Sometimes I think about what this country might look like if Democrats were patriotic and loved this country the way Republicans do. They don’t have to agree on everything, but if they still believed in America, what would it be like? What if we all shared the basic pride that used to cross political lines as naturally as breathing? Something has changed, and the data is finally catching up to what many of us already suspected. How bad has it gotten?
Pretty bad. CNN's Harry Enten broke down polling on American pride, and the numbers don't just show a partisan divide. They show a Democrat Party that has fundamentally changed what it thinks of this country.
Among Republicans, 93% say they are extremely or very proud to be American. Just 1% report little or no pride. I gotta say, that's a healthy, grounded relationship with the country that raised you.
Then there's the Democrat side.
Only 27% of Democrats say they are extremely or very proud to be American. That alone is striking. But what makes it remarkable is what Enten said next: for the first time ever, Democrats who feel little or no pride in being American now outnumber those who feel extremely or very proud. The "little or no" crowd has eclipsed the patriotic one.
"The little or no ‘proud to be an American’ actually among Democrats eclipses — is greater than the extremely or very proud number," Enten said. "So we are just living in such a different universe if you're a Republican versus a Democrat on the basic fundamental question of being proud to be an American."
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That gap between the parties stands at 66 points on the "extremely or very proud" measure alone. But the trajectory is what really stings.
Back in 2001, before 9/11, Democrats who were extremely or very proud to be American outnumbered those with little or no pride by 84 points. Eighty-four points. Now, “little or no” outruns “extremely” or very by nine points among Democrats.
"That is a 93-point switcheroo in 25 years among Democrats," Enten said.
Think about that for a second. In a single generation, the Democrat Party went from near-universal pride in this country to a party where more of its members feel ashamed of it than moved by it.
The companion data point is just as grim. In 2016, only 7% of Democrats said the United States was not among one of the greatest countries in the world. Today, that number has jumped to 31%. Among Republicans, it went the other direction: from 4% down to 2%.
Two parties looking at the same country and seeing completely different things. One sees something worth defending. The other increasingly sees something to apologize for.
This is what decades of messaging from the left does to a political coalition. When you spend years convincing people that America is irredeemably racist, that the founding was a lie, and that patriotism is for rubes, something breaks. The left didn't just change the Democrat Party's policy priorities. It changed how Democrats feel in their bones about their country.
There's something worth grieving here. Patriotism used to be one of the few things that united Americans across the aisle. You could disagree about taxes, healthcare, or foreign policy and still stand together at a ballgame when the anthem played, and you could agree that others’ right to disagree with you was something worth fighting for. That's gone now, at least on one side.
A country is harder to hold together when half of its political class has stopped believing in it. I don’t think any of us on the right realized how much better things were before things changed. We took it for granted.
