This Is No Game: The Perils of Seeing Politics as a Sport

Thinking of politics as a sport produces a warped conception of democracy that overlooks the people and elevates political elites.

Horse races. Slam dunks. The ground game. Sports metaphors are ubiquitous in American politics. In this book, Benjamin Darr catalogs and critiques the various ways that sports shape our popular perceptions of politics and elections, leading to misunderstandings, misconceptions, and mistakes in our expectations for democracy and how it should function. Seeing poli...