Ossified habits of mock-elections prevent Establishment from consolidating in new environment of real-election

An earlier post took a look at how the current climate of hyper-competitiveness is keeping the individual Establishment candidates from coalescing around just one of them, while the others fall on their swords for the greater good of their Establishment team.

"Why do I have to fall on my sword? You do it!" "No, you!" "No, you first!" "No, you first!"

"I'm the obvious choice for taking on Trump, my polls are better than your guyses." "Oh, those polls mean nothing this early. I've got the most endorsements!" "You two losers can't raise as much money as I can!" "C'mon folks, we're trying to stay relevant in 2016 and none of yinz guys has ever been to a gay wedding n'at? Jeez-o-man..."

Etc etc etc, while Trump sails on unchallenged.

There's something else going on, though, where the candidates have become so accustomed to the phony campaigns of the past several decades, that they can't adjust to today's environment where there's a genuine candidate running.

According to business as usual, the Establishment favors a variety of initial cucks, they duke it out in a rehearsed and ritualistic way for the Party's nomination, where nothing is really at stake because whoever wins, the Establishment wins. The only open question is which cuck will prove most popular -- or least unpopular -- with voters, since after all they do want to win the election. The empty mock-combat during the primary is only carried out to winnow the field down to the team's best chance of winning the general election.

Trump has mentioned several times how bizarre it is after the debates, where the other candidates, who have been taking shots at each other for two hours, immediately get all chummy with each other when the debate is over. It's clearly a mock-debate, and there's a sense of sportsmanship among teammates -- may the best cuck win.

Because Trump is not part of the club, does not know its ways, and does not participate in its rituals, the Establishment candidates all ignore him. It's no different than a bunch of guys playing baseball, and excluding the guy who, for some unknown reason, acts as though the game is football. In their minds, he's a wannabe and therefore not worth their attention, not worth their mock-attacks. True, he keeps interjecting his football plays into their baseball game, but that only deserves a dismissive "get off the field" response -- not an actual counter-attack. "Refs, seriously? Remove this confused wannabe player, so we can get back to our regularly scheduled game."

That was very evident during the debate that Trump skipped in order to bring Fox News to heel, and to raise money for veterans' groups at his own rally. By all accounts (too boring; didn't watch myself) it was what should have been taking place all along. With the real candidate gone, they could at long last get around to their ritualistic mock-debate.

This mindset and behavioral style has extended to their campaign trail strategies as well. Because Trump is just a wannabe who doesn't know how the game is played and isn't willing to learn, they all ignore his rallies, interviews, and so on, as though it were a mere shadow campaign by the kid who didn't get allowed into the stadium where the actual game is being played by the actual politicians.

With Trump being out of sight and out of mind, they spend most of their time, money, and effort taking shots at one another. They don't see it as friendly fire because, in their minds, there is no common enemy that puts them all onto the same team. Oh sure, there's that pseudo-candidate who hates all of us, but it's all make-believe, so we don't have to "consolidate" around a single hashtag Establishment candidate.

You see this every time they're forced to remark about Trump's campaign during their rallies, interviews, and so on. They're so irritated at having to take a time-out to deal with a streaker who's burst onto the field. It's like, "Why do they keep asking us about that pretend-campaign going on? Sigh, OK, I'll respond: he's a blustering carnival barker with no specifics who cannot insult his way to the Presidency. There -- is five seconds enough of a response? And now back to my regularly scheduled attacks on a fellow cuck."

But isn't that friendly fire? "C'mon folks, let's get POZ-ITIVE. No matter which one of us cucks wins, the Party wins."

Having been trained as puppets who engage in only sparring-campaigns for their whole careers, insulated from real challengers who hit for real, they cannot help but go through the same old motions. These choreographed wrastlers now find themselves face-to-face with a genuine tough guy in a no-holds-barred street fight, and with no experience to guide them, they fall back on their routine of dancing around with each other, while he advances and puts one after another of them in the hospital.

I think this is what got the Establishment into such deep trouble in the first place. My earlier story about their hyper-competitiveness is more relevant to what has happened after the alarms had been publicly sounded by everyone in the Establishment -- other politicians, the donors, the pundits, everyone -- and they were ordered to perform better as a team by consolidating around just one of them. Then, their overweening ambition has gotten the better of them.

And the rest is history: the unified will destroy the fragmented.