Andrew Docktor
Blog Post #2
Media and Politics
Tuesday night, the nation watched
as the Democratic Party held its first presidential debate. While the
Republicans have essentially stole the spotlight thanks in large part to Donald
Trump. The Democrats have essentially stayed behind the scenes even while
trying to stay apart of the conversation. The first debate on CNN was a major
chance for the candidates to state their positions on important issues that are
currently facing our nation. As we had discussed in class, we see how
politicians word their statements in order to appeal to their voters. This was
all too evident and was on display all night during the debate as the
candidates tried to word their answers and statements that would help push
supporters to their side. The first topic was college tuition, as rates rise
around the country and thousands of students are graduating with enormous and
crippling debt. Both Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton were looking to attract
young voters especially college bound voters. In order to do this, they both
promised and announced their plan to make college tuition at public
universities free. While this would definitely grab a student’s attention and
appeal, they however, did not mention how they were going to fund this
proposal. By announcing that one of their plans, as president would be to make
college free, it essentially helped to grab headlines, as many viewers will
only see the headline “free college tuition”, they will not look to think about
the underlying problem of funding this proposal which will ultimately fall on
the shoulders of taxpayers. While free tuition is great, many of the young
voters that were interested in their proposals did not realize that it would
not affect them at all, this is shown in the fact checking article after the
debate, “But the Clinton and Sanders plans would also expose a sharp
generational divide. New college students would be helped, but the 40 million
Americans who already owe a combined $1.2 trillion in education debt would
receive little aid other than refinancing at lower rates[1]”.
While we discussed in class the importance of politicians wording their
statements correctly in order to soften the impact to the public, Sanders and
Clinton both used the appeal of free tuition as their way to soften the
eventual impact of the costs that this program will have to endure in order to
fund their plan.
Much debate has circulated
throughout the past year over Hillary Clinton’s emails, we have seen
Republicans attack her over the use of her personal email while she was acting
Secretary of State. While she blames the criticism on the Republicans trying to
derail her campaign, she stated during the debate, “I have been as transparent
as a I know to be… I said I have answered all the questions[2]”.
Clinton uses this public forum in order to mold the public’s mind because she
is saying what the viewers want to hear. They do not want to hear how she
continually avoided questions that probed her email use. While she stated that
she was transparent throughout the whole investigation, she however, failed to
answer essential questions that have yet to be answered, “Clinton has yet to
explain how the server was set up and serviced, whether she informed the State
Department about her decision to sue the private system and most important, how
it was protected from hacking attempts[3]”.
She told the public the best way that will keep opinions about her that she is
distrustful and manipulative away from the minds of the American public.
