All 2016 Presidential Candidates Use The Same Pattern Of Positive Spin In The Media


After an entire year of getting to know the candidates, we’ve also gotten to know their surrogates, superdelegates, and supporters who have had something to say to defend their own candidate or attack another.

In the process, the American people have also seen a pattern among all of the candidates, regardless of party lines: They all put a positive spin on their view of things.

Even for these superhuman candidates who wake up and go to sleep campaigning and raising money, it’s a very simple human thing for them to do. Because everyone likes to feel good about things and defaults to either talking positively about themselves, speaking positively about things in general, talking badly about themselves openly where at the very least they’re able to release tension and feel good again.

That’s the natural human condition.

Hillary Clinton was initially described as not very opened and secretive. Her effort to be more open and engaging with people tends to feel false, and one of the efforts put into the campaign is to make her more open. [Photo by Carolyn Kaster/AP Images]

However, all of the candidates are more involved in scheming, marketing, and putting more of an effort into their public relations. They are noticeably being very careful about what they say or simply default to a positive point in their own argument.

Among all of these candidates, the approach is the same: Speak highly of yourself, and when that doesn’t work, attack the other side.

Hillary Clinton might have gotten used to the constant attacks against her in her long career in politics and grown a thick skin, especially over the aging accusations of her private email server, Benghazi, and the Clinton Foundation. She’s been visibly shaken by being asked about them before during interviews, or she’s learned to no longer be shaken by those accusations and is simply letting others speak on her behalf.

Bernie Sanders concedes to Hillary Clinton on the night of the Democratic National Convention, which was largely viewed negatively due to evidence that the Democrats had prevented Sanders from advancing before Clinton. Bernie Sanders is still smiling through it all. [Photo by Matt Rourke/AP Images]

In all cases, however, the deflection is part of the plan. Bernie Sanders is no longer one of the candidates or part of the Democratic campaign, and he speaks very highly of his new Our Revolution organization or creates some noticeable distance between him and Clinton over her controversies, as he did during his interview on Meet the Press this Sunday.

But even during his own campaign, he too has done what those candidates have when his polls were low during the primary: He hardly admitted that he was taking a hit. Someone who most people see as the most honest and incorruptible candidate adopted the mannerisms of the worst one of them all, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump’s campaign surrogates have gone out and boldly denied without shame that the numbers are not in their favor or that there is any wrong doing on their end. All of these obvious red flags are being dismissed through the power of blatant ignorance and/or attacking the media for even bringing up those issues as if they should not be brought up at all.

Donald Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, also appeared on the same edition of Meet The Press, saying that Donald Trump was more honest about what he wants to do as president than rival Hillary Clinton.

Even Jill Stein, who is coming out as a third-party candidate for the Green Party, is angling a similar spin on her narrative when she is doing interviews for mainstream media services, whose audiences know little to nothing about her or her party.

Should the American people demand more from their candidates than this? Because when the campaign season starts coming around, all of the candidates seem to be sure that the American people are going to buy into their presentation. As a result, they model it in the very same way, not because they’re adjusting to the American people and what they want, but because they know that we don’t have much of a choice.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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