Its the morning after the 2016 presidential election. Ross Douthat stumbles out of bed and opens his laptop, as any op-ed columnist would (or at least as I assume they would). He opens up the New York Times and the headline screams ‘BERNIE SANDERS wins 2016 Presidential Election’. He clicks on the story dumbfounded. As he reads through Bernie’s statement he see’s that Bernie read his article, took his advice and took down Trump.
Now this is all hypothetical of course but Ross Douthat’s article is very much real. In his New York Times essay “The Way to Stop Trump”, Ross Douthat employs the use of anecdotes in order to convince his readers, and maybe Bernie Sanders, that Trump can be beat.
His first use of an anecdote is when comparing Trump’s current situation to New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s previous position of Republican front runner two years ago. After laying out their similar position Douthat goes on to say “Think about why the ‘Bridgegate’ scandal was devastating to his [Christie] image...it flipped his brand. Instead of the jerk who looks out for the average guy, he became the jerk whose allies stuck it commuters.” The use of this anecdote helps Douthat both show readers why current attacks on Trump, such as calling him…show more content… Douthat's use of anecdotes work marvelously alongside several other rhetorical devices to thoroughly accomplish what he set out to do: convince his readers that Trump can be beat. Anecdotes work particularly well in this case because they also prove that a Trump like candidate has been
