Jill Stein: People's State of the Union
Above is the link to the transcript of a speech by Jill Stein, the green party candidate for president.
I have been doing a lot of reading lately about the presidential campaign currently taking place. I have noticed an interesting trend in opinions. A surprising number of people have equated voting this time around to picking the "lesser of two evils". With our two-party system, a lot of voters feel that they MUST pick one of the two. We often forget that there are actually other people running for president as well.
I took an online quiz recently that was intended to tell me which candidate my opinions most closely aligned with. I was matched with Jill Stein. Ever since then I have been doing quite a bit of research about the third party candidates. That is how I found this speech.
I am posting this because I think a comparison could take place. I think looking at this speech and those of more well known candidates could be interesting. How does this differ rhetorically from campaign speeches that more people heard? Is there a noticeable difference between candidates that are striving towards an office that they might actually win, and those, like Stein, that have little to no chance of campaign success.
Hmmm... Reading her speech, Jill Stein seems to have rhetoric down to a science.
ReplyDeleteFirst she begins with obvious, if soft, demonstrative rhetoric, pointing out the things wrong with the other candidates and nicely correcting them.
Then, she goes straight into logos, quoting straight facts and figures. It's impossible to argue with that. However, these figures have a definite pathetic feel to them, dealing with poverty, lack of health care, and broke college students. I think that everyone can relate to at least one of those issues, and it gets a strong emotional response.
And then she continues to a pure pathetic argument, talking about a lack of equality "liberty and justice for all" and all that jazz.
It seems to me that she is a master at rhetoric. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I just think that she is very good at what she does.
It's interesting because Jill Stein talks about how polarizing our two-party system is, almost explicitly advocating the need for a third party. She is able to use pathos and logos to do that by intuitively outlining a need (logical progression), while simultaneously appealing to sympathizers who are also fed-up with partisan politics.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting to me because the democratic party is also trying to appear less polarized (the repubs not so much) in an attempt to kinda seem like the common-sense vote. This similarly has a logical, emotional, and credible appeal with voters.
This speech seems to be highlighting a question I brought up before this one, where Karl Marx said that the two-party system would be the end of democracy. Personally, I feel a compulsion to vote and be informed in american politics, but I hate "The lesser of two evils" feeling that I get every time I turn on the TV. I'm on board with you here, but how will we deal with the chaos of a government restructuralization?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Tim, the whole feeling of the Lesser of Two Evils, totally sucks. Voters tend to feel that they are throwing their votes away, just to prevent the worst offender to be in charge. It would be interesting to see at what point in our government history the elections truly became a joke.
DeleteOne of the interesting things this speech has in common with both Obama's and Romney's is the direct tie to a sense of American traditions and American values - it's interesting to me how fully Stein pulls on iconic Americans and iconic American events (like the New Deal). She brings in canonical texts from the American tradition to support arguments about taking more people into consideration.
ReplyDeleteThird parties in the United States are historically so tricky and never have in my lifetime had a serious chance (the most serious was Ross Perot, but he flamed out in part because he had a completely incoherent vice-presidential candidate who looked silly on stage with Al Gore and Dan Quayle). They are game changers, though - many Democrats will never forgive Ralph Nader for taking votes from Gore in 2000, and Perot likely took votes from Bush too.
The time seems ripe for a political reshuffle of parties - but who knows. At present, the Republican party is more and more split on ideological lines, and whether they can navigate through the divides rising about social issues and economic disparity is unclear. But they probably will.