August 8th, 2016
I don’t know about you, but I like to keep up with Dilbert creator / proto-Trumpkin Scott Adams.
Adams likes to brag about how awesome his political predictions are because he wishcasted Donald Trump to the Republican nomination early on. And good for him!
But just because you make one correct prediction, you probably shouldn’t go getting chesty all over the internet.
Here, for instance, is another prediction Adams made recently that didn’t work out so great:
“I’ve been watching the Democratic National Convention and wondering if this will be the first time in history that we see a candidate’s poll numbers plunge after a convention.”
Oh? Oh.
See, Adams didn’t learn his lesson about predicting from the Republican convention, when he said that Trump’s convention speech “was an A-” that “on a strategic level” “was a strong performance.” Such a strategically strong performance that Trump became the first candidate to come out of his convention speech with people telling pollsters that they’re less likely to vote for him!
But here’s the thing: Adams doesn’t always get things wrong. Because he likes to cover himself with lots of predictions:
February 22, 2016: “To solve for scary, Trump needs Mark Cuban as his running mate.”
Oh boy. That’s a tall order. Because it turned out that not only did Trump not get Cuban as his running mate–Cuban eventually endorsed Clinton. Not that that mattered, because it turned out that Trump didn’t need Cuban at all . . .
April 26, 2016: “By October you will hear that Trump is “running unopposed” for all practical purposes.”
“Running unopposed”? Wow! I haven’t seen that #hottake yet, but in fairness, it isn’t October yet, either. So Adams kept trucking into:
May 19, 2016: “I’m teeming with confirmation bias, but from my kitchen counter, I don’t see how it can go any direction but a Trump landslide from here. . . .”
“Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, knows how to win. The Clinton campaign doesn’t show the same level of talent, at least in terms of persuasion.”
Got that? Adams “didn’t see how” it could be possible go in any direction other than a Trump landslide–not possible!–because the Clinton campaign team just blows. Well, here we are five weeks later and:
June 28, 2016: “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.”
But, you see, Adams wasn’t contradicting himself because he was crediting Clinton’s “side” as opposed to her “campaign.” So don’t worry. He’s totally got a handle on the politicky stuff. Nothing he couldn’t master in an hour.
But then he went out with a post on June 28 and dropped a bombshell:
“The Clinton team won the month of June. And unless something changes, Clinton will saunter to an easy victory in November.”
I know what you’re thinking: Wait. What? From Trump “Running unopposed” to I “don’t see how it can go in any direction but a landslide” to “Clinton will saunter to an easy victory in November”? Wtf?
Don’t worry, though. Dilbert’s here to explain: “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.”
Not confused enough? Adams wasn’t done yet: “If [Trump] makes a case for the value of American diversity – and does it persuasively – he wins in a landslide.”
That’s a . . . lot of predictions. And surely one of them will work out.
Unless, of course, Clinton wins a 4- to 7-point victory because we haven’t had a presidential landslide since 1984–for complicated political and demographic reasons that someone who studied politics for, say, an hour and a half, might understand.
If you ranked all the surprises of 2016, right up near the top would be that the guy who draws Dilbert is a wannabe-PUA herb.
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At least he isn’t “Marshal Petain”
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What is a ‘PUA herb’ ?
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PUA = Pick up artist. A term used in certain dark corners of the internet (or by good reporters like Mr. Last who are aware of those dark corners) to refer to guys who teach young men techniques to seduce young women. There are whole blogs devoted to such dark arts — there are even so-called Christians who claim to use “Game” techniques (“game” is another term for these ‘talents’ at picking up women or more broadly, at dealing with the fairer sex) to deal with women (but in a Godly way!)
Herb = dork, a nerd, a doofus, etc. I forget the exact origin of this word, although I suspect it is amusing.
Jason O. — I have a funny, quick Matty Y. story. A libertarian economist I like linked to a liberal economist’s blog post and when I clicked over there the post started off with this:
“The very sharp Matthew Yglesias writes about…”
I couldn’t read any further, even after it was recommended by someone I like — Last has ruined Matty Y. forever for me and anyone was calls him “very sharp” is not worth reading through.
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[…] agree with Jonathan Last's assessment that, in the modern age, we are unlikely to see another Presidential win by more than 7 points, […]
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I thought Adams’ early writings about Trump were good, but after a while he got so inside the narrative that he couldn’t look at it with any objectivity. Also, I thought Trump would tone it down for the general and actually learn a little about policy, but he’s incapable of doing that.
NB: I loathe Trump and have for a long, long time. When Muppets creator Jim Henson died I asked my roommate “why does someone like Jim Henson die while Donald Trump lives?”
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Also, Adams forgot that his white male perspective is not universal, which is really surprising given how much he knows about psychological biases (as detailed in his book, which really is quite good).
Jason O. August 9, 2016 at 11:13 am
Historically only the likes of Matty Y. receive that level of scrutiny/fisking/drawing/quartering round these parts. Make no mistake, it’s both entertaining and necessary.