Sports Betting Returns, But What Odds for a Democratic Congress?

Politics offers much more interesting propositions than mere football or baseball.

Elections, impeachments, resignations, indictments, convictions: I would think an enterprising media operation such as Newsmax.com would see the value in setting up shop and inviting players to lay down bets.

But a warning!

The corruptibility of pols exceeds even the point-shaving of college basketball, the Black Sox scandal, the Packers’ players betting on themselves…

Figure if bets were out there on a twice-elected Senator from incorruptible Minnesota resigning in a scandal before serving out his second term, would anyone wonder if a fix was in when Al Franken left the stage to go back to being a stand-up guy.

But let’s assume reform. Let’s assume too that government oversight of the electoral process would be as stringent as its renowned oversight of point-shaving and dog-track times.

Think of the allure just of futures betting. If, at the turn of the century (the most recent one, 2000 Anno Domini), these propositions were laid out there, shrewd long-shot bettors might see an avenue to riches.

1. An African-American president by 2020
2. A female presidential candidate by 2016
3. Donald Trump President of the United States sometime in the 21^st Century
4. The U.S. would occupy Afghanistan
5. Four graduates of New York City high schools would sit on the Supreme Court at the same time
6. An African-American president re-elected by 2024
7. A Cuomo-Nixon electoral battle

Another warning. Let’s hope that state and local governments don’t get themselves into opening and running sports books.

They’re even worse at managing those than overseeing public schools, waste removal, and transit authorities.

In the glorious history of bookmaking over the centuries, the State of New York proved to be the ultimate Donk. The Empire State acquired a new sobriquet, a true contradiction in terms: A Losing Bookmaker.

Tom Messner worked forever in advertising. In politics, he avoided the predictable negative bent and did positive ads for Reagan in ’84 and for Bush in ’88 along with Bush’s convention film. The agency he co-founded created NASDAQ’s first branding, Volvo’s comeback, and Fox News’s “We report. You Decide.” Then learning from the pols he partnered with (Roger Ailes in particular), they brought attack ads to such formerly benign areas such as telecom (MCI). At 73, he’s doing two things he never did before: Blogging here on wildly unconnected subjects coming on the heels of last year’s adventure: the writing of his first play, a musical “Dogs” destined now for either Broadway or The Pound. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.