Steve Bannon, on audiotape, October 31, 2020, four days before the election:
"What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
Donald Trump, on TV, election night, 2020:
"This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election."
Sunday morning I got this email from the Trump campaign, telling me he has wrapped up the GOP nomination.
Donald Trump understands the psychology of anchoring.
Democrats with intense dislike for Trump may under-estimate him by being blind to his strengths. He does wild, crazy, intemperate things but he is not stupid. Amid his manifest faults, he has some of the attributes of a great communicator. He can frame an argument and shape opinion. As Barack Obama put it, the job of a president is "to explain stuff."
Trump understands how to use anchoring to perpetuate the idea that he is a winner, and therefore that anything that looks like a setback for him is illegitimate. False. Immoral. Taken away from its rightful owner. Humans are susceptible to anchoring an original status. They presume it to be legitimate, normal, the status quo ante. We compare any deviation from it as requiring special justification. The simplest example is the "sale" in a store. It's Labor Day, a reason to drop prices below their "real" value!
Oriental rugs at great prices: www.rugs.com
The "real" price is exactly $7,247.50. Incredible bargain!
We witness this device being employed to serve other people's interests. We know it is a device. We fall for it again and again.
Even smart, rational people anchor. We cannot help ourselves. Every Financial Advisor observes it with clients. Once an investment hits a certain price, or a portfolio a certain high point in value, that is the new anchor point. Anything less than that is "loss," something taken away from what was once rightfully theirs, regardless of the price paid or its price history. Loss implies fault in some way, either by neglect or theft, and therefore there is an implied villain. Humans hate loss. It disturbs the natural order of things. After the drop in housing prices in 2009-2013 from the previous highs in 2006-2007, houses sat on the market for years. People who had understood their house to have been worth a certain value in 2007 could not bear to sell for less than that value..
We see Trump making the statement repeatedly that he received 73 million votes, seven million more votes than any president in history seeking re-election. He is using anchoring. He repeatedly posits that the number of votes prior presidents received in re-election bids is a relevant fact for determining the 2020 election. He got more votes than Obama in 2012, more than Bush in 2004, so he simply must have won in 2020.
Trump is a far better salesperson than is Joe Biden. That combines with the fact that Trump is shamelessly dishonest, selfish, narcissistic, and sociopathic, as widely acknowledged by his former cabinet members. But Trump understands what captures our attention and he is persuasive to a big group of people and is therefore powerful. Next generation Democrats who might arise as party leaders to present an articulate counter-narrative to Trump are deferring to Biden, letting him be party leader and spokesperson. Biden has many strengths, but telling a persuasive narrative is not one of them.
Trump is making it harder for any GOP competitor to replace him. After all, he has already won the nomination, as he asserts. He is anchoring. The nomination is his. It could only be taken away from him by theft, and surely GOP voters would not want to support an election thief.
You have this right. The reason this man has successfully sold smart people buckets and buckets of garbage in his long life is that he is REALLY GOOD AT SELLING. I would almost envy his talent if his results were not so creepy!
Anchor, anvil. I'd throw him either. Or both.
But yes; we all anchor, all the time. It's often wedded to a sunk-cost fallacy. I see both in myself and in other property owners as we seek to sell the ranch and buy a new home. Insight helps a bit, but mnot much.
Another example, appropriately, comes from the U.S. Navy, wedded to conventional targets--I mean ships--in a world of cheap, fast, lethal AI/drones.
NYT gift article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/04/us/politics/us-navy-ships.html?unlocked_article_code=TBRR8H3EctWjVFg384kQQadtp4B7Y0qUh9lZaUuLqzTm8OF5pvIDy_cmVKpkTTBf-_EQ7i4HYKyMKFebKlzILPjSrcfLPkUaHSbzht_cbRkWU9XeTF2cI7u2c9-kMe1f5VBQIIYTXKBAJI06SJ5roJ8_uM9dfd_zMK-SGLNWms0W1AP3H6-dgW0eH9HkDeGtPj7gMfXxr05y3QtUf_fbc7eqiespXVF_S_2GF0SeNKgzHHAbkplxr0aOr_dXflZGBV3Qyh4ZWrTH1s7Pp8O0kpUOFlt-XTJBXBreEKVbVy31Q_8Tvq_m6apnlB-ZgY9gaelcHrFZXT4PdS4&smid=url-share