While searching the internet for politicians use of enthymemes I stumbled across a quote form Hillary Clinton as she addressed the American Federation of Teachers, “I used to worry that they wanted to turn the clock back to the 1950s. Now I worry they want to turn it back to the 1850s”. The “they” is referring to the Republicans in this context. Just before this quote, Hillary is warning the audience of the Supreme Court nominee Judge Kavanaugh, who Trump appointed and has a record of being a constitutionalist and more conservative minded. She goes on to hit key issues that she warns Trump and Kavanaugh will seek to rule against or overturn, issues such as: Civil Rights, LGBT rulings, women's rights, workers rights, and health care.
The quote itself utilizes two chronologically based enthymemes that can then be expanded into several more general assumptions. When she states that the Republican Party wants to turn the clock back to the 1950s, the general assumption is that the time period was one of domesticity amongst women, rampant racism such as Jim Crow laws, and segregation. The second enthymeme is when she states, “Now I worry they want to turn it back to the 1850s”. This is an even more staunch and drastic comparison levied against the Republican Party. The 1850s of course is pre-Civil War and therefore slavery was widely practiced and the citizenship status of many immigrant groups were withheld.
Clinton is stating these two time frames because of the assumption that the audience will understand the connections being made between the oppression of minorities in the past and the Republican Parties platform today. The use of these enthymemes is used to evoke fear into the masses that their rights will be stripped away and they will be forced to live as second class citizens, if citizens at all. I of course see this all as drastic and inappropriate exaggeration, implying that any public figure wishes to return the nation to its past system of legalized subjugation.
That however is the beauty and functionality of letting the audience interpret ones message for themselves. Someone could accuse Clinton of thrusting exaggerated comparisons and fearmongering, however the speaker could then easily say that they were implying something totally different because the true message went unspoken. The use of enthymeme in this context was to incite distrust of the opposing party by associating them, indirectly/directly, with a despicable past.
