The professional pollsters, prognosticators, pundits and legions of experts who predicted that Donald Trump didn't have a chance in hell of winning the presidency were proven wrong and given their lamentable track record, it's hard to take their predictions of that "blue wave" seriously.
One of those who got it right when he accurately predicted that the iconoclastic billionaire outsider would shock the world by defeating the heavily favored Hillary Clinton was persuasion guru Scott Adams who called it right as early as March 2016 when he made the call that Trump would win in a landslide.
The reason for his bold prediction? That unlike Mrs. Clinton, Trump was a master persuader with an ability to transcend politics as usual.
Adams is the creator of the enormously popular Dilbert cartoon series that lampooned life in corporate America and made him a very wealthy man, so much so that he is immune to the usual social media censorship, threats and ostracism because as Adams himself boasted, he has "f-u money" now.
Now Adams has another prediction and this one is equally bold at least in terms of the media narrative and that is that in two weeks America may see "the greatest turnout by Republicans, maybe ever" which he made in an exclusive chat with Breitbart.
Via Breitbart, "Scott Adams Predicts 'Greatest Turnout by Republicans, Maybe Ever' in Midterms":
He told Breitbart News it is too difficult to predict which party will win the November midterm elections, because there are too many local variations in state-by-state and district-by-district battles, "too many variables bigger than persuasion."
But he predicts that we will see "the greatest turnout by Republicans, maybe ever."
His explanation:
My hypothesis is that humans are primed by whatever they've already seen. So if they've seen a pattern, they've already fallen into it. And one of the patterns Republicans enjoyed in 2016 was having the other side be surprised. And they really enjoyed it - I'm talking about the kind of joy you can talk about over the course of your lifetime. And the Republican personality - I realize this is a gross generalization - is that it's not always about the talk, it's about the showing up. Republicans are going to show up. And they're driven by all the things people are talking about, but you cannot underestimate the fun, either. I'll tell you this: if the Republicans pull out the House [win] - I'm still thinking it's unlikely, only because other people say so and I don't know any different - it's because there's a shitload of Republicans who are saying to themselves, "They're gonna be surprised." It's predictable from the fact that they have felt that pattern and that payoff before. They see the same thing happening again, and are reminded of it.
Asked whether Democrats or Republicans have the more persuasive message heading into the final two weeks of the midterm elections, Adams notes that Democrats' claim that Republicans want to take away people's health care was undone with a single tweet earlier Thursday, in which the president promised to sort out any Republicans who dared propose denying coverage for pre-existing conditions - a move Adams called "magically good."
Republicans, he suggests, have a stronger message, in pointing to the "mobs" that the left have mobilized in protest around the country over the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other issues. Fear is the most powerful persuasive force, he argues. That - and the sheer fun of winning bigly - could drive GOP voters to the polls.Even though Adams hedged on whether the Republicans would be able to maintain control and block the boatload of investigations that Democrats are promising, his pointing out that the party may have shot itself in the foot by badly overplaying their hand on Kavanaugh and energizing conservatives should make for an anxious two weeks.
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