I have a feeling that increasingly what we will see in Portland is going to look like violence about which the police had better Do Something. It has now become an aggressive standoff between a populace that deeply hates Donald Trump and his approach to Federal policing, and federal and local police who will ultimately have to work together as the protestors will grow increasingly violent.
I have always felt Donald Trump is a very good Big Stack player, to use a poker analogy. A big stack player is a player in a poker tournament who, having acquired a large stack of chips in prior play, will begin playing almost every hand aggressively, forcing everyone else at the table to risk their entire tournament to play against the larger stack.
He’s found in the move to send federal troops to liberal cities a good way to retake his position of holding a big stack, and now he’s using it to put his opposition into extremely uncomfortable positions every hand. That is what a good big stack player is great at. A big stack player can force every other player at the table out of the game at any moment. A good big stack player knows it and doesn’t let you forget. There is a massive gap between the stakes for the big stack player in a hand (loss of some chips and increase of a small stack players chips) and the stakes for their short stacked opponent (exit from the tournament), and they use this reality to force their opponents to play only strong hands while they personally play weak hand (or, any hand). The big stack player raises every hand, re-raises every other player’s raise, and effectively forces everyone at the table to fold almost every hand.
Playing against a good big stack player feels unfair and infuriating. If you let it infuriate you, your toast=burnt. Most good hands in poker lose to other inferior hands 20-40% of the time. Playing against a big stack means even when you make the right decisions, if you play too many hands, you’ll just end up out of the tournament. How unfair! Life and poker.
The impact of this style of play on a poker table is, everyone has to sit and wait to get dealt better cards (waiting to get lucky), while the big stack player shoves his chips around each round taking down every single pot.
It’s worth noting that it is not easy to be a good big stack player. I’m not actually any good at it. I am better at playing with a middle sized stack. And anyone who thinks they’d have an easier time playing with a big stack would be surprised how frightening it can be to be involved so often in so many hands, risking looking foolish if anyone forces a showdown and they have to turn over their crappy hands. Oh, I just realized why I’m a bad big stack player: I hate risking looking foolish. I should work on that.
On the other side of this, being pushed around by a big stack, it can feel like one should take a stand against this unfair, infuriatingly loose wild card of a player shoving his big stack around. You know statistically that he doesn’t have a better hand then you Every time. But “taking a stand” is never the proper play. The proper play, generally, is to fold, to basically play according to the big stack player’s rules. That’s your only option —to survive and wait for someone else at the table to grow impatient and hope they risk THEIR tournament to “take a stand” and then you hope they win the hand and thus take a chunk of chips from the big stack and bring the big stack back to middle so the whole table can kinda reset into a different style of play again (where there is no outsized single big stack).
But until then, the big stack player opens up their own range of freedom while the smaller stacked players have to tighten theirs.
Coronavirus is a small stack mode for trump. It deals in facts—the hand he’s actually dealt, the data about it. A good small stack player can find a way to open up their range of play somewhat in this scenario but trump is not a good Small stack player.
So he’s found a way to get back to a place where he’s able to force his opponents into an impossible corner and start playing big stack poker again.
So, what’s going to happen in the cities?
I mentioned that the proper play usually is to fold. Portland protestors won’t, so statistically speaking, trump is likely to put them out of the tournament and score major points with his base and some moderates for whom this whole thing is going to appear to vindicate him. Oh look, he had better cards after all! Oh look, the feds WERE needed after all!
This is a very good spot for trump and a very bad spot for Portland.
The people will riot and the police will have to crack down. There is hardly any other possible outcome from trumps choice to send federal troops in to a town like Portland—a town where police have the type of patient relationship they have with protestors in Portland, a town where the elected leaders and the people who elected them are currently very engaged in managing the city’s policing style, a town made up of a bunch of currently unemployed upper middle class young white true believers excited by martyrdom. There is no likely outcome besides an escalation of violence by protestors, and there is no possible outcome from an escalation of violence than for police to aggressively crack down, and, with newly justified cause given the antecedent violence.
But it’s worth saying and I’ll say it: the violence and the outcome of it are not originally the Portland kids’ fault. It’s trumps fault. It’s the game he’s chosen and one he’s probably going to win.
It’s a very unfortunate game, and I don’t think it has anything to do with keeping anybody safe, or any property safe. Still, in the final review, it might be hard for reasonable people to remember that Portland was making the right moves and carefully managing its own relationship to its people, and got run over by a political act that has now, probably, launched a series of unstoppable reactions that I suspect will end with trump growing his big stack and Portland going home beaten.