Abstract
In office, Obama did not successfully navigate between pragmatism and redemption and inconsistently used populist language. During his first term, most populist momentum was captured by the Tea Party, whose reactionary populist, views did not necessarily align with Republican Party elites and were the culmination of the path taken by the Grand Old Party (GOP) since the 1960s. This situation partly explains the success of Donald Trump who was the lead populist in a surfeit of populists on the GOP side contesting for the 2016 presidential candidacy. However, Democrats surpassed Republicans in expertise with digital campaigning technology, although it was Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, who was more successful with the associated use of populist rhetoric. Like Obama in 2008, both of them advanced biographies as appeals to ethos. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden became the next Robin Hood of hacking after Julian Assange.
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Rolfe, M. (2016). Conclusion: The Populist Bonanza of the 2016 Election. In: The Reinvention of Populist Rhetoric in The Digital Age. Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2161-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2161-9_8
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
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