Why Democrats Can’t Sell Patriotism
Reflecting on the works of Richard Rorty and Selling the Future
In only the first few months of the Trump administration, the prospect of maintaining the fundamental values of our country has never been more bleak. Trump’s second term has already proven itself to be far more ambitious and ideological than the first and has taken repeated steps to remake America in its own vision and dismantle what little democratic constraints are left. As if to compound this waking nightmare, the mainstream of the Democratic Party has shown little resistance to these changes, and what courage they can muster is profoundly uninspiring. In its resistance to Trumpism, nearly all members of the party have attempted to appeal to a sense of patriotism in contrast to Trump’s blatantly anti-democratic actions. Yet in nearly all cases, this sense of patriotism rings totally hollow.
Few members of the party seem able to speak convincingly on patriotism, a fact most recently emphasized by Senator Elissa Slotkin’s response to Trump’s address to Congress, a profoundly uninspiring diatribe on importance of the middle class, American exceptionalism, and our shared values. At a time when our democracy and our fundamental values have never been more important, why is it that our appeal to our nation’s identity is so uninspiring? The answer to this question reveals not just a flaw in messaging, but a critical hole at the heart of the party’s appeal. Fundamentally the Democratic party cannot invoke a sense of authentic patriotism because its platform lacks the key requirements for its very existence: a compelling vision that draws its foundations from our national identity, and a conceptualization of progress that invites each and every one of us to participate in changing it.
In contemporary political discourse, patriotism is a thorny issue. Among certain groups it is a cudgel in which to bash opponents for lack of. For others, it is unfairly conflated with nationalism, and an endorsement of every crime the United States is guilty of. In an ideal world, patriotism inspires a feeling of connectedness between a country, the individual, and its founding ideas. To American philosopher Richard Rorty, patriotism was an essential component in engaging in any broad left-wing movement. For Rorty, patriotism and national pride were essential elements in turning spectators into those who see themselves as entirely disempowered and at the whims of the powerful, to agents, able to participate in society and create meaningful change.
Rorty viewed the crisis of the left in the 90s as a failure of the movement having given in to abject spectatorship and rejection of America as a state that was no longer worth saving. The anguish and cynicism of the New Left that developed in the 60s in response to the national disgrace of Vietnam, created an entire generation who had lost the ability to imagine progress through the legislative system, and by abandoning hope in doing so, they made this belief real, leaving the door open to a new breed of right wing politics that replaced them. This failure to believe that America was still a place that could create real, radical progress through the legislative system marked the demarcation line between the Old and the New Left, the latter of which still maintains a strong presence within the DNA of the Democratic party today.
You would not need to look hard today to find even prominent Democrats that believe America is a fundamentally flawed country, hold deep cynicism with national politics at large. In some respect, much of this cynicism is well founded. America has certainly engaged in numerous atrocities in the past and at present it finds itself currently unable to prevent a fascist takeover. Yet, for Rorty by focusing so heavily on America’s failings, it removes the capacity to envision the country as it could be and minimizes its triumphs. This over emphasis on the failures of the United States, treats its failings as inextricable from its future, a type of sin-complex which characterizes nations into a type of being forever marked with shame, rather than a concrete material analysis of where it stands now. For a group of people who often self-identify as historical materialists, it’s a surprising amount of teleological thinking.
Take the 1619 Project, a work of historical analysis promoted by the Biden administration, Kamala Harris herself, and a litany of Democratic lawmakers. While the book engages in a thorough and important review of our nation’s history as it relates to slavery and segregation, its fundamental conclusion is to place the institution of slavery at the center of the national narrative, and that the date of the first arrival of slave ships on American shores is a more accurate start to our national narrative. While it is absolutely true that the foundation of this country is intimately connected with the institution of slavery, the book often veers into essentialist language on the nature of America as necessarily oppressive state and is deeply cynical on the concept of any actual historical progress, deriding the notion as a self-righteous, “national mythology.” Despite its closing plea on the need to live up to America’s promise, for those who take its overall conclusion seriously, anything progress short of a complete revolution seems dubious.
In contrast, while the progressive era of the twentieth century was a response to the corruption, those organizers and activists were united in a belief in the promise of America, and a vision of what it could be. Upton Sinclair, perhaps the most famous of the progressive era reformers, was an avowed socialist, connected his vision for reform to a vision of a classless society, and believed America was the place for achieving it. Other reformers such as Jane Addams, Louis Brandeis, and W.E.B Du Bois, all shared this foundational belief in what American society could achieve. This type of patriotic communitarian thinking that dominated the early progressive movement would be largely unique today, yet on the few occasions in which it does return, it is often met with incredible success. Indeed, Obama’s legendary victory against McCain was famously run on the slogan of, “Yes We Can” a vision that not only inspired change against the even then archaic system of Washington but invited supporters to be agents of this change.
In our contemporary political discourse, the vacancy in patriotic thinking has been filled by a kind of neoliberal pragmatism. The modern-day neoliberal left does not ask much of its citizens, nor does it invite them to be agents in some form of larger political project. Rather it invites them to support “common-sense” policies and a growing expert consensus on creating a wealthier society. Whether they self-identify as centrists, progressives, or more recently “abundance” liberals, these political actors have occupied the mainstream of Democratic political thought in some form or another for nearly 40 years. At their extreme, America is a black box, a series of inputs, a corporation with a mission statement. This type of policy focused “data-driven” engagement with a country is satisfactory to a type of educated professional class white collar worker who outside of access to walkable neighborhoods has generally benefited from supply-side economics and the growth of the professional class and has helped the Democratic party maintain a strong hold over the suburban educated voters.
Yet for the majority of those in the working and lower middle class, those who prefer to connect with a nation not as a set of inputs, but as a story, a national narrative in which they and their descendants are intimately connected, this pitch is broadly uninspiring. Greater efficiency in mass transit and walkable neighborhoods are certainly appealing, but perhaps not something worth putting your life on the line for, especially if you live in a rural area.
To some extent, a key feature of supply-side liberalism is that it does not ask much of anyone. Broadly speaking, it is a top-down regulatory reform effort that eliminates regulations in favor of letting powerful market actors move in to develop. The public has essentially no say, and in many cases that is the key appeal, especially as the last 40 years of deregulation have decimated many areas of the country unimpeded. Hence why Slotkin’s response to Trump in her speech was more a presentation on the importance of maintaining American hegemony and the crumbling status quo, rather than asking supporters to engage in a vision of what America could be. In this sense, the attempt at invoking patriotic sentiment comes off as another reactionary jab.
Indeed, much of the rhetoric of the Democratic rank and file focuses on these almost managerial aspects of the party and its vision for the county, and reflects a generally disempowered attitude, in which voters are seen more as spectators and less agents in society. A common refrain amongst Democratic organizers is that “Democrats get things done” a statement that speaks to the broad ability of Democrats as legislators, but little to its base. As someone who has spent his career thus far in various aspects of the Democratic party and political organizing, I can attest to the prevalence of this attitude.
Even on the progressive left, a common refrain among organizers is “we deserve better.” While I agree with the sentiment on principle, I could not imagine a more disempowered rallying cry. It is as if these individuals are pleading with those in power to change their conditions, tacitly accepting of the status quo at large, sans a few progressive tweaks here and there. It cannot be surprising that Trump’s fiery appeal to “take America back” is more appealing to younger voters.
Perhaps the most revealing instance of this was seen in the Vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. The single most interesting moment of the night came when Vance responded to Walz’s argument to trust the endorsements of several economists backing Harris’ economic plan, a fact she touted in the last debate. Vance’s response brilliantly captured the difference between Trump’s and Harris’ platforms. He correctly pointed out that many of the same people had endorsed the last 40 years of neoliberal governance that gutted the manufacturing industry of the country, helped to facilitate the opioid crisis, and were in part responsible for Trump’s rise amongst the working class in the first place. Where Walz had attempted to appeal to authority of these individuals to make decisions about the lives of millions, Vance, and Trump by extension invited the audience to consider a bold new alternative.
While the left has largely languished in a lack of patriotic ambition, the right is far more unified by a shared vision of what America ought to be. Whereas the traditional conservative vision had previously been relegated to preserving institutions and traditional morality, the far right and its ascendancy within the Republican party offer a bolder, and darkly ambitious vision of a new America. This vision promises not only to return America to a point of former greatness, but to eliminate those in society who it argues brought its collapse in the first place. Whatever you may think about this vision, as anti-democratic and unsubtly xenophobic as it is, it is a bold new direction, one that has been popular enough to encourage voters to put up with things like higher prices, and authoritarianism. Yet unlike the movements of the historical left, rather than an appeal to patriotic sentiments surrounding fundamental rights and equality, it emphasizes the importance and inherent value of the nation and its people as the arbiters of these freedoms, best emphasized by right wing commentator Anna Khachiyan’s recent statements on Fox News on our fundamental character as Anglo-Saxon Protestant in nature.
The new Republican political project, in contrast to the Democratic party’s platform, is undoubtedly an ambitious endeavor. In a speech given earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Besset declared to a group of economists in defense of tariffs that the American dream was “not about access to cheap goods,” a statement which became quietly one of the most profound statements ever uttered by a Republican in the last 100 years. This move marked the completion of the long effort to finally do away with Reaganomics, toward a new, transformative political project. While many in the liberal left see the threat of tariffs as Trump’s ultimate downfall, it may be yet his source of strength. The promise of authentically engaging in a civilizationally transformative political project may be enticing enough to many disempowered Americans enough to override any short-term economic concerns. The difference between the vision that Trump offers to voters and the one that Harris offered in 2024 is that Trump’s is genuinely transformative reorganization of the economy and society, one that runs directly contrary to the status quo and is informed by a vision, albeit dark and fundamentally anti-democratic, of what America is, and could be.
It is indisputable that there is a mass desire for change. More than ever voters have expressed this, from the overwhelming election of Barack Obama to the re-election of Donald Trump. The neoliberal consensus is deeply unpopular and has led to voters taking drastic measures to correct course. Yet the future of the party, nor this country will be achieved on the back of mere modification, nor will it be advertised through “common sense” policy fixes, or slow boring tweaks to the system that was directly responsible for Trump.
This type of inclusive patriotic appeal doesn’t just serve a rhetorical purpose, it wins votes. Time and time again, the American public has demonstrated its great desire for massive change, and to be a part of this change. Bernie Sanders is a notable example of one Democrat (while not technically, he is so closely associated with the party as to be a member) bucking this trend. Sanders appeals to this old left style of patriotism, by invoking the need to engage in a large-scale project that is built up from the bottom. This is perhaps best encapsulated in his famous ad, “America”, a wordless minute long advertisement that showed a chorus of working-class voices, progressively rising in unison, as images flash by of dozens of Americans untied in common vision, erupting in applause as “America” is displayed prominently among a sea of people.
People believe in the promise of America and can be made to see themselves in its future if we offer them one. The Democratic party is in a unique position to act as the moral authority on this issue, to take back patriotism and a belief in this country from the obviously contrived vision the right proclaims, but it can only achieve this by presenting a new and compelling vision of the future that is connected with our nation’s founding principles, and invite everyone a hand in shaping it.