Nov. 7, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
13:47
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| Hey everybody, come on in here. | |
| It's time for another update on the most exciting midterm election of my entire life. | |
| In fact, it's the only exciting midterm election of my entire life. | |
| I didn't even know there were midterm elections until recently. | |
| That's how much I didn't care. | |
| But this one's exciting, and let me tell you what I love about this. | |
| First of all, there are so many different races, and it's all people I don't really know. | |
| So unlike a presidential race where you really know the characters, it's all these characters I don't really know. | |
| I think I've seen that one that time on an interview. | |
| Am I confusing this one with that one? | |
| So for most of what I'm listening to, I have no idea who the players are. | |
| I barely know what states they're talking about. | |
| And then they show the statistics, or the score so far, the votes. | |
| They're changing, and it's too early to know how it'll end. | |
| In other words, none of the numbers are really something you should depend on. | |
| So, I have this weird experience of completely enjoying this experience of not understanding who any of the people are, I can barely tell which one's the Republican or the Democrat, and I'm not sure I care too much. | |
| But it's also very exciting because it's close. | |
| It's super close. | |
| And I was just watching CNN coverage, and keep in mind that by the time I'm done with this periscope, the entire situation may have changed. | |
| But what I just watched bordered on hilarious and could be getting funnier. | |
| So I want to allure you to something that could be really fun to watch for the rest of tonight. | |
| I think I've said this in a few different ways, but I'm going to say it in a more extreme way than I have yet communicated it, which is that there is a best-case scenario for President Trump, which is slightly different than the best-case scenario for Republicans. | |
| You know, there's a lot of correlation between what's the best for the president and what's best for Republicans. | |
| It's about, you know, it's like a 98% what's good for one is good for the other, right? | |
| But there are a few things in which the president could come out ahead while the Republicans as a whole did not. | |
| And that one unique situation looks like it's developing and it looks like this. | |
| Gaining Republicans in the Senate. | |
| So he's even more powerful in the Senate. | |
| So he gets all of his Supreme Court nominations. | |
| And he can put off being removed from office. | |
| So he's got a good power block because he'd have a stronger Senate. | |
| But the only thing that could make the president stronger as a president... | |
| As if the Democrats held a narrow majority in the House. | |
| It's absolutely, if you could step back and say, you know, I'm not biased for one team or the other, but I want to create a situation, like it's a little chess game, in which the objective of where to put the pieces would be to make the President of the United States even more powerful than he already is. | |
| Now, if that scares you, because you're not a fan of the president, I would suggest that the more powerful he is, the nicer he's gonna be. | |
| Because it's been quite clear that he uses his provocative rhetoric to break through the ground and control the conversation and just squeeze everybody else out of the conversation. | |
| But as he becomes successful, And as he gets things done and as his legacy grows, he just doesn't need to be that person. | |
| And all of his advantage would be to become kinder and nicer and to tone it down. | |
| And he now has two years of pretty solid accomplishment. | |
| The things that he hasn't done, here's the best part. | |
| The things that the president has not succeeded at, Require cooperation of at least a few Democrats. | |
| Now, as long as the Democrats were in a very weak position, they could simply be the resistance party. | |
| Yeah, you know, it's like the chihuahua nipping at your heel. | |
| You know, nobody wants to have a dog bite them, but it's a chihuahua. | |
| You see, just scoot it out of the way. | |
| You don't even kick it. Maybe you just nudge it with your foot away. | |
| So, the Democrats could just play resistance all day long and you couldn't get anything done in immigration or healthcare, infrastructure, you know, prison reform. | |
| You can think of a bunch of stuff. | |
| All this stuff that the president needs to do next... | |
| Is the stuff that he's already sort of solidified as, you know, presidential powers plus Senate powers. | |
| So the things that, you know, any gains he has with North Korea, well, they'll stay, right? | |
| Nobody's going to undo that. | |
| The economy will probably keep on going pretty well. | |
| He still can do his executive orders. | |
| So he's going to be sort of locking in a half-legacy And the part that's conspicuously weak, the only thing he lacked to be able to get stuff done is to have the Democrats slightly in control of the House. | |
| Now, I'm not saying it's going to go that way. | |
| It could be a surprise. | |
| It could be that the Republicans keep both houses as possible. | |
| But, you know, most of the weight of opinion, and this one, I don't have an opinion which way it's going to lean. | |
| I just, you know, my jokish prediction was that it would be a tie, meaning that we wouldn't know tonight. | |
| You know, there would be something too close to call. | |
| But the perfect situation... | |
| For President Trump to broker deals between two sides that are quite different, but you need somebody who's got a little more leverage than you can have under the current situation. | |
| So I will be surprised if you don't see some good things getting done. | |
| But the interesting thing to watch tonight is to see if the result comes out in that narrow That narrow little lane that would just suggest that the president is the luckiest person who ever lived. | |
| Because I think that's his sweet spot, where people are kind of close to a perfect balance. | |
| Because here's the basic principle. | |
| When things are close to a perfect balance between two sides, the only person who has power is the one who could go either way. | |
| Nobody else is part of the decision, right? | |
| So if you've got this perfect balance of the Senate and the House and neither one can get anything done, the only person in the country who can make a difference is the one who can say, you know, I'm gonna go over here this time. | |
| I'm gonna make this happen. | |
| So watch if that's what happens. | |
| See if there's a growing realization That the president's power might increase. | |
| But I feel quite confident that that would not be a bad thing because he has far more personal incentive plus patriotic incentive to do a good job. | |
| And he needs a little bit more leverage over the legislative process to get a whole bunch of stuff done that most people want to get done. | |
| So I think it will be similar to sort of a Bill Clinton situation where he figures out how to make deals. | |
| All right. I would love to hear... | |
| Newt Gingrich's opinion on what I just said. | |
| I've told you before, there's some people who, if they disagree with my opinion, I'll immediately change my opinion. | |
| If it's something legal and Dershowitz has a different opinion, I'll just change my opinion to whatever he said, because that's the smart play. | |
| And it's the same with Newt Gingrich when it comes to stuff like Getting legislation through. | |
| So if he disagreed, I'll change my opinion. | |
| All right. So how much fun is it watching the results be so close and switching back and forth? | |
| It's totally like a video game in which whoever you think is your player, you have lots of Lots of data coming in from the screen saying that, oh, your player lost this round. | |
| Your player is behind. But then others will be, oh, yours is winning. | |
| And you're getting these little charges of whatever the chemical reaction is that makes you feel happy. | |
| And it's actually weirdly exciting in a way I've never seen before. | |
| Am I the only one having this experience, by the way? | |
| Is everybody... I think most of you are watching this, or you wouldn't be watching this periscope. | |
| But are you having an actual, almost video game, smartphone-like experience? | |
| Because even, so here's CNN, right? | |
| And you can't see it, but the point is, the color, the production, look how it's framed. | |
| This is actually even perfect framing. | |
| So the quality of the production is really, really high on this. | |
| So whoever is doing the directing, I'm not sure what job that is, but both the networks, Fox News as well, both of the major networks, at least news networks, they've sort of pulled out the stops In terms of bringing their best, most interesting on-air talent and their design. | |
| So even the backgrounds and the colors, the sounds. | |
| Have you noticed that the videos that they're using for their explainers are way better than you've ever seen before? | |
| They've all got these animated maps and they're scooting things back and forth and saying, well, if this goes this way and this goes this way, And I swear, I do not know what's happening most of the time, but it's exactly the same feeling I get if I go to Las Vegas and I play one of those Chinese-themed video games with a big screen. | |
| Have you ever played one of those? | |
| You put your money in, and then a whole bunch of things happen on a screen, and sometimes it gives you some money back, but most of the time it doesn't, but you have no idea Why sometimes it's winning and sometimes it doesn't, and it doesn't matter, because you're knowing it wouldn't change the result. | |
| So it feels exactly like that, yeah. | |
| It feels like watching slots where I'm getting winners and losers, but there are just enough winners that I get a little payoff. | |
| All right. So, let's see how things are progressing. | |
| Just checking in. | |
| Let's go over to Fox News, the other universe. | |
| Fox News projects Democrats gain control of House. | |
| Okay. | |
| So the interesting thing will be by how much? | |
| Yeah, so I'm just looking at that right now. | |
| Yeah, so Fox News projects Democrats gain control of House. | |
| So that would go the way everybody thought. | |
| But we'll see. | |
| Could we be surprised? | |
| Now, the real question will be, will we know for sure tonight? | |
| And how close will it be? | |
| Will the blue ripple... | |
| Turned out to be a big victory for the President because it gives him more leverage than he would have had even holding both houses. | |
| Alright. That's it for now. |
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