This email will interest people who are closely following the US presidential election.
I invite you to watch the following four minute video on Trump and Hillary when you have time. It changed my thinking.
On the Friday June 2 Real Time with Bill Mayer, Scott Adams (who is the genius creator of the Dilbert comic strip) gave a very sober assessment of why Trump has been so successful. Adams is a trained hypnotist and has written several books on the art of persuasion. Adams has a blog and LAST SUMMER he predicted Trump would win by a landslide. This, plus his careful comments were very real to me. According to Adams, Trump is not a fool, but rather he is a high IQ master persuader.
The Real Time clip was taken down on YouTube, where they want you to subscribe to Real Time, but it is still linked here.
http://lastnighton.com/2016/05/31/dilbert-creator-tells-bill-maher-why-trump-will-win-election/
Here is a link to his the Scott Adams blog.
http://blog.dilbert.com/tagged/RealTime
Here is a link to his October 2015 blog where he predicted Trump will win in a landslide.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/131749156346/the-case-for-a-trump-landslide-part-1
Here are the first three sentences from this blog from last October
“The latest poll out of Iowa shows Carson ahead of Trump. And you know what that means?
It means Iowa is about to become irrelevant. Here I am assuming evangelicals will band together to give Carson the win in Iowa before Trump goes on to run the table everywhere else.”
I also liked this review from the Washington Post in March 2016. It summarizes the six principles Trump is using to win.
Here are his principles in list form.
- Trump knows people are basically irrational.
- Knowing that people are irrational, Trump aims to appeal on an emotional level.
- By running on emotion, facts don’t matter.
- If facts don’t matter, you can’t really be “wrong.”
- With fewer facts in play, it’s easier to bend reality.
- To bend reality, Trump is a master of identity politics — and identity is the strongest persuader.
Here are the final lines from that Washington Post article.
Writes Adams: “Identity is always the strongest level of persuasion. The only way to beat it is with dirty tricks or a stronger identity play. … [And] Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males. Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.
“If this were poker, which hand looks stronger to you for a national election?”
http://lastnighton.com/2016/05/31/dilbert-creator-tells-bill-maher-why-trump-will-win-election/
Watch the Real Time interview. And think about how you can get your favorite politician – local, state or national – to be better at persuasion and the use of modern media.
Randy