www.mybaycity.com December 12, 2016
Columns Article 10659


Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's 35-year-old son-in-law, who is said to have commented: "We Money-balled the election."

WE MONEYBALLED IT: Back Room Spinmeister Pulled Voter Strings, Says Forbes

December 12, 2016
By: Dave Rogers


We all are just pawns in the schemes of marketers, so did that just happen big time in the Presidential election?

Apparently so!

Forbes Magazine is out soon (Dec. 20 issue) with a stunning piece about Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's 35-year-old son-in-law, who is said to have commented: "We Money-balled the election."

According to the Forbes article, the real brains behind Trump's election was Kushner, Harvard Law graduate and real estate magnate who is married to Ivanka Trump. His grinning face appears larger than life on the cover of Forbes, where it will haunt Democrats and non-Trumpers of all stripes.

Supposedly Kushner put voters in 20 different Google categories, according to their susceptibility to various messages. Wrote Steven Bertoni in Forbes:

"Kushner's crew was able to tap into the Republican National Committee's data machine, and it hired targeting partners like Cambridge Analytica to map voter universes and identify which parts of the Trump platform mattered most: trade, immigration or change.

"But by running the Trump campaign -- notably, its secret data operation -- like a Silicon Valley startup, Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election. And he did so in a manner that will change the way future elections will be won and lost."

In other words, Walking Dead viewers were considered anti-immigration, NCIS watchers were seen as anti-Obamacare, etc., etc. The Forbes article observed:

"Soon the data operation dictated every campaign decision: travel, fundraising, advertising, rally locations -- even the topics of the speeches. "He put all the different pieces together," [Trump campaign digital director Brad] Parscale says. "And what's funny is the outside world was so obsessed about this little piece or that, they didn't pick up that it was all being orchestrated so well.

"Kushner structured the operation with a focus on maximizing the return for every dollar spent. "We played Moneyball, asking ourselves which states will get the best ROI (return on investment) for the electoral vote," Kushner says in the article.

The 2011 "Moneyball" film is based on Michael Lewis's 2003 nonfiction book of the same name, an account of the Oakland Athletics baseball team's 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane's attempts to assemble a competitive team.

"In the film, Beane (Brad Pitt) and assistant GM Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), faced with the franchise's limited budget for players, build a team of undervalued talent by taking a sophisticated sabermetric approach towards scouting and analyzing players."

Obviously, the most susceptible voters to the gut-jerking Trump messages sabermetrically orchestrated by Kushner were in the old Rust Belt states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio.

Voters in those states toppled the Electoral College tally like tenpins, sweeping the orange-haired tycoon to what may be the greatest Presidential election upset of all time.

The weeks since the election have raised questions about conflict of interest, foreign intervention, qualifications of cabinet picks, etc., to keep a team of Philadelphia lawyers busy for years.

Key Republican senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others upped the ante today on whether Trump will ever see the inside of the Oval Office by calling for an investigation into campaign ties to Russia. Some pundits are asking: "Is impeachment before inauguration possible?"

Unfortunately, all we can do is grin and bear it.



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