Who Gets to Be a Patriot? – BCB #116
Who Gets to Be a Patriot? – BCB #116
Also: the bipartisan politicians you’ve never heard of, and the importance of good news.
A striking change in messaging was afoot at the Democratic National Convention last month. Though Americans are far more likely to consider Republicans patriotic compared to Democrats, the Democratic Party has now started rebranding itself as patriotic. Olympic men’s basketball coach Steve Kerr spoke about the pride he felt in representing America in Paris. Southern, working-class country musician Jason Isbell performed onstage, signaling an effort to reach new audiences. And when he got up to give his speech, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz announced proudly, “We’re all here tonight for one beautiful, simple reason: We love this country.”
As Michael Cooper points out in The Liberal Patriot, this could be a winning strategy:
Democrats are more likely to believe that America’s best days are still ahead of us. That’s good. But they often have a hard time connecting a vision for the future with the best ideals of our past. That’s an incomplete message. That’s not a full narrative. That’s why the Democrats need to tell a story about the country that speaks to where we’ve been, where we are, and where we can go. A message that includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, Thurgood Marshall, and the Civilian Conservation Corps. A message about what Americans can accomplish together.
Democrats have long been the party of progress, but progress also implies criticism that sometimes veers into disillusionment. Now they seem to be asking whether criticism and patriotism are compatible. This is an urgent question when American pride is at a record low across the political spectrum, according to polling from earlier this summer:
Interestingly, the same poll found that, while Republicans have consistently expressed more patriotism than Democrats, the gap in extreme pride between each is less than half of the record-high gap, 54 points in 2019.
It’s hard to know what impact Blue’s turn towards patriotism will have on November’s election. But if it triggers a move towards forward-looking optimism, that seems like a more constructive long-term strategy than focusing solely on America’s myriad flaws.
The most constructive legislators you’ve never heard of
Chances are, the politicians you know the most about are the most polarizing ones, because they are the ones who most often make headlines. But there are plenty of other more useful metrics we could use to evaluate our lawmakers. Who is the best at engaging in bipartisan efforts? Who is most inclined towards constructive debate? Who is especially concerned with nitty gritty policy issues?
The Polarization Research Lab has a resource that breaks down politicians by each of these concerns and more. Its Elected Official Monitoring tool uses AI models to track and analyze the words and actions of every US Representative and Senator in real time in order to identify “who spends their time dividing the country and who focuses on policy debate and constructive disagreement.” Spoiler alert: many of the names on these lists aren’t the ones you’re most likely to spot on TV or a broadsheet.
American voters aren’t as sexist and racist as reading the news might make you think
After Biden decided not to run for reelection and Harris took his place on the top of the ticket this summer, American media outlets immediately started asking: is the country capable of electing a Black and South Asian woman as president? In fact, giving ample air time to the idea that Americans might be too sexist and racist to elect a president like Harris could hurt her chances of winning.
As University of Oxford researcher Sanne van Oosten recently found, voters’ first impressions of female and minority candidates compared to white and male ones aren’t nearly as bad as one might think. A meta-analysis of over 40 studies, most of which were conducted in America, concluded that on average American voters don’t really discriminate against minority politicians. As van Oosten said in an interview, “Voters aren’t negative — in some cases [are] even positive about women, about Asian candidates, and think the same about black candidates as they do about white candidates.”
What’s disheartening is that no one seemed interested in covering these uplifting findings. As van Oosten wrote in a thread on X:
Though a bunch of journalists were interested initially, many didn't publish references to our research.
One journalist of a very highly esteemed newspaper even literally said to me: "people aren't interested in good news."
…
This is bad news for democracy, because this assumed discrimination is what is hurting woman politicians and politicians of colour, even when voters aren't that old-fashioned anymore.
If journalists, politicians, and other power brokers want to incite optimism among Americans rather than fanning the flames of the partisan divide, they need to cover good news like van Oosten’s research. As writer Zaid Jilani puts it:
If we want people to believe that the world isn’t quite as bad as we imagine it, we have to be willing to publish the truth, even when it’s positive.
Quote of the Week
Trolling people is unattractive.
Just stop it. It’s embarrassing.
