NUMB3RS explains Trump 45

My thanks to a episode of that terrific TV show, NUMB3RS, for laying out the reasoning for predicting Trump 45.  

Charlie explains an aspect of Game Theory to an associate of his FBI brother, Don. "Game theory tells us if someone is feeling unfairly wronged, their response is rarely logical."  He then gives the woman ten $10 bills, asking her to imagine that someone has given her the money & told her to split them between herself & Charlie, however she wants.  The woman gives Charlie $30 & holds onto $70.  The hitch is that Charlie has to accept or reject the offer;  if he rejects, neither gets anything.  Logically, what makes sense is for him to accept.  BUT, the actual odds are that a person in a similar situation - where they feel wronged by another who stands to gain more by his acceptance - will act against his own best interests because "people have a tremendous desire for revenge, even if it's at the risking of hurting themselves."  

And that is the presidential election in a nutshell.  Donald Trump wound up the presumptive Republican candidate because people are profoundly pissed at the Establishment, which they - rightly - see has used them in election cycle after election cycle, promising them righteousness & delivering squat.  They didn't care that a Trump candidacy was painted as a political disaster - they followed their hearts, not their heads.  

At last month's Leading to Well-Being Conference, Rollin McCraty of the HeartMath Lab explained that the heart sends significantly more messages to the brain than the other way around.  If their heart wants revenge against someone who's wronged them, damn the consequences.  The heart wants what the heart wants.

That will hold true in the General Election, too, when we assume Trump will go up against the Democratic candidate.  Now, if the HEAD ruled the heart instead of the other way around, the Democratic candidate would be Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, because no one on the face of the Earth reeks more of Establishment than HRC.  But logic won't prevail, for reasons we don't know.  

The Dems are doomed to lose - BIG - in November because the fix is in for Hillary.  I am not a Sanders fan, but it is clear that his unexpected rise has not been given in any way, shape or form the same consideration Barack Obama's was back in '08.  The press has never stopped treating Sanders like a fluke, a freak show, has never given his run any legitimacy.  Which will be the party's downfall.

In 2016, there are hurricane-force winds blowing against the Establishment of both parties.  The only candidate that could take on Donald Trump is Bernie Sanders because he is every bit as much the renegade.  

Why do conservatives feel like their party has done them dirt?  Because time & again, it didn't stop things like the ACA from moving forward, same-sex marriage from becoming law.  They are furious because of how the party has treated social issues.  And they are crushed because while the 1% has roared back financially & are back to their old dirty dealing ways, the rest of the country faces a job market that no longer offers blue collar jobs with good pay checks, that's described as the "gig" economy because people have to cobble together work to make ends meet, where college is increasingly out of the reach of what was once a strong middle class, where public schools offer mediocre educations.  And it didn't stand up to a president that conservatives slammed from Day One for having so little government experience.

That's a good part of what has the GOP base up in arms.  And yet they support in yuuuge numbers a man who's been married three times, who's really rich, has NO experience in elected or any other office, is famous for bankrupting companies but never personally bankrupted, whose children attend the best private schools, who was someone they considered a NY liberal not long ago, whose reported worth makes him part of the 1% of the vaunted 1%.  He offers goals that stir the hearts of downtrodden conservatives, but no detailed plans to back them up. 

The two things that Donald Trump has going for him is that he appeals to the aggrieved nature of a betrayed voter base & he is quintessentially NOT part of the political Establishment.  They know that he would be a disastrous president & they don't care.  They want revenge against an inequity they've born without recourse for 30 years.  

And the appeal he has for Republicans will be strong for Democrats, too.  There will be plenty on both sides who say they don't support a Trump candidacy, but in the privacy of the voting booth will vote their heart not their head.  The change they'd expected from Barack Obama wasn't as decisive as they'd hoped, and in Hillary they have a candidate many loathed back in '08, who - deserved or not - is tainted by ancient & new scandal, is - in an election year that's wildly anti-establishment - the very epitome of old-school Establishment.

As Charlie Epps nailed it in Ultimatum, "people have a tremendous desire for revenge, even if it's at the risking of hurting themselves."  

And there you have, in a neatly wrapped & tied package, why we can expect to see Donald J. Trump sworn in come next January as the 45th president of the United States of America.  Because "game theory tells us if someone is feeling unfairly wronged, their response is rarely logical."