2018 Candidates: Drop the Trump Rhetoric
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“Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife.”
“Look at [Carly Fiorina’s] face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”
“Such a nasty woman.”
"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."
Then candidate Donald Trump, without a doubt, carried no hesitation when displaying his temperament. With the non-stop, constant media coverage of his aggressive and outlandish speeches, Donald Trump was catapulted to the front of the debate stage and finally to the office of President of the United States. A post-mortem analysis of the 2016 election has determined numerous factors that could have contributed to the rise of Donald Trump. This election analysis, which has taken politics by storm, is not new. Politicians have started to analyze everything about their campaign from the demographics of the district they hope to represent to the color of the tie they choose to wear. While every single one of these concepts may indeed subtly influence a race, the rhetoric and diction a candidate employs can be universally agreed as critical in an election. Of course, candidates may struggle in persuading hard-core partisans, but their rhetoric is certainly influential in determining more independent or undecided voters. Candidates who employ Donald Trump’s pugnacious and contentious rhetoric in upcoming elections should not expect a similar success at the ballot box.
The 2017 elections offer an interesting pallet of ideas. Candidates from Ed Gillespie of Virginia to Roy Moore of Alabama have employed Trumpian rhetoric in their speeches, holding back nothing. Ed Gillespie’s failure in Virginia should not be attributed to a lack of Trump-esque language, but rather the rejection of it. Voters who intent on voting for Trump policies certainly stuck with Gillespie, but it was the moderates and more urban voters that rejected the candidate at the ballot box. A similar situation appears to be arising with the Alabama Senate race. While Roy Moore’s fall in the Alabama polls can be attributed to the sexual scandals plaguing his campaign, they only serve to strengthen the parallel between Trump and Moore. Rhetoric such as “they started to create new rights in 1965, and now, today, we’ve got a problem” only serves to incite the public.
There are those who believe that divisive rhetoric is appropriate for a divided nation. The media rarely chooses to refrain from portraying division in our society today. Regardless of which side is truly justified, a rift certainly has emerged between several groups - Black Lives Matter and the police, Israelis and Palestinians, and Republicans and Democrats all constantly appear to be endlessly seething with one another. But with all this being said, another trend is emerging: Americans are just angry that other Americans are angry. We’re tired of being tired.
The American electorate faced a similar circumstance recently, back in 2007. 9/11 did little to help the already present animosity and tension between racial groups; socio-economic differences were only worsened with the collapse of the banks that were “too big to fail.” Plagued by the worst economic recession in decades and a war in the Middle East, America had an exhausted electorate. Cue the entrance of Barack Obama, a fresh-faced boy deus-ex-machina from Chicago. Preaching the idea that “there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America,” and that “There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America,” Obama successfully convinced a nation near boiling point that we are, at the end of the day, one nation. As we progress into 2018 and 2020, it is easy to see that America, once more, has an exhausted electorate.
So, to candidates vying for an office in the near future, whether City Council or Senate, focus on unifying language: work to be a unifying leader.
This is a satirical website. Don't take it Seriously. It's a joke.