There is a segment of cynics who see Donald Trump’s path to victory
running directly through the default reptilian brain of a lame electorate. One
of these cynics is Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert. Adams
insists that Trump will win in a landslide because he is a master persuader,
but Adams is operating on an old model. It’s like when people say “Americans
vote based on their pocketbooks” and I have to correct them and say “some white
Americans vote based on their pocketbooks.” That used to be enough to determine
elections. It is not the case so much anymore. In the same way, some white
people are susceptible to Trump’s brute strategy.
Adams seems to be locked in a
fantasy that the electorate is as culturally non-diverse as Dilbert’s office (which has more animals than black people). FACT:
Black people exist and will not vote for Trump. FACT: Hispanic people exist and will not vote for
Trump. FACT: It is not likely that a majority of women will vote for Trump. The
math has already been done and in order for the Cheeto-toned conman to win, he
must win a proportion of the white male vote that has not been achieved in
recent history. Sixty-three percent of the white male vote no longer sweeps
someone into the Oval Office.
The Adams scenario also assumes that Hillary
Clinton does absolutely nothing. Sure, it’s possible that she will decide to go
on vacation from now until Election Day, but that’s not bloody likely.
Admittedly, Trump presents some challenges as a brute, but just because Scott
Adams may have been savaged by d-bags in his miserable past does not mean that
d-bags are not vanquishable. Cynical Scott Adams believes that we are too
animal-like to be moved by any rational answer to Trump’s barrage of bluster.
He believes that Clinton's inability to appeal to our survival
instinct will seal her doom. He is wrong. Unlike the characters in his comic strip, real people
are not monolithic stereotypes. They are a little more complex and there are
simple ways to appeal to their humanity. One of Clinton’s winning strategies is
when she talks about her mother and how she was raised. Not only does it
personalize her (which people seem to like), it also reminds other people of
how their mothers raised them to be. Regardless of how many jerks are out
there, how many of them were actually raised to be like Donald Trump – to lie,
to mock, to bully, to boast? If Clinton frames the election around a picture of
a mother’s best aspirations for her children, It will put the elusive
ceiling on Trump’s success. Interestingly enough, the story Clinton loves to
tell about her mother is how she was taught to stand up to bullies. I think
that story will come out a couple times this Fall.