racing will be protected because competition will be taken care of by someone else. Racing is owned money from slots and poker and sports betting because it was once the only game in town, now it isn't. The laws of gambling supply and demand don't apply, because they've never applied. These things are all dangerous, but they're still the staples of the horse racing business; a business that believes it's always been their turn.