Sanders, Trump, and the War Over American Exceptionalism

Pundits keep reminding us that the two men who won New Hampshire, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are both “outsiders.” But that doesn’t mean much. George Wallace and George McGovern were both outsiders, too. While the Trump and Sanders campaigns both represent insurgencies against party elites, they represent insurgencies aimed at taking America in radically different directions. One way of understanding those different directions is through American exceptionalism. Sanders voters want to make America more like the rest of the world. Trump voters want to keep America a nation apart.

American exceptionalism has meant different things at different historical periods. But today, it generally denotes Americans’ peculiar faith in God, flag, and free market—a religiosity, a nationalism, and a rejection of socialism and class-consciousness that distinguishes the United States from other advanced democracies. The Sanders campaign represents an assault on all three. From H.G. Wells to Karl Marx, foreign observers have long fingered America’s lack of socialism as a key characteristic distinguishing it from Europe. But Sanders is a democratic socialist; he doesn’t run from the term. And neither do his backers. In a January poll of likely caucusgoers in Iowa, The Washington Post reported that more Democrats called themselves “socialists” than “capitalists.” Sanders’s socialism is especially popular among the young. A 2011 Pew Research Survey found that while Americans 65 and older favored capitalism over socialism by 39 points, Americans under 30 favored socialism.