Dilbert as Pundit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Some of the freshest commentary on the 2016 Presidential election has been coming from Dilbert creator Scott Adams. Adams has endorsed Clinton, as he\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/08\/dilbert-as-pundit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dilbert as Pundit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some of the freshest commentary on the 2016 Presidential election has been coming from Dilbert creator Scott Adams. 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{"id":18273,"date":"2016-08-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=46"},"modified":"2016-08-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-12T00:00:00","slug":"dilbert-as-pundit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/08\/dilbert-as-pundit\/","title":{"rendered":"Dilbert as Pundit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

S<\/span>ome of the freshest commentary on the 2016 Presidential election has been coming from Dilbert<\/em> creator Scott Adams. Adams has endorsed Clinton, as he says, \u201cfor my own personal safety,\u201d but he has also stated that he doesn\u2019t vote. He wants to maintain objective distance from the fray, and analyze the rhetorical strategies, successes, and failures of each candidate. <\/p>\n

On July 24<\/a>, for instance, he examined Clinton\u2019s successful use of \u201cdark\u201d to describe Trump: \u201c\u2018Dark\u2019 is a linguistic kill shot from the left. I assume all the TV pundits on Clinton\u2019s team got the message to use the word \u2018dark\u2019 right out of the gate. I confess that at first I didn\u2019t recognize how good it is. It\u2019s designed, Trump-style, and it didn\u2019t come from an amateur. The Clinton team is playing some serious 3D chess now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explains what makes this such an effective label: <\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201c1. It\u2019s unique. That\u2019s a Trump trick. You haven\u2019t heard \u2018dark\u2019 used before in a political context. That makes it memorable and sticky. And it brings no baggage with it to this domain because no other politician has been so labelled.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201c2. Dark makes you think of black, and black makes you think of racism (in the political season anyway), and that makes you reflexively pair Trump with racism even though it makes no sense.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201c3. Dark can describe anything scary. It invites the listener to fill in the nightmare with whatever scares them the most about Trump. That\u2019s a hypnosis trick. Leave out the details and let people fill in the story that persuades them the most.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\u201c4. Repetition. Dark is the kind of word that pundits can work into almost any answer when talking about Trump. That means you\u2019ll hear it a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Thanks to my son Woelke for pointing me to Adams\u2019s blog.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"