Clinton's Failed Campaign and Trump's Success

Hi all!

Presentations for senior projects are almost coming, so I’ve been thinking about how to structure and organize the research I have been doing so far—including what visuals and important cues to include. One side project that my advisor, Mr. Brady, and I have been thinking about is creating short mash-up videos of specific topics that I’ve talked about (i.e. Trump and Clinton’s use of clout language, Trump’s use of incoherent sentence, etc.) as an exciting visual aspect of my presentation. So far, I haven’t exactly thought of how to actually do this, but I’m thinking of using a site called “Factbase” that essentially allows me to look up any of Trump’s key words, which then shuffles through all of his transcripts and links me a video to where he says the specific words. I might also be using LexisNexis to help me search for specific transcripts of both Trump and Clinton’s language and video editing them into a software.

Other than that, I have been researching on the third presidential debate and some other interesting articles that I’ve come across.

NPR shows an analysis by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes that shows how Clinton’s campaign was, essentially, a failure in Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign. The first wound starts off with “Clinton’s private server, then the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the endless email dump stolen from campaign chairman John Podesta.” It is important to mention that not only Trump focused on how “crooked” Clinton was with using a corrupt private server, but also Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders. Left and right, Clinton was receiving high criticism on how her emails were essentially everything that was wrong with America.

However, Allen and Parnes mentions that the biggest wounds for Clinton were self-inflicted. Of course, every candidate has ghostwriters for every speech—including Clinton who had many of them. But according to Allen and Parnes, her very speech prep was problematic as she constantly brings uncertainty as a central theme (i.e. why she was losing working class whites, her biggest supporters in 2008). This uncertain theme damages Clinton as she loses herself in the very messages she says.

“Where exactly is the candidate herself in all this messaging mélange? Does she have something she really wants to say? Everyone agrees she has plans for every policy problem in the world, but voters want to know what's inside you. And they also want to know what's in it for them.”

Her broad distribution of power was, in fact, a damage that none of her advisors could control in a unified apparatus. Also, NPR mentions how Clinton’s longtime confidante, Huma Abedin, often shielded her from campaign stress, plus reinforcing her “penchant for privacy.” Abdein’s mystery reinforces the uncertainty of Clinton as well.

Another article from Slate I read generally explained Trump’s effective use of rhetoric and language—the fact that his shabby “babble” language was a win in the campaign. While I was obviously researching about this topic this entire time for each presidential debate, Katy Waldmen mentions some aspects that I’ve never came across:

• Trump is a pro at using discourse markers. He uses signpost words (i.e. well, OK, so) that add emotion to his language without changing meaning. Linguist Jennifer Sclafani pointed out that “most politicians practice talking with discourse markers in order to sound intimate, authentic, or unstudied.” For example, Trump responds to the question, “What do you think about single-payer health care?” with “First off, I believe that our families matter.” Like Obama or Clinton, Trump uses this tactic to show folksiness or spontaneous feeling. Another example includes, “Honestly, she should be locked up.”

• The sheer number of not semantically meaningful words implies that he is too distracted by the pleasure of vocalizing than to actually deliver meaningful substance. Trump will always emphasize all the “let me tell you”s he can possibly throw into his sentences to draw attention to the fact that he’s talking, whether or not he knows what he’s knowledgeable in that topic.

• Trump acts like a winner, even and especially if he sounds like a loser. The audience then beings to wonder whether Trump knows things they don’t. They feel uncertain. Therefore, the candidate is there to promise an end to their ambivalence and uncertainty.

• “Trump uses his speaking style to provoke the very negative feelings he cites as reasons to elect him. His angry, incompetent oratory tweaks us out; then he paints himself as the man to restore order and rightness to our crooked lives.”

Finally, I’ve come across this video months ago when I first began exploring this topic, and Waldmen introduces it as a way to explain how effective Trump’s use of simple sentences are. I’ll attach it below!

Next week, I hope I begin starting the mini episodes as a side project visual and begin telling you about some aspects of the third debate!

Thanks for reading again!

--Gina