I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea to cover politics "like it's sports". A large number of us follow both with basically same part of our brains. (They're the two things, I'm most likely to post about, anyway.)
There are a number of valid theories as to why this is so but the best is both satisfy a populist democratic impulse to analyze and participate in shared civic exercises. The difference there is that one of these exercise has real life consequences while the other exists for entertainment purposes only. Sometimes, however, I do wonder which of those is which.
In any case, I'm as frustrated as anyone that the substance-free kind of reporting Politico does continues to thrive at a time when so many superior alternatives are available. In sports terms it's the equivalent of ESPN delivering 24/7 Tebow or Jeff Duncan's failure to question Roger Goodell.
It's not actually more difficult or cost prohibitive to deliver a smarter product. In fact many many smaller-budget organizations and individuals can and do on a regular basis. But the big boys almost always seem most interested in giving us something stupid.
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