A political candidate for the masses, Bernie Sanders invigorated millennials and made outlandish promises like free college and healthcare on his quest for the presidency. He gained enormous popularity by preying on the wants of the lower class and left winged extremists. In his commercial, “Works for Us All”, published during the democratic primaries in 2016, he states that as president he will take down the rich 1 percent and make them pay their fair share of taxes. He then continues by promising better wages and greater equality among all people. The promises sound great, and it empowers his target audience, but his false promises and lack of statistics to back up his claims weakened his argument among the undecided voters. Sanders opens …show more content…
his ad by describing the struggle of working long hours, but still finding it hard to make ends meet. He adopts a sympathetic tone towards the working class citizens, and attempts to speak directly to them by telling them they’re not alone in the fight.
He then turns his focus on targeting the top 1 percent, while standing with the working class. He uses a graph to show the wage earnings of all of the working class combined is less than the top elites by far. That is a staggering statistic that forces a reaction from his audience and commands their attention. Once he established a strong connection to his crowd, he then follows with his promises that he will fulfill as president. His first promise continues to bash the wealthy elites, by saying he will go after them and make them pay their fair share in taxes. In a seamless transition, Sanders shifts his tone to be more uplifting and empowering towards his audience. The music also shifts to an up tempo beat that changes the emotional connection from aggressive to peaceful. He follows by assuring better wages for workers, and stronger equality standards for women in the workforce. After inciting rage towards the opposition, then following with talk of positive change, Sanders concludes his ad by saying that a revolution of change is necessary and that we must have unity to bring about change. The music towards the end of the …show more content…
commercial intensifies, along with Sanders’ voice projection almost in tandem with each other. The powerful ending to his ad was great for inspiring his voters, but turned off the undecided voters because it was very outlandish, and it isolated him as the severely left-winged nutty candidate for the democrats. Sanders’ opening statements set the stage for a great political ad. By starting off with gloomy music and speaking directly to the viewer, he establishes his sympathetic feelings with the audience. He appeals to ethos and pathos at the very beginning validates him as a speaker, and commands the audience’s attention because he has created the façade that he is one of them. Sanders makes it seem like he is on the same level as those struggling to get by, which is a very powerful tool that he utilized from the beginning, and strengthens his ethos significantly. Direct eye contact, along with sorrowful facial expressions and negative body language convey subconsciously to the audience that he is also not happy with the current state. By using his calm tone of voice, Bernie was able to compound his use of ethos with pathos. The soothing tone creates a more relaxed atmosphere for the audience, and makes them more inclined to pay attention to the entire ad. Sanders’ first 5 seconds of the commercial were packed full of rhetorical devices that captivate the audience from the start. He established impeccable credibility with his appeal to ethos and drew in an already curious audience with his use of pathos and the warm environment he created. Following his potent intro, he transitions into a visual explaining that despite working long hours, the top elites still account for a greater income by a large margin. This appeal to Logos is the single most powerful part of his commercial. Transitioning to a more aggressive approach after establishing great credibility and showing sympathy towards the audience was a genius approach. The twist of emotion keeps the viewer listening and are more inclined to listen to his political views. The visual features a graph that shows the working class dwarfed by the powerful elites by the amount of total wealth that they control.
By showing them this frustrating graphic, Sanders is able to incite anger towards the elites that are backed by the Republicans, thus drawing more voters in from the right. I believe this is the most valuable use of a rhetorical strategy in the commercial because it doesn’t solely speak towards a particular niche or party affiliation. The visual puts the working people of America against the top 1 percent. The majority coming from the working class, Bernie is able to speak to a broad spectrum of people in a manner that unifies them under one goal. After playing with their emotions and grabbing the audiences’ attention, he then leads into his political promises of, “making wall street pay their fair share,” “ensuring living wages for all,” and “creating equal pay for women”. He sells his campaign promises by speaking them in a lyrical tone, which is soothing for the audience to hear and appeals to pathos by targeting their joyful emotions. The middle portion of Sanders’ commercial did a good job of continuing the momentum of the powerful intro by providing visual evidence of the wage gap between the working class and the elites; he was able
to demonize the rich and put them against a hurting working class. Then following with an appeal to pathos, he was able to create a stronger bond with the audience. To wrap up his commercial the music reaches a peak; constructing an inspiring environment. He turns back towards the viewer, commanding direct eye contact, he tells them that he approves the message in an assuring tone of voice, furthering his appeal to ethos by making him seem like a great orator. This appeal was minor, but did create a slight stimulus towards my emotions. He then follows by declaring that he will create a “political revolution.” This statement is very damaging to his argument because all of his credibility established with the unsure voter is tarnished by revealing his true socialistic colors. Republicans tend to favor independence and the free market, so by using the words, “political revolution,” he is throwing away the bipartisan approach and focusing on the far left that tends to favor socialistic ideals. He then concludes with a strong recovery by saying he will, “create an economy and democracy that works for all, and not just the powerful few.” In saying this, he kind of patches the wounds that his prior socialist statement inflicted. He reunites his audience into one pool of people, and speaks to them as a strong leader reminding them that the working class is a union that must stand as one against the elites. His pitfall of isolating the left in his attempt to appeal to pathos with feelings of rage, was slightly restored by speaking to them and appealing to a happy form of pathos. Sanders’ political commercial overall was very well constructed and executed by his speaking style. He continued to build the sense of unity with his viewers throughout the first half of the ad, but by saying he was going to, “start a political revolution,” he isolates his focus towards one group of people, and completely shuts out the average voter with a normal set of morals. The end of his ad ties the audience back together with each other, and the audience is left with a good taste in their mouth. This ad was successful during Sanders’ race against Hilary Clinton during the democratic primaries, and helped him established a pivotal foothold against a powerful opponent.
Nobel Prize winner, professor, author and economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz, wrote “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.” Joseph E. Stiglitz served during the Clinton administration as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and is former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank. Throughout his piece Stiglitz argues how America’s economy is not likely to succeed in the future. Stiglitz creates a strong and credible argument throughout his piece by using the appeals of ethos, pathos and logos.
Cesar Chavez was a Hispanic migrant worker who fought for the rights of other migrant farm workers. His strategy for fighting inequality was through nonviolent strikes, boycotts, and marches. In this interview of him by a Christian magazine, Chavez uses logical and religious appeals, and allusions to justify his usage of nonviolent resistance in order to gain civil rights.
Bernie Sanders is running for President of the United States of America as a democratic candidate. His competition for the primary elections is Hillary Clinton, a well-known politician with plenty of experience under her belt. Bernie is running as a non-traditional candidate, which is a main factor of why his campaign is extremely successful and popular with the American people. A recent political ad released by Sander’s campaign team called “Real Change” emphasizes his family values and dedication to the working class, fighting for the votes of the average American. The ad implies Bernie is the right man for the job due to his long history of experience and commitment to the issues he believes in. This political ad illustrates how Bernie
He uses allusion and repetition of words to prove his points about racial discrimination. His main goal is for the country to stay united and put discrimination aside, and continue the path of the ones who came before us. Obama alludes to the civil war by saying,” continue the long march” which illustrates the march that the north did to the south to stop race discrimination, as well as the fact how the north opposed with slavery and wanted to make south stop (1). The other device he uses in his speech was the repetition of words by using the word “more” to express his main goal and focus. Although the country is so called “free” his main goal is still to improve America in every way possible and put race discrimination completely aside. In the speech, he expresses his tone by saying,” more just, more equal, more free, more caring, and more prosperous America.” Which goes to the fact that he is trying to even improve America more in every way possible. If we improve our country even more, then we will not be having any issues in our
...e the rich have increased. The fact that wages have dropped dramatically for the working class says that the rich are more important than the middle working class.
Inside of this video, this guy really targets an issue nobody has really been presented. He shows charts that talk about how we Americans think our wealth is distributed. We think distribution is doing alright. Americans think that the bottom 40% is getting a bit of money. They also believe that the middle class is doing reasonably well. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In the video, he breaks it down a little bit getter. He shows a graph that shows how money is actually being distributed. The poorest of poor don 't even register on the poverty line. The middle class is barely making it. And then there is this huge difference between "the rich" and the poor. It is proven that the 1% of America has 40% of the entire nation 's wealth ("Wealth Inequality in America."). The bottom 80% of America only share 7% of the nation 's wealth among themselves. The top 1% has 50% of the stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. The bottom 50% of Americans only own 0.5% ("Wealth Inequality in America."). The poor is not just getting by but they are scraping and fighting to get by. Now that it is clear that there is a lot of poor people in America, it is important to figure out how to fix
New Nationalism focused on eradicating economic inequality. In 2007, the top 1 percent of Americans owned 23.5 percent of the nation’s wealth (Pear, 2011). This problem has increased, not gone away, since Roosevelt addressed it in 1910. Unfairness in the tax code has become a prominent topic of political discussion. President Obama called for alterations to the U.S. tax system, which allows millionaires to pay lower rates than middle-class workers like teachers and firefighters, in his 2012 State of the Union address (“Remarks of President Barack Obama – As prepared for delivery State of the Union Address,” 2012.). In December, the president traveled to Osawatomie to speak. He echoed Roosevelt’s New Nationalism, saying he believes “this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share” (Fox, 2011). Although he spoke in Os...
Wilhelm, Heather “The Great Income Inequality Sham” Real Clear Politics. May 2013. Web. 29 Apr 2014.
..., infrastructure investments, and direct aid to hard, pressed states and cities. He says all of his goals to fix America would take just one term, it may take two terms, so change would slowly and done right.
In the United States there are four social classes : the upper class, the middle class, the working class, and the lower class. Of these four classes the most inequality exists between the upper class and the lower class. This inequality can be seen in the incomes that the two classes earn. During the period 1979 through the present , the growth in income has disproportionately grown.The bottom sixty percent of the US population actually saw their real income decrease in 1990 dollars. The next 20% saw medium gains. The top twenty percent saw their income increase 18%. The wealthiest one percent saw their incomes rise drastically over 80%. As reported in the 1997 Center on Budget's analysis , the wealthiest one percent of Americans ( 2.6 million people) received as much after-tax income in 1994 as the bottom 35 percent of the population combined (88 million people). But in 1977 the bottom 35 percent had about twice as much after tax income as the top one percent. These statistics further show the disproportional income growth among the social classes. The gr...
Bernie Sanders is promising an opportunity to all Americans to obtain healthcare. Universal health care will be a great relief for those who do not have health care and cannot afford it. Many people and families go on living without having health care because it is too expensive. For those who do not have Health care, are constantly in fear knowing that if they get sick, it complicates the situation of where to go and get help or better themselves because it is so expensive for them. As of right now, there are approximately Over Thirty-Three Million Americans that still do not have insurance, Seven million, which happen to be immigrants coming from poor families. (Barry-Jester, Casselman). Bernie Sander believes “ Health care is a right, not a privilege.” (Sanders). He stands for equal treatment, everyone should be able to obtain health care at a reasonable and affordable price so that all people can get the help that they need without having to struggle their way to pay for it. Not everyone chooses where they are born and what family income they come from, it shouldn’t have to be that way with healthcare. The Affordable Care
Krugman points out how despite the obvious and ever growing gap between the rich and middle class in terms of wealth increase, Republicans tend to vote for tax cuts for the rich and for decreases in funding for programs that benefit the middle and lower classes of society, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Cutting funds for these services puts the middle and lower classes at even more of a disadvantage than they already were. Meanwhile, the rich receiving more tax cuts means they receive more money, furthering the economic wealth gap and increasing the money they can spend to influence politics. Krugman suggests the solution to the problem is increasing taxes on the
Scarborough, Joe. “Top 1% Took 95% of Gains Since 2009.” Tampa Bay Times. January 21, 2014. Web. March 11, 2014. In this article the authors shows how income inequality has been changing over the time. He also tries to emphasize how large this gap has become by comparing income and taxation of the top 1% with the rest of the nation.
While the the 1%, are secured, no one is addressing the rest of the people. As the economy flourishes, housing, higher education and health care, and child care increases with it to the point where 30 percent of a person’s income goes towards housing. People are finding it impossible to purchase a house with their middle class incomes. People begin to fall out of the once stable middle class because too much is needed to be sacrificed in order to live in a stable home. In the shrinking middle class, “40% or more of the residents live below the poverty
Obama, Barack. “Obama’s Powerful Speech On Income Inequality.” THEARC. Washington, D.C., 04 December 2013.