Scott Adams's Blog, page 253

Trump’s Glide Path

Is it my imagination, or has Trump been relatively non-controversial lately?

Do you remember how Trump got lots of free publicity in the past year by saying approximately one outrageous and controversial thing each week, like clockwork? And do you remember how you thought his outrageous approach could never be a winning formula in the general election?

I’ve been saying since last year that Trump’s path to victory is simple. All he needs to do is STOP saying controversial things for the last several months before election day to prove he can control himself. Plus, voters have short memories. So whatever Trump does in the coming months will be more important than whatever happened last year. And lately he’s been more presidential, at least by Trump standards.

But here’s the fascinating part, at least to me. Trump’s consistency in being outrageous has created a situation in which we’re all expecting more of it. Now Trump is in a position to get man-bites-dog publicity (the best kind) simply by being non-controversial. And the longer he maintains this new approach, the more newsworthy it becomes. By late August you might be seeing headlines of this nature:

TRUMP PIVOTS TO SERIOUS

CAN TRUMP KEEP UP THE PRESIDENTIAL TONE?

HAS TRUMP CHANGED?

Now consider what Clinton and Trump each need to accomplish – and quickly – in order to win in November. Clinton needs to prove she is not crooked, which is now impossible because the head of the FBI has publicly certified her as crooked. At least that’s how it looks to the public. The public heard the FBI say Clinton broke the law, followed by a decision to not prosecute. That taint won’t wash off by November. 

Trump, on the other hand, simply has to NOT do crazy-racist-sounding things for a few months. If he stays presidential (mostly) from here on out, people will believe he can moderate his scary persona at will. That’s all he needs to prove.

Clinton’s task of proving she is not crooked is literally impossible at this stage. But Trump’s task of NOT being outrageous for a few months is somewhat easy. He’s already doing it, and I don’t see him breaking a sweat.

You also have to factor in the Gingrich effect. No matter who gets tapped for Vice President, Gingrich has already created intellectual cover for Trump. Were you worried that Trump is dumb and under-informed? You don’t have that concern about Gingrich, even if you dislike him. Gingrich solves for Trump’s perceived intellect gap with Clinton. Expect Gingrich to have a key role in Trump’s government.

The new Quinnipiac poll shows Trump now leading in 4-out-of-5 battleground states. Most of the polling was done before the FBI announced its email server decision. Do you know what else was happening during that time to influence polls?

Answer: Nothing

In other words, Trump didn’t do anything outrageous for a few weeks. That’s all he needs to do from here on out – more nothing – to win in a landslide. The “Crooked Hillary” harpoon he landed a few months ago is bleeding her out. Trump’s glide path to victory involves picking his cabinet and acting serious for a few months. That’s all it will take. (Expect a few mini-outrages just for fun.)

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Speaking of glide paths, you might like my book, even though those thoughts are not connected.

When Persuasion Turns Deadly

Some of you watched with amusement as I endorsed Hillary Clinton for my personal safety. What you might not know is that I was completely serious. I was getting a lot of direct and indirect death threats for writing about Trump’s powers of persuasion, and I made all of that go away by endorsing Clinton. People don’t care why I am on their side. They only care that I am. 

You might have found it funny that I endorsed Clinton for my personal safety. But it was only funny by coincidence. I did it for personal safety, and apparently it is working. Where I live, in California, it is not safe to be seen as supportive of anything Trump says or does. So I fixed that.

Again, I’m completely serious about the safety issue. Writing about Trump ended my speaking career, and has already reduced my income by about 40%, as far as I can tell. But I’m in less physical danger than I was. 

If you didn’t believe me that I endorsed Clinton for my safety, perhaps the recent shooting of police officers changed your mind. That’s the sort of tragedy you expect to happen when Team Clinton frames the national debate as a race war. 

Let me give you an example of how Clinton and her supporters in the media have pushed us to the brink of a race war. This article in the Washington Post tells us that although cops kill more whites than African-Americans, we still have a police racism problem because blacks are killed in greater proportion to their relative population. That’s all true, as far as I can tell.

But what got left out?

Well, for one thing, it doesn’t address the fact that most police shootings happen in high-crime areas (I assume). And high crime areas in the United States often have high concentrations of African-American citizens. If the police accidentally shoot someone in my neighborhood, the victim will almost certainly be white, Asian, or Indian, because that’s who lives here. But if police accidentally shoot someone in a predominantly African-American neighborhood with a high crime rate, the odds are high that it will be an African-American victim. Does that tell us anything about racism?

To be clear, racism exists. What we don’t know is how it plays out in every scenario. Cherry-picked data doesn’t tell us anything useful. But it probably does get cops killed. 

You also have to ask yourself how the environment influences the amount of resistance one shows to a police officer. If you grow up in a tough neighborhood, where you’ve learned to use aggression to resist all forms of bullying and abuse, you might not surrender to police as passively as people raised in a less violent world. Statistics don’t capture that sort of difference, if there is any.

The backdrop to all of this racial tension is that Trump was winning the persuasion war by making citizens afraid of external threats from illegal immigrants and terrorists. That was a strong formula because people respond to fear.

But Clinton’s team – including social media and the liberal-leaning mainstream media – responded by defining Trump as a literal Hitler. A Hitler-like leader in your own country is even scarier than external threats. Persuasion-wise, it is a winning formula for Team Clinton, even though the case is built on confirmation bias, not fact. (Trump has never mentioned race in a negative way.)

So now we have a situation in which Team Clinton has scared citizens into thinking the threat to their lives is mostly domestic, coming from Trump, Trump supporters, and anyone who looks like them. People who are scared will act. And we see those actions now in terms of violence against police, violence against Trump supporters, and death threats to bloggers such as me. And we already have one attempted Trump assassination.

So far, Trump has showed a willingness to annihilate any professional politician that gets in the way. And he’s annihilated professional reporters and news organizations that got in his way. And he’s tough on non-citizens. But Trump hasn’t tried to turn American citizens against each other. Clinton has, and successfully so. 

You can blame Trump for Trump University, and for his uncivil language. You can blame Trump for lots of stuff. But the police shootings and the recent uptick in domestic racial violence are mostly Clinton’s doings to win the election. And it is working. Unless Trump finds a way to counter Clinton’s racial persuasion, he will lose in November.

I expect Trump to go full-attack after the conventions. It would take the world’s greatest persuader to redefine Trump in a way that he can win the election. But as it turns out, Trump is probably the world’s greatest persuader. That’s why I predict he will win in a landslide. Unless someone kills him first.

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Speaking of landslides, my book has never been in one.

The Persuasion Diet

Business Insider has an interesting article on how traditional dieting is becoming less popular. Now people are focusing on health and fitness, with weight management being a side benefit. That’s a big deal because dieting was always the wrong approach to health.

Dieting is a bad idea because it treats weight as a function of what you do. The idea is that if you do less of the bad stuff – eating cake, for example – and more of the good stuff – let’s say eating salad – you will lose weight and be healthy. While that is technically true, it is a terrible system because it ignores the biggest challenge of weight management: Your mind. If you get your mind right, everything else happens easily. But if you try to overclock your brain and use willpower to force yourself to eat less, eventually your willpower will crap out, and you’ll be back where you started. That’s why traditional dieting rarely works in the long term.

A smarter approach to fitness is to fix the brain first, and let the body follow. You might call it the Persuasion Diet. That’s what I wrote about in my book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. I teach you how to learn which foods to eat, manage cravings, create positive habits, and eliminate the need for willpower. In other words, I teach you how to persuade yourself to good health without doing anything unpleasant whatsoever.

Because I’m known as a cartoonist – and not a doctor – none of you should be taking health-related advice from me. I wrote the health-related chapters in my book with the full knowledge I would be ignored and mocked for my lack of qualifications. But I didn’t mind that tradeoff because I counted on two things:

1. I have no sense of shame, as I will demonstrate once again in this post. So I knew it wouldn’t bother me to be mocked. It didn’t.

2. I figured science would catch up to me and validate my “mind first” approach to fitness. We’re almost there.

Since publication of my book – which only has a few chapters on fitness – I have heard from readers all over the world that they have lost lots of weight and gotten back into exercise, all relatively effortlessly. So the idea of systems being better than goals – for all areas of your life – is spreading.

Also, I have been documenting my own progress as I approach my 60th birthday next June. I achieved this level of fitness – the best of my life, by far – without any willpower or sacrifice at all. I simply developed systems to train my brain. My body followed. This photo is a day old. And I should note that I don’t have a personal chef or a personal trainer. This is just me eating whatever I want, whenever I want, as much as I want, and going to the gym for about 45 minutes a day. 

You might say I hypnotized myself to identify and prefer healthy foods, disdain unhealthy foods, and stay active every day. That is essentially true. That’s how I can eat “whatever I want.” It’s because I only want healthy food these days. And you can do the same, by developing your own personal system as described in my book. (Your system would be different from mine, and from anyone else’s.)

Regular readers of this blog have heard too much about my book already. The reason I’m revisiting it is because by now you also know about my writings on persuasion during this presidential election. As I have been saying since last year, Trump’s powers of persuasion would change more than politics. It would open a crack in the universe so people like me could explain to people like you how powerful persuasion can be, and how to use it to your benefit. That’s what I’m doing here. I’m persuading you to see fitness as a self-persuasion system, not a goal that you accomplish with willpower.

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You might like my book because it is filled with words that I tried to arrange in a sensible order.

Better Surrender Technique

Everyone is talking about police violence against African-Americans, but I haven’t seen much discussion about practical solutions. In the short term, the most productive approach probably involves teaching citizens how to surrender better.

You’ve probably seen tutorials on the correct way to handle a traffic stop by police. You should put both hands on the top of the steering wheel, fingers open and outstretched, and wait for the police officer to give you permission to reach for your wallet. If you have time before the officer gets out his car, your wallet should already be out and on the dashboard so you don’t have to reach for it in a suspicious-looking way. That’s good surrender technique, and I think it would work for many situations.

But I think we can simplify it even more. And simplification is important. People aren’t thinking clearly during police encounters, so simplicity is the key. Here’s how I would use the science of persuasion to simplify the surrender process even further.

1. Roll down your window upon stopping and stick both hands out the window, palms up, waiting for the police officer. That’s as clear a surrender as you can get. And importantly, it is easier to remember this move than the steering wheel hand-placement mentioned above. You have a different visual memory for sticking both hands out the window (which is unusual) compared to putting both hands on the steering wheel, which is closer to normal behavior.

2. Your first utterances to the police officer should include the words “officer” and “safety.” Example: Good morning, Officer. Let’s be safe today. Tell me what you need me to do.

If you have a legal firearm in the car, you might want to try this: “Good morning, Officer. I have a legal firearm in the glove compartment. What is the safest way for you to disarm me?

When you call the police officer “officer,” it signals your acceptance of the authority of the badge and conveys respect. That persuasion move probably reduces risk by half.

When you put “safety” in your message up front, it sends a message that your top priority is safety, for all concerned. And it shows an understanding for the officer’s risk. Persuasion-wise, that eliminates nearly all of your remaining risk as long as you cooperate from that point on.

Communication experts will tell you that a message is only as credible as the sender. Your first interaction with a police officer will tell him – accurately or not – who you are. So if the first impression looks like rebellion, the officer will interpret everything that follows according to that model. If the first impression is obvious concern for mutual safety, you put the officer on your side from the start. Once you have established yourself as a respectful citizen who is primarily interested in safety, any ambiguous communication on your part will be seen through that filter.

Summary:

1. Stick hands out the window, palms up.

2. Say Officer and Safety right away.

The best way to test a new surrender technique is one city at a time, so you can see if it makes a difference. Perhaps other cities could try modified approaches to see what works best. In each case you would do a general publicity push to teach people how to surrender, much the way our laws about seat belts were publicized with the successful “Click it or ticket” campaign. 

My best guess is that my surrender technique – or something like it – would nearly eliminate the risk of violence for anyone who used it. The hard part is persuading people to use this method. That’s where simplicity, A-B testing for best methods, and a good PR campaign come in.

Obviously this method doesn’t get at the root causes of the problem, but it might keep some folks alive until we figure out better solutions.

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Speaking of surrendering, my book has no hands.

The FBI, Credibility, and Government

The primary goal of government is its own credibility.

That notion needs some explaining. 

Governments do many things, including building roads, providing social services, defending the homeland, and more. But no matter what the government is trying to accomplish, its macro-responsibility is to maintain its own credibility. Governments without credibility devolve into chaos. Credibility has to be job one. 

Consider all the different government systems around the world, and all the different laws they created. The Chinese government is different from the United States government, which is different from Jordan’s government, which is different from Great Britain. But each of those governments is credible to its own people, and that’s the key. The specific laws and the specific forms of government don’t matter too much, so long as the public views its own local system as credible.

The notion of credibility is why my political preferences don’t align with either of the candidates for president. I look for credibility in government, not for my personal agreement with a particular policy.

For example, I think laws regarding abortion are most credible when they are agreeable to the majority of women, no matter what the majority of men think. Imagine an abortion-related law that was acceptable to 90% of men but only 10% of women. It wouldn’t be credible. Nor should it be.

I take this same thinking to how a president should fill Supreme Court openings. For maximum credibility, we should have eight justices instead of nine, equally divided by liberal versus conservative credentials. That way nothing gets through the Supreme Court unless one of the liberals or one of the conservatives switches sides. That’s how you get credibility. Compare that to a 5-4 court that always votes conservative or always votes liberal. With a biased court, every decision will lack credibility with half of the citizens. That’s a problem.

This gets me to FBI Director James Comey’s decision to drop the case against Hillary Clinton for her e-mail security lapses. To the great puzzlement of everyone in America, and around the world, Comey announced two things:

1. Hillary Clinton is 100% guilty of crimes of negligence.

2. The FBI recommends dropping the case.

From a legal standpoint, that’s absurd. And that’s how the media seems to be reacting. The folks who support Clinton are sheepishly relieved and keeping their heads down. But the anti-Clinton people think the government is totally broken and the system is rigged. That’s an enormous credibility problem.

But what was the alternative?

The alternative was the head of the FBI deciding for the people of the United States who would be their next president. A criminal indictment against Clinton probably would have cost her the election.

How credible would a future President Trump be if he won the election by the FBI’s actions instead of the vote of the public? That would be the worst case scenario even if you are a Trump supporter. The public would never accept the result as credible.

That was the choice for FBI Director Comey. He could either do his job by the letter of the law – and personally determine who would be the next president – or he could take a bullet in the chest for the good of the American public.

He took the bullet.

Thanks to Comey, the American voting public will get to decide how much they care about Clinton’s e-mail situation. And that means whoever gets elected president will have enough credibility to govern effectively.

Comey might have saved the country. He sacrificed his reputation and his career to keep the nation’s government credible. 

It was the right decision. 

Comey is a hero. 

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Speaking of heroes, my book is rectangular.

The Crook Versus the Racist

Do you remember the detailed policy proposal that came out of the Clinton campaign last week?

Neither do I.

I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m just saying that if Clinton said something about her policies, I didn’t notice. The Clinton campaign has wisely ditched facts and reason for pure persuasion. And it is working.

As you know, Trump has branded Clinton as “crooked.” And that branding has stuck. If you doubt it, watch ABC’s Martha Raddatz literally imagine the word “crooked” in a Trump tweet she is reading about Clinton.

But while Trump has defined Clinton as crooked, the Clinton campaign has put together an impressive confirmation bias case that Trump is a racist. As I have described in prior posts, none of the “evidence” is real. Trump talks about other countries, illegal immigrants, and religion. He has no proposals about race. But the facts are not important to politics. Never have been, never will. What matters is that the Clinton side – including parts of the media – have branded Trump a racist, and it is sticking.

Let me be perfectly clear about this: In a contest for the office of the Presidency of the United States in 2016, crooked beats racist every time. So if things stay the same, Clinton wins in November.

Trump has made us afraid of immigration – and fear is a powerful persuader. But Clinton countered by making us afraid of Trump! Persuasion-wise, it was exactly the right play. It would be nearly impossible to make voters less afraid of terrorism while things are blowing up all over the world. But you can make voters more afraid of Trump, and that strategy is working for Clinton.

Speaking of confirmation bias, this week we saw Trump retweet an image that included a Star of David symbol, or at least a six-sided star that looks a lot like one. An article at Breitbart mimicked my writing about Trump – while crediting me – and suggested that Trump cleverly made this “mistake” on purpose to enjoy the free publicity it generated. And while I appreciate the credit, that’s not how I saw it this time.

My best guess is that Trump and his campaign didn’t notice that the image looks like the Star of David. I say that because I didn’t notice it the first time I saw it. To me, this situation looks more like an unfortunate oversight than either a sign of dog-whistle racism or a clever ploy to get free media. But that’s not now the public is seeing it.

Thanks to the confirmation bias trap set by the Clinton team, Democrats are primed to see it as one more piece of circumstantial evidence that Trump is a racist.

And thanks to the confirmation bias trap I set with my own writing about Trump’s persuasion tactics, Trump supporters are primed to see the tweet as a clever ploy to get free publicity. 

But I’m reasonably certain Trump’s retweet of the offensive image was not intentional, either as a racist dog whistle or as a clever plan to get free advertising. The worst thing the Trump campaign could do is create more confirmation bias for the racist branding Clinton put on them. There isn’t the slightest chance someone on the Trump team thought tweeting a racist-looking image was a good tradeoff for all the free publicity.

The Democratic convention is July 25-28. Until then, Trump’s team is probably holding back their best attacks. The last thing Trump wants is a stronger opponent to replace a weakened Clinton at the last minute. As soon as Clinton is locked-in at the convention, expect to see Trump bring out the big weapons. I assume he is saving the best attacks for then. That would be the smart play here.

Trump needs to reframe this situation in August to win, because otherwise crooked will beat racist. So look for Trump to reframe things this way:

Clinton has a race-first view of the world that is corrosive to society.

Trump has an American-first view of the world that creates healthy competition with other countries.

If Trump sells the reframe, he wins in a landslide. And if Clinton’s email scandal escalates, Trump also wins in a landslide. You might see both.

Note: I endorsed Hillary Clinton – for my personal safety – because I live in California. It isn’t safe to be viewed as a Trump supporter where I live. My politics don’t align with either candidate, but backing Clinton reduces my odds of dying at the hands of my fellow citizens. (And yes, I am 100% serious. It just happens to be funny by coincidence.)

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If you think this blog post uses some words more than others, you might like my book. 

The Time I Accidentally Plunged Europe into Economic Uncertainty

I have to confess that I wasn’t paying attention to the Brexit issue until after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. I wondered why so many folks from England had been asking me what I thought of the persuasion angle the Brexit “Leave” side was using. I always responded that I wasn’t following the topic and had no opinion.

Now we learn that the winning side of the Brexit vote was using what they call a Trump strategy of ignoring facts and appealing to emotion. The persuasion apparently worked. The “Leave” side won, defying both polls and expert predictions.

As regular readers know, I have been blogging for months about Trump’s powers of persuasion, and how he often ignores facts because facts are worthless for persuasion. I predicted Trump’s success thus far in the election cycle based on his tools of persuasion. And I documented his techniques as I went.

What you might not know is that I have a lot of blog readers in the United Kingdom.

So…did the winning side in the Brexit vote learn how to use Trump’s persuasion tools by reading my blog? And does that make me directly responsible for the coming economic collapse in Europe?

Well, probably yes, and probably no. For many months I’ve been the loudest voice to say that Trump’s strategy of ignoring facts and using persuasion was a winning system. And I’m reasonably sure my writing made it to the folks in the Brexit “Leave” movement. A-a-a-a-and I can be persuasive.

But I don’t think Europe will fall apart because of the Brexit vote. I base that prediction on what some of you already know as the Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters.

The law states that whenever humans have plenty of warning of a pending disaster, we always figure out how to avoid it. That’s why the Year 2000 Bug turned out to be no big deal. That’s why we haven’t run out of oil, or food. That’s why we haven’t all died in a nuclear war. If we see it coming, we get out of the way. We’re extraordinarily good at that.

Humans have enough time to figure out how to make the Brexit situation work. It will be inconvenient and unpredictable for some time, and economies hate that. But in the long run, no big problem. That’s my prediction.

But if I’m wrong, and the Brexit vote destroys Great Britain and Europe because of my Trump blogging, please don’t add that accomplishment to my Wikipedia page. It’s already bad enough.

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If you think the Brexit vote was the wrong decision, you might like my book. And if you think the Brexit vote was the right decision, you might like my book. 

Hypnotizing My Dog, Snickers

I often write about the importance of context. Watch how important context is to my dog, Snickers. 

And yes, humans are almost as easily influenced by context. They just don’t realize it.

If you like this video, there is no reason to believe you would also love my book and recommend it to everyone you know. And remember to check out the larger Persuasion Reading List I put together for you.

Persuasion Update: Clinton Vs. Trump

For months I have been saying mostly good things in this blog about Trump’s powers of persuasion, and mostly bad things about how the Clinton campaign does persuasion. And yet Clinton has a solid lead in the polls, assuming the polls are accurate. How can that be?

The quick answer is that Clinton’s side is totally winning the persuasion battle.

Confused?

Clinton’s side includes more than her campaign team. It also includes pundits, supporters on social media, and the liberal-leaning parts of the mainstream media. While the Clinton campaign itself has been notably weak with its persuasion game, the folks on her side have been viciously effective at branding Trump a crazy racist.

Nothing else in this election matters. 

Viewed through the Master Persuader filter, the facts of this election don’t matter because facts are not persuasive. The lies don’t matter. The flip-flopping doesn’t matter. Trump’s command of the issues don’t matter. Trump’s insults don’t matter. Policies don’t matter. Trump University doesn’t matter. Even charges of sexism are not enough to derail him. 

The persuasion kill shot against Trump is the accusation that Trump is a crazy racist. When you combine crazy and racist, you have a lethal persuasion cocktail. And that’s what the Clinton side has done.

The folks on social media tested lots of accusations against Trump until they found traction with the “crazy racist” theme in all its forms. And Clinton’s campaign team wisely amplified it.

Remember when social media was saying Trump wasn’t serious about running, or that he was a clown, or he was doing it for the money? Those accusations didn’t get traction, and Trump swept them away with his continued success. 

But the accusations kept coming, one after another, until the combo of crazy and racist bubbled to the top, as measured by social media virality. The Clinton campaign recognized the crazy racist theme as the best approach and started hammering on it through a variety of “fear Trump” message. Fear works when facts do not. And “crazy racist” is totally scary. And totally working. You can test it for yourself by asking any anti-Trumper to list the top three reasons for disliking Trump. Some form of “crazy racist” will normally come out on top. Persuasion-wise, every other reason is just noise.

If you’re new to what I call the Master Persuasion Filter, and you’re on the Clinton side, you probably don’t see any persuasion there at all. What you see appears to be facts that say – without a doubt – that Trump is a crazy racist. But all of that is confirmation bias and persuasion.

For example…

There was the time Trump called for a wall to keep illegals out, and social media said securing our borders – which we already try to do – is racist.

There was the time Trump suggested mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and social media said upholding current law is racist.

There was the time Trump suggested banning all Muslim immigrants until we figure out what the risk is, and how to deal with it. Islam is a belief system open to all, not a race, but social media branded it as racist.

There was the time Trump didn’t denounce the KKK on CNN in a timely fashion. He says he didn’t hear the question because of a bad earpiece, and he had denounced the KKK before the interview and several times after. Still, that one awkward interview created confirmation bias of racism because the public was primed to see it as such.

There was the time Trump called the judge in his Trump University case “Mexican” even though the judge was born in this country of Mexican immigrants. That seemed racist because voters were primed to see it that way. Keep in mind that Trump called Ted Cruz a Canadian for months and you didn’t see that as racist.

As a legal strategy, it makes perfect sense for Trump to accuse the judge of bias. That way, if the ruling goes against Trump, he already has a defense in place. And realistically, no one believes the judge could give a favorable ruling to Trump without some awkwardness at his next family gathering. But voters saw Trump’s accusations about the judge’s bias – a bias all humans have – as racist because they were primed to see things that way.

And there are all the times Trump calls Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas, which is more silly than racist. But once you put it in context with the rest of the confirmation bias, it looks like some sort of pattern.

The facts don’t matter. Facts never matter. What matters is that the “crazy racist” label picked up enough confirmation bias to stick like tar. The Clinton team won the month of June. And unless something changes, Clinton will saunter to an easy victory in November.

But remember also that Trump always makes aggressive first offers before negotiating to the middle. I predicted a softening of Trump’s immigration proposals and you see that happening now, right on schedule. Those changes in his proposals won’t be enough to change the election results because facts and policies are meaningless for persuasion. Trump would have to do far more to shake off the crazy racist label.

I now update my prediction of a Trump landslide to say that if he doesn’t give a speech on the topic of racism – to neutralize the crazy racist label – he loses. There is nothing he can do with policy tweaks, debate performances, advertising, interviews, or anything else that would remove the tarring he received from the Clinton side. But a persuasive speech could do it.

How?

Trump needs to convince Americans of all types that he loves them and plans to protect them from outside forces. Here’s a simple and persuasive formulation for that:

Example: “If you are an American citizen – of any color, ethnicity, gender, or religion – I love you, and I’ll fight for you. I support the melting pot of America, and I will fight to protect each of you from crime, terrorism, and economic risks.”

That’s the basic idea. Talking about policies won’t be enough. To become president, Trump has to embrace the melting pot. And he has to embrace the value of American diversity, loudly. 

If Trump doesn’t directly address the elephant in the room – the accusation that he is a crazy racist – he loses. If he makes a case for the value of American diversity – and does it persuasively – he wins in a landslide. 

I expect him to do the latter.

Note: I endorsed Hillary Clinton for president – for my personal safety – because I live in California and it isn’t safe to be seen as a Trump supporter here. But my political preferences do not align with either candidate.

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Bonus thought: If you were Trump, and you didn’t want a stronger candidate to replace Clinton at the last minute, you would hold back your best attacks until she secures the nomination. My guess is that Trump’s strongest attacks will start in late summer.

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If you think you can’t be persuaded to do dumb things, you might want to buy my book.

The Humiliation of the American Male in 2016

Perhaps the biggest unreported story of this presidential election is the humiliation of the American male. Unless I’m blinded by confirmation bias – which is entirely possible – it seems to me that the humiliation of American men is now institutionalized in the media.

Check out this commercial for dishwasher detergent. And take careful note of the American man’s v-neck sweater. That’s the uniform of a man who is owned by a woman. 

You’re laughing because you know it’s true. How many of the married men reading this blog have received those same sweaters as “gifts” from women? Personally, I’ve received about 25 over the years. None from men. I received three of those sweaters so far this year. I throw them away. Nice try.

Many of you can’t talk about this topic without being accused of sexism, losing your jobs, and being cast out of your social groups. But I can talk about it because I endorse Hillary Clinton for president. I did that for my personal safety, because I live in California, but still, I’m on the progressive side now. That gives me some extra freedom of speech.

If you are following the election polls, you know that Clinton has greater support from women while Trump has greater support from men. Trump probably can’t win the presidency unless he gets massive voter turnout from American men. 

Will that happen?

The dishwasher soap commercial should give you a hint of how big that turnout might be. You might not notice the size of the coming tsunami because American men generally don’t voice their humiliation in public. That would just make it worse.

But in the privacy of the polling booth, the men who don’t talk are free to act.

You can criticize Donald Trump on many dimensions. You can say he’s not really a great businessman. You can say he’s offensive. You can say he lies. You can hate his position on issues. You can say he has insufficient policy details. And lots more. But I think we all agree that Melania never asks Donald to go back to the store because he’s too dumb to buy the right kind of soap on the first try.

I predict you will see the largest male turnout of any presidential election in American history. 

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In the interest of completeness…

In my opinion, Hillary Clinton has already done a great service to the country because – win or lose – she already effectively broke the glass ceiling on the most visible and important job in the nation. If she falls short of the presidency, few people will think it was because of gender discrimination against women. Clinton has been a strong role model for women and deserves massive credit for that.

STOP TELLING ME IN YOUR MIND THAT WOMEN HAVE IT WORSE IN THIS COUNTRY THAN MEN! 

I’m sure women do have it worse than men in this country in lots of ways. But it isn’t a competition. My point is that the psychological state of American men in 2016 is one of persistent humiliation for simply being male. That sense of humiliation might be more imagined than real – which is not an important distinction – because either way it affects how people act.

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If you don’t like v-neck sweaters, you should read my book while not wearing one.