Fox News host Jesse Watters at Turning Point USA's 2021 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida on July 19, 2021 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
On Fox News Tuesday, co-host Jesse Watters desperately clung to his own hand-picked data to claim there would be no so-called "blue wave." The show got even more interesting as Watters had to face how wrong he was and what he'd say to viewers.
"It's not a red wave. I don't think we're gonna get our $5,000 checks," Watters said at the 8 p.m. hour. "Democrats had a good night. It's not a great night. That remains to be seen. But if it is a great night you're going to leave me alone, right?"
Twenty-year practicing psychotherapist Elliott Connie, who offers short, easy-to-understand analyses of the brain and how people think, explained that Watters is just as guilty as other Fox News viewers of confirmation bias and living in a silo of delusion.
Watters' miscalculation came largely from his denial of every ounce of data available. The other thing that Connie said Watters and other Fox hosts neglect to understand is the goodness in the American people.
"The miscalculation that the Republicans made is they did not understand that human beings are inherently good," said Connie. "We genuinely don't like watching each other suffer, by the most part. And B we don't want to suffer ourselves. When you start saying we're going to secure the border, it's very easy for people to get behind that and say, 'Rah! Rah! We love it, we love it.' But then when there are videos of unarmed people being executed in broad daylight, it causes us to be like, 'Wait a minute.
We didn't know it would look like this.'"
He explained that it then makes it easier for people to say, "I can't vote for this because I feel bad. I feel wrong to vote for more of that."
The more significant miscalculation, Connie said, is that Republicans caused pain throughout the entire American citizenry, the economy, gas prices, grocery prices, etc. People were hurting going into the polls. So when you ask people to go into the polls while hurting and vote for a thing that they think is going to hurt them more, that's a very difficult psychological obstacle to overcome and they couldn't overcome it."
He said Republicans didn't pay attention to humanity and the good nature of most people.
"As a consequence, it led to massive losses. So, I hope that we all learn a lesson here that America, you can have whatever policy you want and people can vote for whatever policy they want, but we can no longer vote for and support human suffering," Connie closed.