Rhetorical Analysis Of Bernie Sanders Speech

Bernie Sanders is a socialist democrat whose main platform is helping the middle and lower classes through jobs programs, increased minimum wages, and additions of social safety nets. He knows who his main audience is. They are younger voters who traditionally do not vote as often as older voters. These older, predominantly white, voters generally lean more conservatively. In order to secure his predominantly young audience, he is focusing on issues that impact them more, issues such as climate change and cost of college. He is focusing less on things that matter to the voters he has already lost, the older white voters. His rhetorical use is extremely similar to how many other politicians speak, and is similar to Buber’s position on audience interaction. He begins his speech by appealing to the idealistic side of the young voters and those who are in the lower sections of the economic ladder. He explicitly states “This great nation and its government belong to all the people, not just a handful of billionaires” (Sanders) in order to. He says typical campaign rhetoric about not remaining part of traditional politics and instead be something novel, and anti …show more content…
That is the reason for his dramatic uptick in popularity, something that almost no political pundits or probable even Sanders himself foresaw. He still will most likely not win the nomination, but his goal of driving the political discussion to the left seems to be happening. His ability to make his audience believe strongly in his cause is something that has been difficult for Hillary Clinton to replicate. For him to be able to win the nomination, he must now change his rhetoric. Before he was talking to younger voters, a large, untapped potential voting block that has been ignored in most traditional politics, but now Sanders must speak to those that still make up the majority of voters, older white