Rush says Hillary being crooked and criminal won’t sway the electorate:

That’s what politics is to these people! There isn’t anything illegal. There isn’t anything shady. It’s just the new norm. And, of course, that fits perfectly with the devolution of our culture overall. But, anyway, when I saw Panetta say it — Can we all just move on? — I imagined practically everybody in the audience watching that show. “Yeah, yeah, ’cause I’m sick and tired of hearing about it,” people are saying. You know, you can only hear so much, and then there better be some action behind it or it begins to become a tune-out. We’ve been hearing about Hillary Clinton’s emails for how many months or years now? Well, it’s a long time, whatever it is. And we can have news stories about what’s in there. We can have information from Judicial Watch. AP might even run an occasionally a story about what’s in Mrs. Clinton’s emails. But if the sheriff doesn’t come calling, if the Department of Justice doesn’t… Better yet, if the FBI director goes on TV and says, “There’s nothing here,” then Panetta comes along… (interruption) Well, he did. He said, “There’s nothing there prosecutable,” even though there is. But he said, “There’s nothing in here that a reasonable prosecutor would pursue.” That’s it as far as the low-information crowd is concerned. So then Panetta goes on TV Sunday. “Can we move past this?” and I guarantee you there’s a chorus of people going, “Yeah, yeah.” But I… (sigh) Look, it’s always dangerous getting into See, I Told You So mode, because people interpret that as condescending and being negative, and I don’t intend to be either. But I have never believed it, because I have intelligence guided by 25, 27 years of experience. We are not going to “illegal” the Clintons out of office. Scandal is not ever going to harm them. There is no evidence that it ever has, and there’s plenty of evidence that people believe. There are all kinds of Clinton scandals that people believe, and it doesn’t matter to ’em.

I agree. The public is inured to corruption and criminality in DC.

Scott Adams says, violence plays against Trump:

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, who has gained new fame for his predictions and analysis of the 2016 presidential race, told Breitbart News on Sunday that growing violence in America benefits Hillary Clinton at Donald Trump’s expense. “All domestic violence, as long as it’s not terrorism, seems to play against Trump, because they have successfully framed him as the ‘divider,’ the one who is dividing society,” Adams said in an interview via FaceTime. Adams described the political effect of violence in the context of his overall theory of persuasive techniques, which he says are shaping the election more than rational arguments about policy and experience.

Adams is right.

This brought to mind a thought on political strategy.

People today want things to be easy. Yes they want government to change course. But they don’t want the change to be difficult. People today do not have balls, on the whole, and the people who have not yet formed a political opinion, or who can switch between Donald and Hillary, have even less balls than most. They do not want the hard slog, they want the easy trot to victory.

Right now, Donald is all alone whenever you see him. In the media, the corrupt Republican Establishment is deserting him, the Democrats are against him, the media is against him, the Mexican government is against him, Hollywood is against him, Robert Deniro is against him, and so on. And every time we hear of his candidacy on the news, it is him, alone on a stage fighting, be it with Hillary, protestors, the media, the terrorists, the establishment, and so on. The more alone he looks, and the more forces that are allied against him, the bigger and more numerous the challenges look by comparison, and the more difficult fixing them will appear to be. He needs to start emphasizing the impressive group he leads.

In essence people, and especially mushy moderates, are seeing a “twig-snapping” image in the amygdala consisting of a lone Donald, outside of the group, standing by himself, facing a massive lying media, a corrupt Republican establishment, the criminality in DC, the economic problems of the entire world, a collapsing healthcare system, global terrorism, Hollywood idiocy, leftist protestors, angry world leaders, and on and on. People hate all of those things. But human instinct being what it is among the mushy moderates who have not joined him, they don’t want to join Donald’s David to fight all of those Goliaths alone, because it looks difficult and dangerous.

In the brain, there is a natural tendency for people to see him as prone to lose, given all the forces allied against him, and that will make the mushy brains that decide elections dissociate themselves from him. People, and especially the mushy minds who could support either the Republican or the Democrat, and have no preference between the two, are like that. They are not in this to slog through the good fight, no matter the cost 0 those people are already with Donald. The mushy voters want the good fight fought easily so they can cruise in when the winning starts.

What Donald should focus on doing now is to make himself appear as one leader of a massive group of powerful forces and personalities that cannot be stopped. He needs to show that law enforcement is behind him. He needs a massive rally with thousands of cheering Police officers, maybe in blue and gold “Make America Great Again” T-shirts and hats, overflowing the venue, where he accepts the full support of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association from its leaders, thanks them for fighting with him, and promises to never betray them like others do so readily today.

Then, a massive rally where he accepts the support of retired enlisted Military personnel – as the only candidate who will not risk the lives of our military pointlessly overseas, or leave them on the field of battle to die alone and unsupported. Another for Border Patrol, another for Obamacare care victims, another for industry and manufacturing victims who lost jobs, another for coal, another for victims of violent crime and their families, and so on.

At each turn, personalities who are known to the public, and who support him in each field, should be highlighted. The meeting in Milwaukee with Sheriff Clarke was exactly what was needed, only on a massive scale. Every problem Donald is going to destroy, he needs to show that he has an army of powerful, pissed off people behind him, and he needs to confer that his victory will not just happen, it will be easy because of all the forces fighting with him.

This will show him to not only be the type of person people get behind, and be inside “the group,” but it will make him look more powerful himself, and the problems look easily quashed.

It will also put Hillary outside the group, and begin to make her look small, weak, alone, and unable to face those problems, compared to Donald. I am not sure there even are any impressive people she could trot out in that party of mental midgets, physical defectives, and future Darwinian victims.

These are all the type of “executive summary,” twig-snapping images which the amygdala looks for – and in r-selection, making things look easy, and your opponent look alone, is how you get the mushy voters in the middle on your side.

But most important will be the Police, though. If he can create the image that the Police support him (and by extension his supporters), that will be its own kind of “twig-snapping” stimuli in the brains of liberals and the public. It will immensely discomfit the left, even as the moderates quickly determine which side they want to be on when that fight goes down.

The weak minds that are scanning and deciding such matters based on twig-snapping stimuli are often filtering things through the schoolyard lens. Right now, Donald may be the biggest kid in the schoolyard, and he may be able to fight all of those bullies and win, but to the amygdala, all that flashes through is an image of him about to confront all of those massive bullies by himself. That is a prescription for everyone to stand off to the side and wait to see what happens.

What people need to see is that all of the strongest kids who everyone likes on the playground are joining Donald and making his side invincible, and the fight is going to be unusually easy because of it. If he issues that twig-snapping image to the nation’s amygdala, those weak minds who have yet to decide which way they are going to break will align with him.

That is what Adams means when he says each incidence of violence is now helping Hillary. Each incidence of violence is making the fight appear more arduous, and making it look like his fight will take forever, and have resistance at every turn. That is bad when times are still relatively r. We need signs now that it will be easy and fun.