Scott Adams's Blog, page 247

How’s My Timing?

Not bad, eh?

—

I’ll be watching the debate tonight, live streaming to you on Periscope. Find me at @ScottAdamsSays. Tune your TV to CNN and listen to my (limited) commentary as they go. My co-host will be neighbor, Kristina Basham.

Why I Switched My Endorsement from Clinton to Trump

As most of you know, I had been endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, for my personal safety, because I live in California. It isn’t safe to be a Trump supporter where I live. And it’s bad for business too. But recently I switched my endorsement to Trump, and I owe you an explanation. So here it goes.

1. Things I Don’t Know: There are many things I don’t know. For example, I don’t know the best way to defeat ISIS. Neither do you. I don’t know the best way to negotiate trade policies. Neither do you. I don’t know the best tax policy to lift all boats. Neither do you. My opinion on abortion is that men should follow the lead of women on that topic because doing so produces the most credible laws. So on most political topics, I don’t know enough to make a decision. Neither do you, but you probably think you do. 

Given the uncertainty about each candidate – at least in my own mind – I have been saying I am not smart enough to know who would be the best president. That neutrality changed when Clinton proposed raising estate taxes. I understand that issue and I view it as robbery by government. 

I’ll say more about that, plus some other issues I do understand, below.

2. Confiscation of Property: Clinton proposed a new top Estate Tax of 65% on people with net worth over $500 million. Her website goes to great length to obscure the actual policy details, including the fact that taxes would increase on lower value estates as well. See the total lack of transparency here, where the text simply refers to going back to 2009 rates. It is clear that the intent of the page is to mislead, not inform.

So don’t fall for the claim that Clinton has plenty of policy details on her website. She does, but it is organized to mislead, not to inform. That’s far worse than having no details.

The bottom line is that under Clinton’s plan, estate taxes would be higher for anyone with estates over $5 million(ish). I call this a confiscation tax because income taxes have already been paid on this money. In my case, a dollar I earn today will be taxed at about 50% by various government entities, collectively. With Clinton’s plan, my remaining 50 cents will be taxed again at 50% when I die. So the government would take 75% of my earnings from now on.

Yes, I can do clever things with trusts to avoid estate taxes. But that is just welfare for lawyers. If the impact of the estate tax is nothing but higher fees for my attorney, and hassle for me, that isn’t good news either.

You can argue whether an estate tax is fair or unfair, but fairness is an argument for idiots and children. Fairness isn’t an objective quality of the universe. I oppose the estate tax because I was born to modest means and worked 7-days a week for most of my life to be in my current position. (I’m working today, Sunday, as per usual.) And I don’t want to give 75% of my earnings to the government. (Would you?)

3. Party or Wake: It seems to me that Trump supporters are planning for the world’s biggest party on election night whereas Clinton supporters seem to be preparing for a funeral. I want to be invited to the event that doesn’t involve crying and moving to Canada. (This issue isn’t my biggest reason.)

4. Clinton’s Health: To my untrained eyes and ears, Hillary Clinton doesn’t look sufficiently healthy – mentally or otherwise – to be leading the country. If you disagree, take a look at the now-famous “Why aren’t I 50 points ahead” video clip. Likewise, Bill Clinton seems to be in bad shape too, and Hillary wouldn’t be much use to the country if she is taking care of a dying husband on the side.

5. Pacing and Leading: Trump always takes the extreme position on matters of safety and security for the country, even if those positions are unconstitutional, impractical, evil, or something that the military would refuse to do. Normal people see this as a dangerous situation. Trained persuaders like me see this as something called pacing and leading. Trump “paces” the public – meaning he matches them in their emotional state, and then some. He does that with his extreme responses on immigration, fighting ISIS, stop-and-frisk, etc. Once Trump has established himself as the biggest bad-ass on the topic, he is free to “lead,” which we see him do by softening his deportation stand, limiting his stop-and-frisk comment to Chicago, reversing his first answer on penalties for abortion, and so on. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump look scary. If you understand pacing and leading, you might see him as the safest candidate who has ever gotten this close to the presidency. That’s how I see him.

So when Clinton supporters ask me how I could support a “fascist,” the answer is that he isn’t one. Clinton’s team, with the help of Godzilla, have effectively persuaded the public to see Trump as scary. The persuasion works because Trump’s “pacing” system is not obvious to the public. They see his “first offers” as evidence of evil. They are not. They are technique.

And being chummy with Putin is more likely to keep us safe, whether you find that distasteful or not. Clinton wants to insult Putin into doing what we want. That approach seems dangerous as hell to me.

6. Persuasion: Economies are driven by psychology. If you expect things to go well tomorrow, you invest today, which causes things to go well tomorrow, as long as others are doing the same. The best kind of president for managing the psychology of citizens – and therefore the economy – is a trained persuader. You can call that persuader a con man, a snake oil salesman, a carnival barker, or full of shit. It’s all persuasion. And Trump simply does it better than I have ever seen anyone do it.

The battle with ISIS is also a persuasion problem. The entire purpose of military action against ISIS is to persuade them to stop, not to kill every single one of them. We need military-grade persuasion to get at the root of the problem. Trump understands persuasion, so he is likely to put more emphasis in that area.

Most of the job of president is persuasion. Presidents don’t need to understand policy minutia. They need to listen to experts and then help sell the best expert solutions to the public. Trump sells better than anyone you have ever seen, even if you haven’t personally bought into him yet. You can’t deny his persuasion talents that have gotten him this far.

In summary, I don’t understand the policy details and implications of most of either Trump’s or Clinton’s proposed ideas. Neither do you. But I do understand persuasion. I also understand when the government is planning to confiscate the majority of my assets. And I can also distinguish between a deeply unhealthy person and a healthy person, even though I have no medical training. (So can you.)

—

I will be live streaming my viewing of the debate Monday night, with my co-host and neighbor, Kristina Basham. Tune your television to the debate and use your phone or iPad with the Periscope app, and look for me at @ScottAdamsSays. 

Blowing Your Mind -- as Promised

About a year ago I told you that Donald Trump would change far more than politics. I predicted that he would change your understanding of the human condition and your role in reality.

Back then, I couldn’t explain what I meant. You didn’t have the mental framework to hold this new idea – unless you were a trained hypnotist or a cognitive scientist. The ideas were too radical. 

Until now. 

I saw this situation developing last year. The Master Persuader opened a crack in the universe so we mortals could – for the first time – understand the nature of reality. At the end of this short blog post I will link to an article that will blow your mind.

But first I will describe the mental framework you need to accept this new vision of reality. The framework goes like this:

1. Smart, well-informed people disagree on nearly all major issues. So being smart and well-informed doesn’t help you grasp reality as much as you would hope. If it did, all of the smart, well-informed people would agree. They don’t.

2. Trump says lots of things that don’t pass the fact-checkers’ tests. His supporters don’t care because facts don’t influence decisions. Humans decide first, then rationalize their irrational choices with cherry-picked data. You see this all the time with the people who disagree with your brilliance. Just remember that they see the same irrationality in you that you see in them.

3. So-called “news” outlets are literally inventing news and peddling it as truth.

4. We learned that voters don’t actually pick the Democratic candidate. The party picks the candidate. Democracy in the United States is largely an illusion.

5. Every candidate looks good until we learn more about that person’s past. Then every candidate looks terrible. But is it possible that only terrible people run for president and get to the final rounds?

6. We all noticed – this year more than ever – that political polls are skewed by bias. 

7. You watched as I used the Master Persuader filter to accurately predict the outcome of the presidential election up to this point. In so doing, I ignored forecasts from all the “experts.” I also ignored policies, experience, and facts. None of those things help you predict the future.

8. Many of you have started reading from my Persuasion Reading List, and by now you understand that humans are not rational creatures. We are creatures who believe we are rational.

Now you are ready. 

Read this to forever alter your understanding of reality.

Welcome to the third dimension. The Master Persuader has been waiting for you.

—

You might love my book because it tells you how to use this new understanding of your reality to achieve happiness and success.

How to Know an Election is Over

In the 2D world in which most people live, Clinton and Trump are polling about evenly, and either one could win. The 2D world is all about facts and policies and common sense. In other words – all the stuff we think we care about but really don’t. 

In the 3D world of persuasion, however, the election is already over. There is still some mystery about how large the margin will be, but Trump is already the President of the United States unless something big happens in the next few weeks. How do I know that?

Listen to this clip in which Clinton asks why she isn’t leading by 50 points. Ignore the content of what she says, because no one cares about content. Just feel it.

And see the future.

—

In other news…

You might be wondering if Trump made mistakes this week when he mentioned both profiling and “stop and frisk.” Persuasion-wise, both comments are mistakes, because they work against his outreach strategy that has been effective. But these are minor problems because the news is providing the best-possible context for Trump’s comments. 

On some level, everyone knows the government of the United States is already profiling, and will continue doing so. We just call it something else. No one believes that the U.S. checks Swedish immigrants as thoroughly as Syrian immigrants. Clearly we already profile – not just for race, but probably according to a dozen other variables. (And Islam still isn’t a race.)

Trump’s “stop and frisk” comment will haunt him for a few weeks, but it comes in the context of outrage about an African-American policeman killing an African-American citizen. According to the pundits on TV, that changed the frame from a problem of white-versus-black to a question of police training. And even Trump is asking why the police shot a man in Tulsa who appeared to be surrendering. 

Trump is consistent in staking out whatever is the most bad-ass sounding position on all matters of security. Later, following his well-observed pattern, he negotiates down to something that doesn’t violate the Constitution so much. So I wouldn’t worry about “stop and frisk” becoming a thing. States will figure out that stuff on their own.

—

You might love my book because it loves you.

Checking My Spooky Predictions

Check out my blog post from August 10th on the “surprises” that could cause Trump to come from behind and win. At the time, Clinton was well ahead in the polls, thanks to a convention bounce and the Khan situation. I noted at the time that the likely “surprises” favored Trump.

How’d I do?

From August 10th:

—

You might enjoy my book because my neighbor Kristina did.

Assessing the Risk of Trump

For over a year now I have been blogging about Trump’s talent for persuasion, and that gives people the impression that I prefer him as my president. That is not the case. I’ll tell you why at the end of this post.

The best choice for president depends on the types of challenges ahead. And the future has a habit of surprising us. We have no way to predict whether Clinton or Trump would end up being the right match for an unpredictable future.

That said, let’s talk about assessing the risk – to the country – of Trump versus Clinton. My observation of their histories and their personalities suggests that Trump offers America an entrepreneur’s profile of risk, whereas Clinton would be more like investing in a CD at your bank. Which is better? The answer for you probably depends on how old you are, how selfish you are, and how much money you have.

If things are going well for you and your family, you probably don’t want to rock the boat. In that case, Clinton is a good choice for you. But if you are young, or things are not working out well for you and your family, it would be rational to accept higher risk with the hope of getting a bigger/faster improvement.

But how big is the Trump risk to the economy and the country in general? Let’s talk about how Trump has managed risk in the past. That’s the best way to predict how he will do it in the future.

Diversification: Rule #1 for an investment portfolio is diversification. Trump probably wasn’t sufficiently diversified early in his real estate career, but now he has his name on about 500 entities and he has succeeded across multiple fields. He understands diversification. That’s good.

A-B Testing: One of the best ways to manage risk is to try things on a small scale and only double-down if the test is a success. We see Trump trying out different Linguistic Kill Shots to see what sticks, changing campaign staff as needed, and employing different campaign strategies depending on the situation. We observe him being decisive when things don’t work (firing people) and we watch him pivot quickly based on what he learns from testing. That suggests a “systems” type of mind, as opposed to a “goal” mentality. You can read more about that distinction in my book, which you might enjoy because it has pages. The summary is that systems-thinkers manage risk better.

Licensing: A big part of Trump’s business involves licensing his name. I know a lot about licensing because I have done if for years with Dilbert. Licensing is a great way to manage risk because I get paid in advance even if the product that Dilbert’s image is licensed to adorn does not work out. Trump does the same. He gets paid even if the project with his name on it fails. That’s good risk management.

Likewise, Trump almost certainly negotiates for a lump sum advance payment from publishers for his books. Trump gets paid even if the publisher loses money. That’s good risk management.

Likewise also, The Apprentice probably paid Trump a guaranteed minimum no matter the ratings. And if the show had failed, Trump would not have any personal investment in it. He only had upside potential.

Two Ways to Win: We often see Trump choose strategies that have two ways to win and no way to lose. That’s the best risk management of all. For example, when Trump warned that Iran should release American prisoners before he gets elected, he created two ways to win and no way to lose. If the prisoners were released (and they were), Trump could claim his threat was effective. (He did.) If Iran kept the prisoners, Trump could say the United States needs a bad-ass President like him to deal with Iran. 

Bankruptcies: When the general public hears that Trump had several bankruptcies (out of hundreds of projects) they think that means he did something wrong. Business people see a different picture. They see a diversified portfolio of projects that are wisely siloed into their own corporate entities so some can fail without taking the others with them. That’s good risk management because one would naturally expect several failures out of hundreds of projects.

Marriages: Trump is married to his third wife and still has good relationships with his exes. Apparently Trump had good prenups, and good lawyers. He managed the risk of divorce better than 90% of the people I know.

Alcohol and Drugs: Trump has never had a drink of alcohol or an illegal drug, because of the risk. If you have ever consumed alcohol or taken illegal drugs, you have a far higher tolerance for risk than Trump. He removed those risks from his life. And those are some big risks.

Seeing the Future: One way to reduce risk is to predict the future better than those around you. We know that Trump went all-in on his run for president this time, but in prior election years he dropped out early. Apparently he made the right decision this time because he could see himself making it all the way.

We have also witnessed Trump using unorthodox campaign strategies that almost everyone else in the world thought would fail. But apparently Trump predicted the future better than the pundits. His methods have worked.

Trump hasn’t predicted the future correctly every time. As noted, several of his projects did not work out. But evidently he expected there could be some losers among his projects because he set them up as separate entities that could fail on their own without dragging down the rest.

Listening to Advice: One of the criticisms we heard about Trump early in the campaign is that he wouldn’t listen to experts. But now we have lots of examples in which he has done exactly that. His entire campaign has transformed in the past six weeks. We watched Trump assess the changing election dynamics, take advice from advisors, adapt his approach, and spike in the polls. 

Trump is also good at firing people. The smartest person I know told me that the most important skill of a leader is firing, not hiring. No one is smart enough to hire the right people every time, so firing is the more valuable skill. Trump apparently has that skill. Consider how hard it was to fire his longtime friend Corey Lewandowski, and later Paul Manafort. Trump pulled the trigger both times. And both moves proved to be helpful.

Trump’s Ego: Trump’s showmanship and branding comes off as ego, and narcissism, and that can be scary to the public. You want to know your President is making decisions based on what is good for the country, and not what is good for the President’s ego. But Trump’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon went a long way toward changing perceptions about his ego. Trump let Fallon mess up his famous hair on TV, and it humanized Trump. We watched Trump put his ego aside with no real effort.

We also see Trump doing more outreach to the African-American community, toning down his rhetoric (mostly) and generally doing what the public has been asking him to do. That suggests a candidate who has control of his ego. He listens to the people and gives them what they want. 

—

In my personal situation, things are going great for me, so that suggests Clinton would be a safer choice in terms of managing my risk – both financially and physically. Change isn’t necessarily good for me. But I’m also at a point in my life where I’m focused on providing some public good before I check out of the computer simulation we call life. So if my American teammates prefer a Trump-like risk – because they think change is needed for their own benefit – I’m okay with that. Pick the president you want and I’ll work with it. I’ll be happy either way.

Trump and Birtherism - update

Moments ago, Donald Trump acknowledged that Barack Obama was born in the United States. You all know that’s a big deal because Trump was the leader of the so-called “birther” movement, which critics called racist.

But watch the festival of cognitive dissonance that happens today among Trump’s critics and the media. They need to explain why the birther thing was racist. What exactly is the reasoning for that connection?

Jake Tapper says the connection between the birther movement and racism is so obvious that you would have to be “naive” to think it wasn’t about race, given that Obama is black. And also given that the “birther” idea had no credible evidence.

But how does that explain why Trump said Ted Cruz was Canadian? Is it because Trump is also racist against Canadians?

That’s the problem the media will have to wrestle with today. And Trump has turned all of them into idiots because there is no real answer to the Ted Cruz analogy. A rational person would look at this situation and say that Trump uses every available option to win, and birtherism helped him get this far because it gave him a launch pad.

Birtherism also allowed Trump to do what hypnotists call pacing and leading. First, he matched the Obama-hating Republicans by being one of them. That’s called pacing. Once they accepted him as one of them, he was in the position to lead. He just did that by saying Obama was born in this country. 

The answer to why Trump pursued the birther issue is that he thought it would work for him, persuasion-wise. And it did. Unambiguously. Just the way a Master Persuader would expect. 

First he paces, then he leads. Watch for that pattern in everything he does.

—

You might like my book because my neighbor likes it.

When Reality Turned Inside Out

Do you remember way—-way—-way—back in July, when the public thought Trump was the candidate they couldn’t trust with the nuclear arsenal? That was before we realized he could moderate his personality on command, as he is doing now. We’re about to enter our fifth consecutive week of Trump doing more outreach than outrage.

It turns out that Trump’s base personality is “winning.” Everything else he does is designed to get that result. He needed to be loud and outrageous in the primaries, so he was. He needs to be presidential in this phase of the election cycle, so he is. 

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has revealed herself to be frail, medicated, and probably duplicitous about her health. We also hear reports that she’s a drinker with a bad temper. Suddenly, Clinton looks like the unstable personality in this race. Who do you want controlling the nuclear arsenal now?

You probably thought Trump was the bigot in this contest, until Clinton called half of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables.” That’s the point at which observers started to see a pattern. Trump has been consistently supportive of American citizens of all types – with the exception of the press and his political opponents. The main targets of Trump’s rhetoric are the nations that compete against us. In stark contrast, Clinton turned her hate on American citizens. That’s the real kind of hate. Trump is more about keeping America safe and competing effectively in the world. That is literally the job of president.

Trump was once the candidate that the LGBTQ community found easy to hate. Then it turned out that Trump is the loudest voice for protecting America against the anti-gay ideology that Clinton would increase in this country via immigration. At the GOP convention, Republicans stood and applauded Trump’s full-throated support of the LGBTQ community. While Clinton was talking about a better society, Trump was transforming the Republican Party into one. (Yes, I know there is more to do.)

You might remember a few months ago when Clinton had lots of policy details and Trump had few. Clinton still holds the lead in the number of bullet-points-per-policy, but while she rests, Trump has been rolling out policy details on one topic after another. Perception-wise, the optics of “who has policy details” has flipped. (Reality isn’t important in this context.)

Do you remember over a year ago, when Trump first entered the race? Social media relentlessly insulted his physical appearance. They mocked his orange hair and his orange skin. They called him a clown. They called him a Cheeto. It was brutal.

But over time, Trump’s haircut improved. He softened the color to something more blonde than orange And his fake tan and TV makeup improved too. Today, if you ask a voter to name the candidate for president who “looks bad,” the answer would probably be Clinton, primarily because of her recent health issues. In our minds, Clinton went from being a stylish and energetic personality to a hospice patient dressed like a North Korean dictator at a rave.

Not long ago, you would have said Clinton was the strongest candidate for protecting citizens who need the help of social programs. Then Trump unveiled his plan for childcare and senior care. You can debate the details, and the cost, but nearly everyone recognized the idea as a critical need for working class people.

In other words, the world is turning inside-out, right in front of our eyes. I summarized this surprising reversal in the most popular tweet I have ever created.

That’s how a Master Persuader does it. A year ago, I told you that Trump was bringing a flamethrower to a stick fight. His talent for persuasion is so strong that he has effectively flipped the script and rewired the brains of the people watching this show.

But I’ll bet you still think Trump is “thin-skinned,” primarily because Clinton’s team has done a great job of branding him that way. The label sticks because Trump has a pattern of going on offense whenever he is attacked. But let me give you another framework to see this same set of facts. Specifically, I’m going to tell you how Master Persuaders convert embarrassment into energy. It’s a learned skill.

I often talk about the benefits I got from taking the Dale Carnegie course. One of the skills you learn in that class is how to convert your anxiousness about public speaking into excitement and positive energy. I personally observed the Dale Carnegie course turning a few dozen introverts into people who were enthusiastic about speaking in front of a crowd. It was astonishing.

Part of the Dale Carnegie process involved each student doing something embarrassing in front of the class just to get used to the feeling, and to know you could survive it. It is one of the best skills you can learn because our egos tend to hold us back. We fear embarrassment so we don’t risk it. That limits our potential.

Now think back to 2011, at the Correspondent’s Dinner, in which President Obama mocked Donald Trump in front of the world – while Trump sat in the audience, stone-faced. The popular reporting was that Trump was humiliated by the event. But Master Persuaders don’t process humiliation the same way as others. They convert it to energy, the same way Dale Carnegie students learn to convert anxiousness to excitement. It’s a learned skill. And it is literally the opposite of having a thin skin. It only looks the same because of confirmation bias.

How do I know Trump has mastered the skill of converting humiliation into energy? The signs are all there. For example…

Trump has entered one high-risk business after another, guaranteeing that he would experience a large number of setbacks, failures, and humiliations. People don’t run toward humiliation unless they know they can convert that negative energy to fuel. When you see someone succeed across multiple unrelated fields, that’s often a sign of a Master Persuader who feeds on both success and failure. You are watching Trump do exactly that, right in front of your eyes. He has converted every “gaffe” into news coverage. He eats bad news and converts it into fuel.

Many of you have watched me do the same thing. You’ve watched as I jumped fields from corporate America to cartooning. Then I became an author of business-related books. I opened two restaurants that didn’t work out. I tried lots of stuff that failed miserably. Now I’m talking about the presidential election. What do all of those things have in common?

I risked public humiliation in each case. 

And in each case, lots of people told me “Keep your day job.” On a typical day, dozens of strangers insult my body, my personality, my brain, my integrity, and lots more. Like Trump, I consume it as fuel. And it is a learned skill.

You might have noticed that both Trump and I are quick to attack anyone who attacks us. Observers tell me I shouldn’t do that, because it makes me appear thin-skinned. Observers tell Trump the same thing. But observers are missing one important thing: We use the critics to refuel

If you were an alien from another planet, and you observed a lion killing a gazelle, you might think that lion was angry at its prey. You might think the lion was insulted that the gazelle was using its watering hole. What did the gazelle do to deserve that treatment? Is the lion being thin-skinned?

Trust me when I tell you that sometimes the lion is just eating.

—

You might like my book because of various reasons and whatnot.

Deplorable Pneumonia

When Hillary Clinton called half of Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables,” I said it would not move the polls more than 1%. My thinking is that we have three types of voters:

1. The Deplorables – who already made up their minds for Trump.

2. Clinton supporters – who already made up their minds for Clinton.

3. Undecideds – who don’t care about stuff like this. That’s why they are undecided. And most of them probably have decided. They just don’t want to admit it.

All by itself, the “deplorable” gaffe wouldn’t be much of an issue in the long run. Clinton had time to apologize and recover from it.

But then Clinton collapsed with some sort of health problem – perhaps pneumonia – at the 9-11 anniversary event. The optics of a potential commander-in-chief collapsing at that holy place, and on an important anniversary, rendered her unelectable in my opinion. I base that prediction on how people will associate her health issues with the need to have a reliable commander-in-chief. Persuasion-wise, that’s a hole you don’t get out of.

But the 9-11 situation had another impact that I didn’t realize until today. It weaponized Clinton’s earlier gaffe about the deplorables by turning it into what I call a “fake because.” Sometimes you need a “fake because” to rationalize whatever you are doing. And that’s doubly-important in this situation. Here’s why.

In our rational minds, we are good people who use data and reason to arrive at our decisions. We need to maintain that untrue self-image to stay happy. Clinton’s collapse at the 9-11 event creates an uncomfortable dissonance in us. On one hand, we don’t think anyone should be penalized for a minor illness. And we don’t wish harm on anyone. Our rational minds want to NOT care that Clinton collapsed on the 9-11 anniversary. That’s who we are. We’re rational people who can put stuff like this in context.

But in our irrational minds – the part that actually makes decisions – we really, really don’t want a commander-in-chief who is so frail that she might sneeze-fart herself to death in the Situation Room. Realistically, and rationally, we know that isn’t a real problem. 

But…it…feels…like one. 

And that’s what matters. We want to act on that feeling, but it conflicts with our self-image as nice people. That causes cognitive dissonance. The way out of your dissonance is to find a “fake because.” You need to latch onto some sort of rational-sounding reason that passes the sniff test. 

And so you look to Clinton’s “deplorable” comment and find your “fake because.” She insulted voters, you say! It’s just like Romney’s 47% gaffe, you say! She’s acting unpresidential, you say!

Any reasonable person knows Clinton was making her usual point about Trump attracting an unsavory bunch of supporters. She just worded it in a funny way (and it was funny) but it blew up in her face. There is no story here. 

All by itself, the “basket of deplorable” gaffe was more funny than damaging. But coming as it did so near to Clinton’s health problem, it turns into a handy “fake because.” 

The existence of a “fake because” frees the undecideds. It gives them an issue they can understand – as opposed to international trade deals, for example – and it gives them a “reason” for their change: They can say they want a president who supports all Americans, even the deplorable ones.

When Clinton collapsed at the 9-11 site, that was enough to end her chances of winning. But adding the “fake because” to her “deplorable” comment will super-charge whatever was going to happen anyway.

—

You might love my book because Clinton called some voters deplorable. (But some, I assume, are good people.)

Checking My Predictions About Clinton’s Health

In a blog post I wrote on December 27th, 2015, I said this…

Bonus Thought 1: One of the skills a hypnotist has to master is reading people’s inner thoughts based on their body language. That’s a common skill for people in the business world too, but hypnotists go deeper than looking at crossed arms and furrowed brows. We learn to look for subtle changes in breathing patterns, tiny changes in muscle tone, variations in skin color (blushing or not), word choice, pupil dilation, and more. I assume law enforcement people look for similar tells when doing interrogations.

As regular readers know, I’m a trained hypnotist. And to me, Hillary Clinton looks as if she is hiding a major health issue. If you read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, you know that so-called “experts” can sometimes instantly make decisions before they know why. In my case, I am going to make an “expert” hypnotist prediction about Hillary Clinton without knowing exactly which clues I am picking up, or whether I am hallucinating them.

Prediction: I’ll put the odds at 75% that we learn of an important Clinton health issue before the general election. That estimate is based on my own track record of guessing things about people without the benefit of knowing why. I think Trump is picking up the same vibe. He has already questioned Clinton’s “stamina.”

On December 29th, 2015 I blogged that Trump would be seen as “running unopposed” before election day. I mentioned Clinton’s health as a possible reason.

While I’m on the topic, I’ll add another prediction to the Master Persuader series. I predict that by the time Trump is in the general election and running against Clinton, you will start hearing that Trump (Lucky Hitler) is – for all practical purposes – “running unopposed” as Clinton’s poll numbers plummet.

That can happen in a variety of ways. One way is if Clinton’s health or legal issues rise to the point of being disqualifying, and Trump persuades us to think about those things more than we think about anything else. Once you imagine there is one candidate in the race who is eligible and one who might not survive the term, or might be in jail, you start to imagine it as a one-person race.

And you will. That’s how you get a landslide.

Look for the words “running unopposed” in pundit articles and quotes within a few months of election day. And it still counts if it started here, because it won’t catch on unless it actually fits.

On April 29th of 2016 I expanded on the thought in this post.

I have blogged and tweeted that Hillary Clinton looks unhealthy to me. And I have mentioned on Twitter that one of the skills of a hypnotist is identifying subtle bodily changes. Observation is a huge part of a hypnotist’s skill. You look for micro changes in muscle tone, breathing, posture, and anything else that can tell you whether your technique is working or you need to quickly pivot to a new approach. Think of it as rapid A-B testing on humans. And like any skill, one gets better with practice. I have more than three decades of practice for this specific skill.

What I see in Clinton’s health is an unusual level of variability. Sometimes her eyes bug out, sometimes they are tired and baggy. Sometimes she looks puffy, sometimes not. It would be easy to assume fatigue is the important variable. And that is clearly a big factor. But notice that the other candidates have little variability in their physicality. Trump always looks like Trump. Cruz always looks like Cruz, and so on. Sometimes we think we can detect fatigue in their answers, but visually the other candidates appear about the same every day.

Clinton, on the other hand, looks like an entirely different person every few days. That suggests some greater variability in her health. And that’s probably a tell for medications that are waxing and waning but rarely at the ideal levels. Or perhaps the underlying conditions have normal variability. Or both.

Under normal circumstances it would be deeply irresponsible for a cartoonist to give a medical diagnosis to a stranger he hasn’t met. I trust you to ignore my medical opinions. I do this to build a record of my persuasion-related predictions and to show you the method.

I give Clinton a 50% chance of making it to November with sufficiently good health to be considered a viable president. Judging from her performance on the campaign trail, she is managing her health effectively to get the job done. But I would think most people who run for president end up sacrificing their health in some measure. The big question is how much buffer she has left.

To be clear, there is no dependable evidence of Clinton having an undisclosed major health issue. But it looks that way to observers.

—