In the mix?

Reader question:

Please explain “in the mix” in this headline:

Bayern Munich youngster Mathys Tel spurns Tottenham Hotspur! Manchester United, Chelsea, Aston Villa still in the mix (BavarianFootballWorks.com, January 31, 2025).

My comments:

I double-checked on Mathys Tel, the person in question. He’s French. He’s 19 years old and he’s a talented soccer player.

In fact, he’s so talented that he’s been compared favorably with Kylian Mbappe, one of the very best players in the world.

Now, that’s really something.

Anyways, Tel is coveted by quite a few English Premier League clubs including Tottenham, Manchester United, Chelsea and Aston Villa.

In our story, Tel has just rejected an offer from Tottenham, leaving the latter trio (Manchester United, Chelsea and Aston Villa) to fight it out for Tel’s signature.

In other words, Manchester United, Chelsea, Aston Villa still has a chance to sign him.

That’s what “still in the mix” means.

In the mix?

This phrase can best be explained via food recipes.

Take the famous Chinese Five-Spice Powder recipe for example.

The five spices needed for this powder are star anise, fennel seeds, pepper, cinnamon and clove.

You take a certain amount of these five spices each, grind them to power form, mix the powders together and you have the versatile Five-Spice Powder, good for almost anything – from dumplings to barbecue.

In order to make the Five-Spice Powder, the afore-mentioned five spices are in the mix, literally.

Mix as in mix and mingle, join and become part of a large group.

To be in the mix, then, is to be included.

Hence, figuratively speaking, if someone or something is in the mix for something, they’re in with a chance to accomplish something.

In our example, Manchester United, Chelsea and Aston Villa are still in the mix, meaning they’re still in competition to get Tel to play for them.

What’s being implied here is that other teams, such as Liverpool, Manchester City or Arsenal or any other, don’t have such a chance because they’re NOT in the mix.

All right, let’s read a few recent media examples to hammer the point home:

1. Could Bronny James, son of future first-ballot Hall of Famer LeBron James, actually be a member of the Toronto Raptors by the time day one of the NBA Draft concludes on Wednesday?

What started as more of a fan-concocted theory – a way of creating a full circle moment with the younger James joining, and hopefully helping, the team his dad tormented in the East for years – turned into a real possibility earlier in the week.

Rich Paul, CEO of Klutch Sports and agent to Bronny James, made it known that Toronto was among a handful of teams interested in the USC guard.

“There are other teams that love Bronny. For example, Minnesota, Dallas, Toronto. If it’s not the (Los Angeles) Lakers, it will be someone else,” Paul said per ESPN’s Jonathan Givony.

The Raptors enter the two-day event with the 19th and 31st picks. Although it isn’t likely they consider the 19-year-old with the higher of the two, there’s at least some belief he could be chosen with the first pick in the second round.

“Masai (Ujiri) loves him,” Paul said. “They could take him without even seeing him at 31. Workouts aren’t everything for these teams.”

When asked Tuesday by Sportsnet’s Michael Grange whether Toronto would consider him with pick No. 31, Raptors assistant general manager Dan Tolzman said: “He’s in the mix. It’d be a disservice to us if I told you anything more strongly than anyone else, (but) I would say yeah.

“Every player on the board we're looking long and hard at and I wouldn't say we’ve ruled anybody out at any of our picks.”

- Bronny James ‘in the mix’ for Raptors ahead of 2024 NBA Draft, SportsNet.ca, June 26, 2024.

2. On this week’s episode of Decoder, we’re talking about Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Tesla – and I have to say, it feels like the first of many episodes about these three characters that we’ll be doing over the course of the next four years.

Musk’s efforts to get Trump elected president in 2024 will go down in history as the ultimate money-in-politics story. He dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the race, used his platform X to relentlessly promote Trump, and promised to run a government efficiency commission that would radically reshape how America operates if any of his ideas get put into action.

Since the election, Musk has been deep in the mix planning Trump’s second term: he reportedly spent time at Mar-a-Lago, weighing in on cabinet appointments and even hopping on the phone with world leaders like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He also attended Trump’s first postelection meeting with House Republicans in Washington, DC, this week.

Then, on Tuesday, Trump announced that Elon would co-lead the new Department of Government Efficiency with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Yes, the acronym is DOGE. Yes, the efficiency initiative has redundant leadership. And to be clear: this is not a real department or government agency – only Congress can create those. But it looks like Elon’s ambitions to “dismantle federal bureaucracy” with severe budget cuts and layoffs have landed him a real advisory job and a direct line to Trump.

But there’s one big problem in all of this: Elon’s money all comes from Tesla, and in particular, Tesla’s enormously overvalued stock price. Tesla is already the leading seller of EVs in America, but to keep things going, Musk has to sell more electric cars and also deliver on the promise of those cars becoming self-driving robotaxis. The problem is that Trump turned EVs and the EV transition into a political nightmare during the election – not to mention climate change overall, which Trump has resolutely denied.

So how is the CEO of an electric car company, an outspoken advocate for combating climate change, going to square his support for Trump and a Republican policy agenda centered on climate change denial? Can Musk convince Trump to pump the brakes on gutting climate regulations and the EV transition, or is he just looking to spare Tesla as best he can and give it an edge over the competition?

- How Trump’s second term could be bad for EVs – but great for Tesla, TheVerge.com, November 14, 2024.

3. For the first time in two decades, it is impossible to predict who the next Democratic nominee for president might be. Three straight election cycles produced three flawed nominees who were firmly backed by their predecessors. Hillary Clinton was Barack Obama’s preferred successor, and led in just about every single poll over her theoretical and literal competition. Joe Biden seized the nomination four years later, thanks in part to Obama’s 11th-hour intervention to force several competitive center-left candidates, including Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, out of the primary ahead of Super Tuesday. In 2024, following Biden’s implosion, Kamala Harris became the first Democratic nominee in more than a half-century to achieve that status without winning a vote in any of the primaries.

Now it’s all blown open. This makes some Democrats nervous. The party is bereft of a single leader and seems adrift, struggling to respond to Trump’s assaults on the federal bureaucracy and the civil rights of legal residents. The party itself, in most polling, is widely unpopular, and no single course of action feels especially satisfying. Many Democrats wanted Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, to refuse to help Republicans keep the government open. His decision to pass a continuing resolution with GOP support has enraged many elected Democrats and activists, especially on the left. But Schumer understood the alternative was no better: Trump and Elon Musk might have reveled in a shutdown, using it as a pretext to purge enormous numbers of government workers. Ken Martin, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, doesn’t seem like the sort of inspirational figure capable of leading the party out of the wilderness.

But the state of play isn’t as grim as it looks. The shadow primary underway for 2028 is exactly what Democrats need: a robust contest over ideology and ideas that will be waged in the public square. The best Democrat will win. It was under these conditions that Barack Obama, still in his first term in national office, ascended to the presidency. Since then, for a variety of reasons, Democrats have been allergic to such competition.

It will be the most public and natural way to define what the future of the Democratic Party might look like. There will be no single interest group or power broker who can boost one candidate to victory at the expense of the rest of the field. Centrist, progressive, populist, or something else entirely – all ideological factions will get the open playing field. When George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004, there were very few pundits calling for the Democratic Party to nominate a Black former law professor who was strongly opposed to the Iraq War. The primary sorted that out. Now, Democrats will get that opportunity again.

There’s a long roster of governors, senators, members of Congress, and celebrities who can take the plunge. A short list includes Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, Maryland governor Wes Moore, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, and California governor Gavin Newsom. Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut and Ro Khanna, a Silicon Valley congressman, seem likely to announce. For Democrats hungry for wealthy, famous outsiders, billionaire Mark Cuban and Stephen A. Smith, the ESPN commentator, could be viable. Pete Buttigieg will probably run again. Both Harris and her old running mate, Tim Walz, might be in the mix. For those nostalgic for bruising centrists, Rahm Emmanuel is floating a trial balloon.

- Who Will Be the Democratic Candidate in 2028? NYMag.com, March 19, 2025.

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）