The Democratic Party's Patriotism Deficit

Analyzing the Bernie Sanders candidacy, Joseph Sternberg offers a comparison between Sanders and Britain’s biggest loser: Jeremy Corbyn.

He explains that however much the British people rejected Corbyn’s socialism and his bigotry, the more important point was that they saw Corbyn as less than patriotic. Corbyn lost because he was suffering a patriotism deficit. Brexit, I daresay, had become a patriotism issue:

Sternberg writes:

What British voters really, really didn’t like about Mr. Corbyn wasn’t his economics. It was his culture.

To a remarkable extent the December election wasn’t a vote on Brexit or socialism or Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s economic “leveling up” of poorer regions. It was a referendum on Mr. Corbyn’s Britishness: Does he have enough of it, yea or nay?

Nay, said voters in Labour’s traditional heartlands. Michael Ashcroft, a former Conservative deputy chairman and veteran pollster, this month released a postmortem on Labour’s campaign. His surveys and focus groups with former Labour voters who defected in 2019 are devastating.

“He is not patriotic,” one participant said of Mr. Corbyn. “He meets all those terrorist parties. You want someone with good old values.” Quoth another: “He said he would never press the [nuclear] button. We need protection. He should have said he would, even if he didn’t mean it.”

Among those who voted Labour in 2017 but not in 2019, the most common reason for switching allegiance, cited by 53%, was that they didn’t want Mr. Corbyn to be prime minister. That sentiment outranked Brexit as a motivation even among voters who defected to Mr. Johnson’s get-Brexit-done Conservatives by 75% to 73% (respondents could choose more than one option). These voters decided the election.

Unpatriotic and indecent… these were the words British people used to describe Corbyn:

Mr. Corbyn had given them ample reason for doubt: There was his tendency to pal around with terrorists who killed Britons or their allies. His indulgence of anti-Semitism in Labour’s ranks, which offended working-class Britons’ sense of decency. His disdain for alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and military programs such as the Trident nuclear deterrent, which give the U.K. its esteemed place in the world.

Similarly, American citizens have ample reason to see Sen. Sanders as lacking patriotism. It’s not just the socialist yearnings, it’s also the willful and even mindless clinging to nations and movements that hate America:

Mr. Sanders faces the same problem. No one who shares Middle America’s core values of freedom, democracy and entrepreneurship would choose to honeymoon in the Soviet Union. No one who values American achievements in science, the arts or education would heap praise on Cuba’s schools.

Surely, patriotism involves borders. Sanders, like most Democratic candidates, wants to open America’s doors to anyone who wants to come in. He wants to offer all manner of social services to people who are here illegally. He does not distinguish between Americans and non-Americans. Without such a distinction, you do not have a country. Without a country, there is no patriotism.

Sternberg suggested that the other Democratic candidates have managed to express “an undertone of patriotism.”

Every other Democratic candidate on a debate stage with Mr. Sanders has been able to communicate even the most fantastical policy ideas with an undertone of patriotism. Mr. Sanders alone sounds as if he wants to replace America rather than transform it.

Here, I disagree. The other candidates all want an open borders policy. They believe that Trump’s wall is a racist obscenity.

Moreover, the Democratic Party is still the party of Barack Obama. And Obama was anything but patriotic. When you apologize for the country you are manifesting shame, not pride.

True enough, Obama was more subtle than Sanders, but Donald Trump was able to use patriotism as an issue in the 2016 election because the Obama presidency had told Americans to be ashamed of their country and to believe that they had never achieved anything consequential.

The Obama presidency also trafficked the notion that America was built by criminals as a conspiracy against minorities. Thus was the country divided between oppressors and the oppressed. A divided country cannot inspire love or loyalty.

Being unpatriotic is the Obama legacy. We will see if the Democratic Party can overcome it.