Abstract
Nomination acceptance addresses perform two major functions: They reconstitute the factions splintered by the primaries into a unified party and they frame the general election campaign as a clash between two narrative visions of America. In 2016, Donald Trump co-opted Republicans into his empire, conflated imagining and remembering to envision an American dystopia caused mainly by Clinton, claimed that he alone could fix things using unspecified mechanisms, and promised to provide an immediate American utopia. Clinton envisioned a cooperative nation with fewer recent successes than problems, explained that only together could we improve our prospects for a better future by working hard to enact unspecified policies, and warned us against making a bad man our potentate. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton performed the rhetorical functions of consolidating support and framing the campaign but, to date, no rhetor has found a way to reconcile them into a unifying American vision.
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