“When you play the game of thrones you win or you die.”
-Cersei Lannister, to Ned Stark, season one of Game of Thrones (or somewhere in the first book)
My friend/boss/mentor/totem spirit Glenn Platt recently made a Facebook post about game theory (not exactly the same as the “game” theory work I do, but markedly similar) and politics. I won’t quote it at length here because that’s a quasi-private space and this isn’t, but it was a cogent reinforcement of something I’ve been saying for years: American politics is endless broken because the Democrats don’t know how to play the game.
I’ve been screaming this in my political life since the election in 2000. Near the end, Bush was sending surrogates into churches to tell their followers that God would turn his back on America if we elected Al Gore. Once the election was in question, the concerns of the GoP about state’s rights and the desire to see every single vote counted magically faded away when there was a chance it would mean that their opponent would win. I’m not going to go so far as to say that Republicans are amoral or immoral. But they’ll play fast and loose with the rules.
On the other side are the Democrats, a party that for some weird reason thinks that the cornerstone of liberalism is trying to be idealistically beyond reproach (while paradoxically nominating a woman with more skeletons in her closet than anyone else in their field, but… that’s the Tao of Clinton). Understand that on some level that appeals deeply to me on a personal level. Many of my colleagues and mentors in the past have criticized my own sense that people should be expected to act in a noble and responsible fashion. So in my heart– it fits that I usually support the Democrat in an election. I am by-and-large more liberal than the party, and I adored Al Gore because Al Gore was a lunch-bucket, do-the-right-thing, logical politician. He was an over-grown Boy Scout, the closest we ever will have to Captain America.
There’s another side of my personality that guides more of my political life, though. Native people understand the concept of survival (or survivance, though I define that in a more complex way than I need to get into here– I don’t agree with how everyone uses that). Here’s an example of what I mean. I HATE to lie. I am not being hyperbolic there. I literally feel disgust and distain for the concept of lying. But I’m a rhetorician and a survivor. I KNOW how to lie really well. My desire to not be a liar doesn’t preclude me from being able to both recognize and deploy it in moments where survival means to do that which we might not want to do in order to survive.
America, as I’ve pointed out before on this blog (and I’m not claiming this is my concept– it’s a bedrock fact that numerous people have pointed out), is a two party binary system. So the “game of thrones” in America is a battle of the good guy vs. the bad guy (and it’s usually guys– I’m glad we had a woman in the fight this last time, but that’s an an anomaly just like the mixed-blood African American who won the two times before was). The problem, of course, is that “good guy” and “bad guy” are value judgments. No one IS the good guy or IS the bad guy. It’s all about positionality.
The reason Donald Trump is President of the United States isn’t that he’s the smarter person. It’s not that he was the more popular person, even. It’s not about his skills (which his not to say he is unskilled). It’s because he and the Republicans play the game better. They made a number of fantastic choices:
- Trump says what he wants and doesn’t worry about it being right as long as he can sell it as being right. It’s a concept his supporters and inner circle have named “alternative facts,” but it’s really just lying. Or at the very least being fast and loose with the facts. If you wonder what I mean, look up the Bowling Green Massacre. It’s only a thing that Trump’s people said.
- Trump attacked people like an internet troll. “Crooked Hillary,” “Little Marco,” “Crazy Pocahontas.” It’s how most of us fought in elementary school, but it’s hard to fight back against that without either lowering yourself to that level or looking like a total poindexter.
- The Republicans gerrymandered the country to a ridiculous degree, sometimes drawing what looks like crop circles on the map to ensure that voting districts broke their way.
- When the crown was on the line, their party fell in line. They did what they needed to do in order to make sure their guy won.
Contrast this to the questionable choices by the democrats in the same election:
- They treated their nomination like a lifetime achievement award, giving it to Hillary Clinton when anyone doing the political science behind things knew she wasn’t their best nominee. It was amazing to see a female Presidential nominee. It would have been amazing to go back to Clinton the Husband Era politics (this was a better country then, and anyone who isn’t blinded by political hate can easily see that’s just the truth). But Hillary had so many things to overcome (her husband’s scandal, her own scandals from being Secretary of State, some of her questionable early life financial dealings, etc.)
- They also nominated the person who was least equipped to actually win a “fight.” I am not saying that Hillary Clinton isn’t a fighter. She is. She’s an amazing woman. I am not trying to claim she wasn’t. But she’s not a good speaker compared to others the party could have nominated, and she’s notorious for going into apology mode when someone comes at her instead of simply fighting back. I know there are gender politics involved in this, and I don’t deny them, but Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have the same problem, so to call this entirely a gender issue is a mistake. Warren is the Democratic party’s best hope right now.
- The party failed to realize that the grassroots movement that made Obama a better choice than Clinton made Sanders a better choice than Clinton 8 years later. Bernie Sanders had a swell of support that just disappeared when he was out of the race. And sure, it might not have been the majority of the party (we’ll never know for sure because the party leadership botched the game and didn’t give Sanders a fair shot), but to know the game is to know that if you nominate the guy who has the fresh new faces with him, the party loyal will fall in line. Hillary supporters weren’t going to go vote for Trump over Bernie Sanders. And given the difference in turn-out vs. post-election action, Hillary didn’t energize the base.
- This one is the cardinal sin: no one in the Democratic party would sling the dirt at Trump. Our current President’s life is FILTHY with things that scrutinizing would cause numerous problems. But any time something came up, Trump would expertly deflect, and instead of going with a return punch, the Democrats would try turning the other cheek.
On some level I respect the Trump campaign, as much as I disagree with most of its key positions (if you can, you know, figure out the positions anyway). They knew how to play the game and they did what they had to do. At the same time, for yet another year I repeat the same refrain to my friends in the Democratic party. We can’t win this game the way we are playing. Being the better person in some moral sense is NOT going to get it done. And to be honest, I’d rather vote for a lying, sometimes backstabbing, bloody knuckled street fighter who will make sure that Roe vs. Wade isn’t overturned and that we don’t end up in either a war or a bad marriage with Russia than vote for a high road noble. There’s too much at stake to worry about the moral high ground. We got crushed.
It’s time to play the game.