On the heels of a Marquette University poll showing Sen. Ted Cruz taking a 10-point lead in Wisconsin, Donald Trump once again whined on Wednesday that the “establishment” is trying to take the nomination away from him, citing the Louisiana delegate allocation which gave Cruz more delegates even though Trump got more votes. as Exhibit A. As Breitbart News reported:

With less than a week to go until the Wisconsin primary, Trump came out swinging -- against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), against the Establishment lining up behind Cruz in order to keep Trump below 1,237 delegates so they can broker it in Cleveland, and against Cruz’s supporter Governor Scott Walker.

“The Establishment is trying to take it all away from us, folks. They’re trying so hard,” he said, noting the fact that he won Louisiana but still ended up with less delegates there than Cruz. The crowd booed.

Well, it has never been quite clear who the “establishment” is but, whoever they are, of course they are. It’s called politics and, as the saying goes, politics ain’t bean bag. A lot of people were and are trying to deny Trump the nomination. Currently, there are Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Before them there were Rubio, Christie, Bush, Fiorina. Carson, Huckabee, et al.

Nobody robbed Trump in Louisiana, where he contemplates filing a lawsuit. He was simply out-organized by the Cruz people, who knew the rules and played by them. As National Review’s Rich Lowry observed concerning The Donald’s latest hissy-fit:

The Louisiana delegate picture isn’t evidence of anything untoward. Trump and Cruz both won 18 delegates on election night. Marco Rubio, since dropped out, won five, and another five are uncommitted. The Cruz campaign has done the nitty-gritty work to see that those delegates are likely Cruz supporters.

The Donald does not take losing or being out-organized well so he has to make excuses when he does. Trump doesn’t mind when, for example, winning all of a state’s delegates with less than 50 percent of the vote, such as he when he won 100% of Arizona’s 58 delegates despite getting only 47.1% of the vote. If he accepts Arizona’s election rules, then he should accept Louisiana’s. While Trump cries “stop thief”, the fact is that Trump in state after state has gotten a plurality of the delegates despite a majority of voters rejecting him and choosing someone else.

In Iowa, where Cruz again out-organized Trump, Trump had to invent another excuse for losing. Cruz stole the election from him when members of Cruz’s staff passed on an initial CNN report that Ben Carson was not going directly to his home in Florida to “change clothes,” implying Carson was quitting the race. Trump called that a “dirty trick,” forgetting how he once compared Carson to a pathological child molester. As CNN reported:

Donald Trump said Thursday that Ben Carson's self-described "pathological temper" is incurable -- adding that it's like the sickness of a "child molester."

"It's in the book that he's got a pathological temper," Trump told "Erin Burnett OutFront," speaking about Carson's autobiography. "That's a big problem because you don't cure that... as an example: child molesting. You don't cure these people. You don't cure a child molester. There's no cure for it. Pathological, there's no cure for that."

Trump lost Iowa because Cruz had a good ground game and Trump’s was virtually nonexistent. He also lost because late deciders in Iowa didn’t take kindly to him skipping the final Iowa debate because it was hosted by Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, who roughed him up with tough questions in an earlier debate:

During Fox News' February 1 coverage of the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Fox News figures repeatedly linked GOP candidate Donald Trump's lower than expected performance against candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX) to his decision to withdraw from a Fox News debate following an argument over the debate moderator. Polls attributed Trump's defeat to Ted Cruz's overwhelming support among evangelical voters. 

If Trump fails to win the nomination, it will because his efforts weren’t good enough to secure the 1,237 delegate votes needed on the first ballot. Period. It won’t be because of what Cruz allegedly did to Carson in Iowa, or because Cruz knew the rules and Trump did not.

It will be because Trump’s profane rhetoric once described Ben Carson’s temper as “pathological”, his ad hominem attacks on “Little” Marco Rubio and “Lyin’” Ted Cruz or saying Carly Fiona’s face was not worthy of an Oval Office portrait. It will because his “stream-of-consciousness” policy statements have resulted in contradictory and often incoherent policy positions on issues like Planned Parenthood, ObamaCare, the Islamic State, and, yes, abortion, where he was for punishing woman before he was against it.

While most delegates selected will be bound to a candidate on the first ballot, a good chunk will not. As The Hill notes:

But many delegates -- potentially close to 200 -- are not bound by those rules.

A handful of states and territories -- Colorado and North Dakota among them -- chose not to hold a vote at all, which means most of their delegates will arrive at the convention free to cast their ballot for any candidate.

And in some states, the delegates who were bound to candidates no longer in the race -- such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio -- are unbound as well.

On the second ballot, it’s virtually every delegate and candidate for themselves. Can the author of The Art of the Deal make deals to win the nomination, or will he whine once more about being robbed? Nominations go to those who get a majority, not plurality, of the delegates, just as touchdowns don’t go to those tackled on the one-yard line.

Donald Trump needs 1,237 strawberries. Hopefully he will let us know when he finds the missing ones.

Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.