My theme this week has been the similarities between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders—and what their success says about us.
On Wednesday, I explored whether the paroxysms of anger and frustration are cathartic and productive (ultimately concluding they were probably a net negative). And on Thursday, I pushed back at the notion that what is remarkable about their rise is that it is pushing Hillary Clinton to the Left (that may be true, but it’s far from the most important takeaway).
On the heels of Thursday’s piece a smart, young colleague sent me this:
Saw your piece, thought I’d share some thoughts. Trump is clearly running on nostalgia and his voters are seeking “the good ole days.” Sanders supporters are as well, just more subtly. His base is whites 18-29, a lot of them male and with college debt. Let’s say you’re a 25 year old Bernie supporter with a degree, debt, no job, and no place (leaving with the parents). These people are nostalgic for the days of their father, when you weren’t crippled by debt, and could buy a house and feed your family. They aren’t crazy for social justice like Hillary is, they just feel screwed over.
This struck me as interesting, primarily because I didn’t mention nostalgia in my post, and yet, it has been on the top of my mind. The reason I’ve been thinking about it is that I’m reading Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic, and he does a good job of describing how nostalgia is driving today’s politics. (In fact, although he doesn’t mention Trump or Sanders here, the first chapter in his book is titled, “Blinded By Nostalgia.”)
Levin points out that “Liberals are especially nostalgic for the economic and political order of [the post World War II] era. Government was growing, the labor movement was powerful, and large corporations in key sectors seemed content to work with government and labor to manage the affairs of the nation.”
I think this is true, and I also think that young progressives probably wish they could be a part of something significant and rebellious like the Vietnam anti-war movement or the civil rights movement. Seriously, all this talk about taking down the “establishment” (on both sides of the aisle) has always reminded me of 60’s era hippie talk about fighting The Man.
Meanwhile, conservatives, Levin suggests, are nostalgic for the Reagan era. And there’s really no doubt that’s true. But I also suspect Trump’s “Make America Great Again” message has different interpretations, depending on the person.
(Note: I’ll talk a lot more about this soon when Yuval Levin joins me on my podcast to discuss his new book.)
The irony may be that voters are shifting the political paradigm in new and revolutionary ways, in order to try to return to a past that (mostly) never really existed.
This desperate desire to return to the “good old days” might also help explain why we have three “baby boomer” candidates around the age of 70 running for president—and why the GOP primary base wasn’t interested in passing the torch to a new generation of young leaders.
