It’s a cold and rainy spring Saturday. The grass is the color of an emerald, but the sky’s a glowering shade of hangover as Matski peeks out his blinds and contemplates the falling rain. The weather reminds him of the lowest moment of his political life—that grim winter day when Bush the Younger took the throne. Matski begins to drift off, wondering just how much of our political environment is the result of luck alone.

There’s the luck of birth. That’s a big one when you consider that over 70 members of the House and a full third of the Senate are millionaires. Many were born into money, some married it, a few made it. Congresspeople experience financial fortune far beyond what the average American will ever know. Lucky them.

Then there’s plain ol’ fashioned luck. William Henry Harrison happened to be introduced to a very nasty bacterium right around the time he entered office. Hinckley’s bullet missed Reagan’s heart by millimeters. Oswald’s didn’t miss Kennedy.

But not every wealthy person is in Congress, and not every person who’s had a brush with tragedy has gone on to greatness. So, thinks Matski, maybe there’s a uniquely political luck, a kind of fortune that wouldn’t exist without the context of electoral politics.

For as long as Matski can remember, American presidential elections have always been accompanied by discussions of how snowstorms in Des Moines might increase one candidate’s chances or how tornado threats might affect voter turnout in Texas. The rule of thumb is that bad weather hurts turnout and low turnout hurts the challenger.

There is no doubt that weather can affect an election’s outcome. In ’48, Truman beat Dewey in part because storms suppressed Republican turnout in parts of Ohio and California. Kennedy beat Nixon in ’60 by a whisker plucked from Republican chins because the downpour in Missouri and Illinois kept rural Republicans at home. And in ’76, Democrats again had rain to thank, this time in Ohio, for Carter’s electoral victory. (Republicans melt when they get wet? What’s that make them?)

Maybe there is some grand design, after all. If so, then why the heck wasn’t there a high-pressure cell covering both coasts and the industrial Midwest last November while horrible freak snowstorms raged in Texas and Alabama? Sigh. As he steps back from his blinds, Matski cannot help but wonder why it is raining on a Saturday.