We are at Stage 3 TDS heading into Stage 4

A couple of years ago, Scott Adams laid out a three part forecast as to how his opponents would characterize Trump. I thought it a prescient forecast and likely to be correct. Over the past year I have on many occasions thought - "more evidence we are at stage three." The problem was, I could not recall the exact formulation. If you don't record it when you see it, it disappears. Nothing I searched on turned it up.

Until today when someone referred to it in sufficient detail that allowed me to locate it.

From The Turn to “Effective, but we don’t like it.” a forecast by Scott Adams made on July 30, 2017.

Prior to President Trump’s inauguration, I predicted a coming story arc in three acts. Act one involved mass protests in the streets because Hillary Clinton’s campaign had successfully branded Trump as the next Hitler. Sure enough, we saw mass protests by anti-Trumpers who legitimately and honestly believed the country had just elected the next Hitler. I predicted that the Hitler phase would evaporate by summer for lack of supporting evidence. That happened.

I also predicted the anti-Trumpers would modify their attack from “Hitler” to “incompetent,” and that phase would last the summer. That happened too. The president’s critics called him incompetent and said the White House was in “chaos.” There were plenty of leaks, fake news, and even true stories to support that narrative, as I expected. Every anti-Trump news outlet, and even some that supported him started using “chaos” to describe the situation.

Now comes the fun part.

I predicted that the end of this three-part story would involve President Trump’s critics complaining that indeed he was “effective, but we don’t like it.” Or words to that effect. I based that prediction on the assumption he would get some big wins by the end of the year and it would no longer make sense to question his effectiveness, only his policy choices.

How does the anti-Trump media gracefully pivot from “chaos and incompetence” to a story of “effective, but we don’t like it”?

The three stages:

Stage 1 - Trump is Hitler

Stage 2 - Trump is incompetent

Stage 3 - Trump is competent and we don't like it

We are at Stage 3 TDS.

Perhaps there is a fourth stage. Trumps accomplishments are demonstratively good for many of the core constituents of the Democratic party. Record levels of employment for African-Americans and Hispanics, rising salaries, revitalization of the blue collar sector, particularly manufacturing, improving trade deals, declining military engagements abroad, historically low crime, declining opioid deaths after a decade of rises, etc. We are approaching the point where it is not only churlish to criticize that effectiveness but also counter-productive. How does the base respond when you reject that which is making their lives better?

So perhaps

Stage 4 - Trump is competent and achieving good things but he is crass.

I have been seeing foreshadowing of Stage 4.