"Is there an increase in taxes on the
middle class to pay for Medicare For All,
or rather, where would the tax burden go to pay for that?" [Sanders] "Good, OK."
A little over four very,
very long years ago, I made a video about
the way then-candidate Donald Trump answers a question.
I tried to show that Trump's salesman-like phraseology was
very effective at communicating a feeling to the listener,
even if the actual claims were bogus or
nonsensical. I don't think this is the only reason he won
in 2016, but his skill as a communicator was definitely
a big part. Like Trump, Bernie
Sanders, who is currently leading the contest for the democratic
nomination for president, has a talent
for communication. In a million ways that I won't
enumerate here, these two men are very
different, obviously. But the polls and the
votes show that they both know how to connect
with voters. And a significant reason for this, I think,
is the way they wield language.
Today, I want to take a look at Sanders' answer to a question that
he gets a lot: [Colbert] "Is there an increase in taxes
on the middle class to pay for
Medicare For All?" And I think an interesting place to
start might be to look back at what I said about Trump's
speaking style and see how Sanders compares.
After all, both these answers happen to be the
same number of words: 220. Though Sanders
takes an extra 30 seconds to get through them, which
I'll get back to in a little bit. So these are the four things
I said about Trump's speech. The first two
are about his simplicity, both in the words
he chooses:
And the way he constructs sentences:
The third thing I noted was his ability to re-frame an
assumed negative reaction to what he was saying by
his use of the second-person point-of-view:
And by implicating
us in what he's saying, as if we've
already agreed:
And finally, I pointed out how Trump likes to end
his sentences with punch, with words
that will leave you with a thematic sense of the emotional
content he's trying to convey:
So how does Bernie compare?
What about his word choice? Trump favors short
words, about three-quarters of his answer were one syllable.
Well, it was the same for Bernie: 74%.
Here's how he stacks up against Trump with more complicated words.
Looks like Bernie uses significantly more
three-syllable words, but otherwise a somewhat
similar breakdown. They both understand that
rhythmic series of short, simple words can
burrow into the listener's head:
Of course, Bernie doesn't need to use short
words to find rhythm. The reason he
takes longer than Trump to get through the same amount of words is because
he gives every single syllable
space to breathe:
Now in sentence
construction, Bernie's answer is more complex than
Trump's. He uses more compound sentences. In fact,
he starts his answer with two dependent clauses,
back-to-back.
He's also talking a lot about things that require
a basic understanding of politics,
health care, and taxation, which makes his language
necessarily more sophisticated. As for
reframing negative reaction, he does that
in a similar way to Trump, by putting the listener
directly into his answer, in this case using Colbert
as a stand-in for all of us.
And finally,
yes, he does end his sentences with punch,
just not in the way that Trump does by using thematic words.
Sanders uses epistrophe,
the stylistic device in which you repeat words at the end of
sentences for effect.
"Just talked to a woman the other day who paid $1,700 a month, $20,000 a year - gone.
No more copayments - gone.
No more out of pocket expenses - gone.
...All of that is gone...That's gone.
You can almost see your out-of-pocket medical bills blipping
out of existence. So there are
actually some interesting similarities in the way Trump
and Bernie speak.
But of course, these answers aren't perfectly comparable.
And there are
a lot of differences in their styles as well.
Trump is singular in the way he improvs stream-of-consciousness
rants that often look incoherent when read
back, yet connect with his supporters in the moment.
Sanders, on the other hand, has been preaching about the same things
for decades. He's sharpened his message
to a fine point, which is extra impressive when you consider
that so much of his rhetoric has to do with context.
"Is there an increase in taxes
on the middle class to pay for
Medicare For All,
or rather, where would the tax burden go to pay for that?"
Colbert asks him if he's going to raise taxes, and to his credit,
he's willing to answer yes, but it's here,
couched in 200 words of fine-tuned
context. He has to explain why, in his view,
raising taxes isn't the scary thing it's assumed to be,
when you factor in all your premiums and copayments,
the artificially high prices of prescriptions drugs
set by a pharmaceutical industry that's ripping us off,
he's ensuring us that the richer will get taxed more,
and struggling people not at all. Overall,
we'll pay less in taxes, he wants to say, since current
health care costs are a tax in all but
name, one that can be and has been
devastating to many among us. For Bernie, I've noticed
that foregrounding the important context
is a game of volume—volume
and emphasis. While it might seem like he's yelling all
the time, Bernie does modulate a lot, and if you
pick out the moments when his pitch or his volume
ramps up, you can see a sketch
of what he wants the listener to take away.
"Nobody in America will pay any more premiums...
No more copayments...
No more out of pocket expenses...
Nobody will go bankrupt...
All of that is gone...
For their prescription drugs...
In a progressive way...
If I say to you, you're $10,000 to the good,
You'd ask me, where do I sign on for that."
As with my Trump video four years ago,
I'm not trying to make a comment on Bernie Sanders'
politics. I'm just obsessed with
the way politicians attempt to communicate with the voters.
Sanders obviously has a good sense of rhythm
and delivery and an iron grip on the points he wants to make.
But what's even more masterful is his ability to
articulate an ideology out of all the things that surround
his answer to a question in a way that
often makes the questions feel not only stupid,
but a symptom of the stupid worldview that he's
trying to fight against.
Now, it remains to be seen whether those principles can win the
presidency or even the democratic nomination.
Regardless, they have a powerful messenger.