The "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy" Trick: A Close Kin to the "Lucy With the Football" Trick
The Federal Way Mirror's political columnist, Bob Roegner, who apparently thinks the Municipal League of King County "Guidebook" (or whatever those Establishment puppets call their main tract) ranks right up there with the political tracts of Thomas Paine, and as something that today's political theorists should be enlightened by rather than bemused by, is using the old "self-fulfilling prophecy" trick of deflating expectations for those candidates that don't get the prediction of victory, or placing, that is bestowed on those who do (the hoped for self-fulfilling prophecy), and thereby effecting the bandwagon effect for candidates he likes or his newspaper likes, and depressing the votes for all others. If the trick works, it goes something like this: a respected, or half-way respected, political columnist, who must know something, writes that somebody is going to lose an election, which means that a vote for this candidate who he says is going to lose will be a wasted one, so either don't bother voting at all or join the bandwagon (sometimes called the "if you can't beat them, join them" syndrome).
Some pundits, like Roegner apparently, make these predictions without even taking the most negligible of polls (even one of those unscientific on-line polls might show me winning, after all). Similar to the "Lucy With the Football" trick, they get people's hopes up that elections & democracy are endeavors of some mystery and intrigue until, of course, they weigh in with all the grandiosity of a prophet, and elections thereby become merely predictable, which is precisely the point of a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's Psychology 101. Hey, Charlie Brown, don't for a minute think your vote will get through that goal post when a columnist/predictor is holding the football for you. With any luck, Federal Way will see right through this -- a.k.a. Common Sense.
-- Mark Greene, Candidate for Federal Way City Council, Position 1
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