Meet the angriest man running for president – no it’s not Trump ...
On Labor Day, Sanders, as usual, comes out swinging. Literally. He uses a double-barreled hand gesture for emphasis — both hands clenched into fists and raised level with his head. Add a barrage of finger-pointing to drive home his resistance to the status quo, and you’ve got Sanders’s body language nailed. But that’s just the obvious stuff. Sanders’s somewhat more subtle facial expressions also mark him as the angriest candidate in this year’s election cycle. When I facially coded all the candidates’ campaign launch speeches, more than half of Sanders’ address fell on the anger spectrum — from annoyed to frustrated to outraged.
Sanders registers anger far more than any other emotion. Watch how his chin thrusts upward during or between sentences, often as his lips press together. How tightly he presses them together is a barometer of whether an issue makes him merely frustrated or downright angry. Then round out the package with a furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. It used to be that American presidential candidates obligingly smiled to the cameras and the crowds. It showed you were calm and cool, upbeat — a winner. But not Sanders. Though he is attracting large crowds at campaign events, now as much as five times the size of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s biggest audiences, it doesn’t get him to lighten up. Since he is insisting that he won’t be bought off by wealthy donors, he has pulled in contributions from more than 400,000 people. Yet that also doesn’t seem to soften his anger. Sanders is succeeding beyond most political analysts’ expectations. The senator admits that he is “stunned” to have pulled even with Clinton in recent Iowa polls. He is ahead in New Hampshire — which, granted, is Vermont’s neighbor. The amazing thing, however, is that, despite this success, Sanders appears to have gotten even angrier since his campaign launch. It’s almost as if he’s the candidate of wrath. ... The more that Sanders gathers crowds and small donations, paradoxically the less happy he appears. Sanders told the Labor Day rally only once that “we’re going to win this election.” As the crowd erupted in cheers, then, and only then, did Sanders leave anger. He smiled. But it wasn’t an actual smile. It looked more like a smirk. It seemed to reveal the senator’s contempt for all the usual “we’ll win” campaign claptrap. Even as he was using it
. - See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/09/20/press-ignoring-how-sanders-really-angry-candidate-%E2%80%94-and-person#sthash.fFlGhDVh.dpuf
 |
