Thursday, May 5, 2016

Place Your Bets, America

I truly don't believe Donald J. Trump has a snowball's chance in the Land of Snowball-Eating Crocodiles of becoming President of the United States.

I'm pretty bummed that Google couldn't produce an image of a
crocodile eating a snowball. Please accept this image of a lion cub
playing with a snowball as my apology.
Trump's ascension to presumptive Republican nominee is compelling evidence that the most powerful special interest group in America is not the 1%. It's not the NRA, or oil companies, or climate change deniers, or even Teh Gays. It's Doofuses Who Thought It Would Be Funny to Vote for Trump in the Primaries Because Surely Enough Concerned Citizens Would Vote to Keep Him from Winning.

That's right: In the United States of America, the doofuses outnumber the concerned citizens, but still get out and actually vote instead of self-righteously fingering their flag pins on voting day.

America: Insert here.

Truth here: I voted for Bernie Sanders in the Texas primary. I voted for him for the same reason I've voted for any candidate ever in my 30 years of being old enough to vote: Because I liked him best. As opposed to, because I thought he had any reasonable expectation of being the Democratic nominee. Which he doesn't. Once you remove the women voters who will vote for any woman, the semi-apathetic voters who know Hillary Clinton's name from her 24 years in the public eye, and the assholes who don't want to vote for a Jew, Clinton's supporters still outnumber Sanders' supporters by a significant margin. But that's not how I play the democracy game. I voted for MICHAEL DUKAKIS in 1988 because he was the Democratic candidate against G.H.W. Bush. Yeah.

Aside: On the night of the 1988 Presidential election, my almost-ex, who was then my college boyfriend, who had voted for Bush the Elder, asked me to accompany him when he moved to the other side of the country to attend graduate school. I said yes. Turns out that night would define me for many years to come, although I didn't realize it then. I still vote Democratic; I will no longer abandon my home to follow a man in the name of love.

Funny how enlightenment always occurs after the fact.

Here's my point: Donald Trump is now the only Republican candidate still in the race. Some right-wingers are anxiously eyeing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and failed 2012 candidate Mitt Romney, wondering/hoping if either will step up and, I don't know, present a candidate who is ineffectual and ideologically offensive yet still attractive to people who don't want much in a leader of the free world?

Let's all vote for this guy. Why not?

That could happen, sure. But even if it doesn't, I'm still confident Trump will never be elected. Because I personally calculated the odds of all the possible outcomes of November's election, and you know what that means: Nothing, because I suck at math. But I'm not going to let a few errant calculations get in the way of my supreme (if not desperate) confidence that a Trump presidency will not happen in this iteration of reality.

Here's how it stacks up:

Odds of Various Alternate Outcomes to the 2016 Presidential Election

The Democrat wins: 6 to 4

A third-party candidate wins: 3 to 1

A white-knight Republican swoops in and steals the GOP nomination: 5 to 1

Joe Biden declares himself America's first emperor, barricades himself inside Oval Office: 9 to 1

Ronald Reagan returns from the dead, wins in a landslide: 10 to 1

Trump withdraws from the race following release of sex tape with Gary Busey: 15 to 1

Election canceled to due to zombie apocalypse: 19 to 1

Candidates agree to decide election by flipping a coin, Trump loses the toss: 26 to 1

28,000,000 write-in votes for Grumpy Cat: 100 to 1

Election canceled due to nationwide diarrhea outbreak: 217 to 1

"Trump" pulls off his skin mask, revealing he was Oprah the whole time: 453 to 1

Sharknado: 732 to 1

Election canceled due to uprising of intelligent apes: 1500 to 1

Americans unanimously agree that nobody will vote for anybody: 2350 to 1

Jesus returns, leaves again, taking Trump with him: 10000 to 1

Canada invades America, banishes Trump to Hans Island: 12667 to 1

Trump tweets "j/k lol, dt out," is never heard from again: 95000 to 1

Meteor destroys Earth day before election: 150000 to 1

Trump wins, meteor destroys Earth day before inauguration: 358612 to 1

Trump wins, becomes next POTUS: 607384828380293818294039875 to 1


See, no problem.

May the odds be ever in our favor.




1 comment:

  1. It seems to me that for at least forty years the Republican philosophy has been that all government, except defense spending, is evil, that greed is good, money is might, and that all problems can be solved through brute force (see the part about defense spending).
    Franky I'm shocked that anyone's shocked that Trump is the candidate.

    ReplyDelete

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