What’s Important NOW?

Tomorrow’s election is very critical because voters will be turning up to the polls and casting their votes on this election. WHO WILL COME OUT ON TOP?! Voters will be coming to the polls with many issues flowing through their minds before inking or electronically finalizing their votes to be processed. The voters will be coming to the polls with an idea in mind but many will not have made up their mind until just before casting their ballot, and the sad reality is that many will not even make it to the polls on what could be the biggest election ever for this country. Many will be heading to the polls with individual reasons as to who they cast their ballot for, for instance pro-life vs. pro-choice, foreign affairs, security, or economy. However, for many minorities it will be a huge day for the future of their livelihood in the United States. Obviously, because of the very opposing views that Clinton and Trump have on immigration make it a very pivotal piece of tomorrow’s vote.

Trump has really hurt himself when it comes to the immigrant vote with his comments on the national stage, however Clinton is known for being more of the open arms type when it comes to immigration. On one end of the spectrum you have someone who wants to build a wall and get rid of all immigrants without proper documentation. On the other end you have a woman who is more caring, sympathetic, and loving when it comes to people. For Clinton, it is bigger than documentation, Clinton sees people for who they are and would be more prone to take them under her wing, which illuminates an emotional response from the minority population. This is a way that Clinton continuously builds on her pathos and gains the upper hand on Trump and the minority vote. People see that Clinton is very open and willing to work with minorities/immigrants and these people are hurting and they find Clinton as the more appealing nominee.

NODAPL=SILENCE

In North Dakota there is a havoc being stirred up because of the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline which could possibly end up destroying sacred places, and pose a huge ecological risk which could potentially poison a numerous amount of water supply. At the end of the day Clinton has yet to take a stance on this trending topic and by not taking it stance it is hurting her vote with the indigenous people of America. There is a number of Americans in this country that have indigenous backgrounds who could possibly feel oppressed as well as not defended by Clinton choosing to take the stance of “silence”. When it comes down to it I can side with Hillary not wanting to speak out on how she feels about the situation because of the October surprises as well as the reopening of her investigation by the FBI. Clinton is not in a good spot to take a stance with everything going on around her. However, I do believe that which ever candidate comes out on this situation in the next couple of days could gain the indigenous vote through taking the most appealing stance. It is just a matter of which candidate will take the opportunity and run with it.

#NoDAPL

I believe Hillary needs to come out and use an emotional appeal (PATHOS), so she can solidify herself not only on caring for the people involved in this situation but also to solidify the indigenous vote. The people being affected by this are very worried for their health and what is going to happen in the process of the construction. Clinton needs to come out with a plan of action and what route will be most valuable to the benefit of the people affected. Everyone involved will be at ease when a plan of action comes out that will be appealing to the people. If Clinton does come out before Trump on this situation it will benefit her tremendously by increasing her ethos and painting her as the image of being a capable future Commander-in-Chief. However, if it is not appealing to them it could crash and burn and essentially lose the vote of the indigenous people because they will feel racially oppressed against. This is a pivotal situation that needs to benefitted by one of the candidates it is just a matter of which one will take it and run with it!

Head Down Through The Finish Line

In an appearance this past Sunday at a Baptist Church in North Carolina, Clinton spoke amongst a predominately black audience. Clinton was surrounded by five black women who have lost their children to gun violence or altercations with police. Clinton has made it a priority of hers’ to address predominately black audiences throughout the rest of her campaign down the home stretch. In this appearance Sunday, she jokingly said “love thy neighbor as you love thy self” and went on to mention that it can be hard in the background of politics. This was a subliminal shot at Trump, which was very successful at her appearance after you could hear the crowd begin to engage and laugh. Clinton further went on to take shots at Trump during conversation about systematic racism, she said “my opponent has been involved with that and much more.” Lastly, Clinton concludes with “I have stood next to him for four and half hours through all three debates, to just further prove that I have the stamina.”

In this last appearance we see that Clinton is very interested in gaining the black vote, and made it her priority moving forward. Once again, Clinton is using “intend to gain an audience” being the black voters which is a pivotal point in winning this election. I found that Clinton did a fairly good job of putting herself way above Trump at this rally through reading the transcript. Clinton was able to successfully take shots at Trump, through the rhetoric she used she was able to make it subliminal and not to controversial. However my favorite quote is when she stated she has the stamina. Clinton used the “stamina” claim to take another shot at Trump, thus trying to prove through the fact that she was able to stand next to him for hours at a time that she was in good health. Overall thought this was a beneficial outing for Clinton, and only gave her more momentum for the black vote.

FINISH THE DRILL

In the upcoming debate, Clinton will be looking to solidify the nation’s vote. In doing so, Clinton will be focusing hard on locking in the votes of minorities and immigrants who are directly affected by racial injustice. During this debate I expect Clinton to lay out the plan she has to bring about racial equality in all aspects of life in this country, she needs to be very specific and straight to the point to give the American people belief in her and what direction she is going to head upon entering the presidential office. Right now, Clinton has tons of momentum heading into the last debate and needs to keep rolling to solidify her spot as the nation’s top presidential nominee.

There are two pieces of presidential debate that Clinton will be honing in on. They are “stated proposition” being racial injustice, and “intent to gain the attention of an audience” by gaining the attention of all people directly affected by the racial injustices that take place in this country. Clinton has pulled away substantially in the last two debates, as they say “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it”. Clinton needs to continue to hammer down the topics she has been which include racial injustice and much more.

Presidential debate predictions: What to expect from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

Clinton stated in the last debate that Trump owed an apology to America for the alienation and verbal abuse of minority groups which has divided America which he was apart of. This accusation further separated herself from Trump and has helped her gain momentum with the minority and immigrant vote. I look for her to continue with these tactics to solidify her vote with the people directly affected with racial injustices.

Political Campaign Advertisements: Framing of Hillary Clinton in regards to Gun Control

Although the 2016 presidential campaign differs from traditional campaigns, one thing remains constant, the effect political ads have on voter decisions.

Just like artists frame their pieces, campaigns aim to frame candidates. Rhetorical framing happens when an object, situation, or person has been described in a way that leads the audience to believe a certain way. In this campaign, Trump frames Clinton as untrustworthy, hypocritical, untransformative, and weak. While she tries to frame herself as nurturing, knowledgeable, relatable, and strong.

Nurturing, Protective Mother

Hillary Clinton informs her audience of her stance through the use of positive, story-telling ads. In one ad title My Mom, the daughter of a victim of the Sandy Hook Shooting describes the loss of her mother, the principle of the school. It starts with wedding pictures and the daughter telling the story of planning her wedding with her mother. Scenes of ambulance lights and a news article covering the shooting appear on screen. Next the daughter says,

“No one is fighting harder to reform our gun laws than Hillary Clinton”

The narration continues with the daughter stating that Clinton “reminds me of my mother”.

In this ad, Clinton uses testimonial to reach her target audience of younger, college educated women. Hillary frames herself as a loving caring motherly figure. This ad extols Hillary virtues through the use of narrative and story-telling.

Hypocrite Hillary

While Clinton frames herself as protective and nurturing in her gun control political ads, Trump attacks her practices during his speeches.

Donald Trump: "Hillary wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment." pic.twitter.com/jEppTyaUbS

— POLITICO (@politico) August 9, 2016

Because harsh backlash happened after Trump’s comment, “2nd Amendment people” should “take care” of Hillary, the NRA, The National Rifle Association, decided that they should intervene and distribute an attack ad instead of doing something more extreme (which could have been implied with Trump’s controversial quote).

In this particular ad, the NRA focuses on framing Hillary as a “hypocrite”. The ad starts with black SUVs escorted by police vehicles pulling up to a private jet. Hillary steps out of the SUV and armed guard walk her to the plane. The ad says that Hillary “tours on private jets protected by guards for thirty years, but she doesn’t believe in your right to keep a gun at home for self defense”. Because Trump did not attach his approval, this ad has the ability to attack Clinton as hard as it wants. PACs do not abide by the same rules as candidates. In fact, most attack ads which occur during a normal political campaign are paid for and distributed by PACs.

What does framing mean for the election?

With citizens already heading to the polls for early voting to elect the next president, it is important to understand how framing effects their decisions. For those who watch NRA’s ad, they could see Hillary as a hypocrite or untrustworthy. For those who watched the My Mom ad, they could see Hillary as someone who will nurture The United States of America back to health after the gun violence occurring across the country.

“Losing an Election for Dummies!” by Donald Trump

My oh my what a weekend it was. Unless you’re living under a rock you’ve heard about the now infamous video of Donald Trump demeaning women and bragging about being able to commit sexual assault. For many potential voters, the Donald has officially jumped the shark in terms of saying shocking things, and his support has plummeted. If you want my hot take, I’d say there is no longer a path to victory for Donald Trump unless something absolutely catastrophic happens to the Clinton campaign.

The thing about saying something so dark and indefensible about women is that they literally make up over half the general electorate. There’s no coming back from this. Whatever female support he had mustered to this point has essentially evaporated, and he’s not going to win Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, etc. without that support. As it turns out, female voters were put off by him reducing them to pieces of meat that he can sexually assault because he’s of high status. Shockingly, female voters weren’t very thrilled at his subsequent response to the video wherein he “apologized if anyone was offended”. It would seem as though the female electorate wishes to be seen as individual human beings, and not objects.

I feel bad for Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. She is likely working extremely hard to present Donald Trump as presidential to the American people, and then the whole thing gets set on fire by the sheer reality that surfaced in the leaked tape: Donald Trump is not presidential. He does not act with the decorum or respect for human decency that the President of the United States must exhibit at all times. He cannot be reigned in, and his message is failing as a result.

And the great comedy of it all? Donald Trump’s MESSAGE could have won this election. In a year where people are hungry for change in D.C., Trump’s populist political movement could’ve ridden the wave of anti-establishment all the way to the Oval Office–if only that message weren’t being sabotaged every step of the way by it’s messenger.

Accountability Check

In the past debate, Clinton was able to show the nation that Trump needs to be held accountable for his actions. Clinton spoke about Trump bashing a federal judge who was born in Indiana whose parents were “Mexican” therefore he could not be trusted. This is another example of Clinton making sure that the nation does not see this behavior as normal and acceptable.

In another instance, Clinton spoke about how Trump never apologized to the current POTUS for calling him a non-american because he was under the impression that Obama was not born in the U.S. Clinton deemed that a racist lie in the last debate, and that Trump needed to apologize to not only the POTUS but the country of America as well. Clinton finished these remarks by stating that Trump once again needed to be held accountable for his racist remarks and actions. Clinton was able to separate herself in this past debate when it comes to a racial standpoint because of these statements against Trump.

Clinton used “confrontation” one of the six elements of debating to bring public attention and focus on to his actions, and she was able to publicly condemn him for his racial remarks. While America was watching this most definitely helped her ethos as a defender and as the candidate that cares and will fight for racial justice in America. Personally, I found her remarks to be very beneficial to her campaign in my eyes because of the fact that Trump did not try to defend himself on the accusations because he realized that his actions were being watched and he was being held accountable and the whole nation now sees him as a different person than they may have before this second debate.

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Now shake hands and be friends

It seems for once that our major parties agree on one issue. What would that issue be? Gun control.

While many of the details of the 2nd Amendment rhetoric differ, even our polar opposite political parties agree that guns in the wrong hands can be detrimental. On Tuesday October 4th, Vice Presidential candidates Mike Pence and Tim Kaine took the stage for their first debate in the 2016 election.

Initializing the controversial question concerning the issues The United States is facing with law enforcement and race relations. Elaine Quijano brings up the Dallas Police Shooting. She said, “Do we ask too much of police officers in this country, and how specifically do you address the chief’s [David Brown] concerns [with mental health funding and putting off blame on cops]?”

Kaine addressed the chief’s concerns by discussing the issue of background checks.

“I’m a gun owner. I’m a strong 2nd amendment supporter, but I got a lot of scar tissue because when I was governor of Virginia there was a horrible shooting at Virginia Tech and we learned that through that painful situation that gaps in the background record check system should’ve been closed and it could have prevented that crime. So we’re going to work to do things like close background record checks and if we do, we won’t have the tragedies like we did. One of those killed at Virginia Tech was named Liviu Librescu. He was a 70 plus year old Romanian holocaust survivor. He had survived the holocaust, then he survived the Soviet Union take over of his country, but then he was a visiting professor at Virginia Tech and he couldn’t survive the scourge of gun violence. We can support the 2nd amendment and do things like background record checks and make it safer and that will make police safer too.”

The attention was focused on the issue of allowing individual’s with mental health concerns the ability to bare arms. He does this through the use of enthymemes. Not once in his narrative did Kaine mention that the shooter, Seung Hui Cho, had a history of mental illness. Instead he allowed the audience to make the connections.

After a lavish story of growing up with a father who served as a police officer, Mike Pence made a statement that showed his agreement with Kaine. He said, “at the risk of agreeing with you.” If one goes to Donald Drumpf’s campaign website, s/he will find a list of Drumpf’s 2nd amendment and gun control policies. Listed among them is this:

According to a Pew Research survey in July 2015, 85% of the public – including large majorities of both Republicans (79%) and Democrats (88%) – favored making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks. There was also bipartisan support for laws to prevent people with mental illness from purchasing guns. [Pew Research, Jan. 5, 2016]

So it seems that for once, Both Democrats and Republicans see eye to eye on the issue of mental health and gun control. It will be interesting to see if this issue will be brought up in upcoming debates this year.