In embracing Sanders’s socialism and class-consciousness, young Americans are making America more like Europe. Polls show that they are far more likely than their elders to believe that the rich got that way because they “know the right people or were born into wealthy families” than because “of their own hard work, ambition and education.” Older Americans overwhelmingly identify themselves as “haves.” A majority of younger Americans, by contrast, call themselves “have nots.” Older Americans overwhelmingly call themselves members of the “middle class.” Young Americans are almost as likely to call themselves “lower class.” Young Americans, the population to whom Sanders appeals most, don’t believe that. As Marx himself said, “Though classes, indeed, already exist, they have not yet become fixed, but continually change and interchange their elements in a constant state of flux.”

Instead, they see their economic position as fluid. Chroniclers of American exceptionalism have long argued that the reason Americans eschew socialism is because they don’t see themselves as members of a fixed class. A 2011 Pew Research Survey found that while Americans 65 and older favored capitalism over socialism by 39 points, Americans under 30 favored socialism.īut their comfort with socialism only hints at the ways Sanders supporters are challenging long-established notions of what sets America apart. 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. But Sanders is a democratic socialist he doesn’t run from the term. Wells to Karl Marx, foreign observers have long fingered America’s lack of socialism as a key characteristic distinguishing it from Europe. The Sanders campaign represents an assault on all three. 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. Trump voters want to keep America a nation apart.Īmerican exceptionalism has meant different things at different historical periods. Sanders voters want to make America more like the rest of the world. One way of understanding those different directions is through American exceptionalism.

While the Trump and Sanders campaigns both represent insurgencies against party elites, they represent insurgencies aimed at taking America in radically different directions. George Wallace and George McGovern were both outsiders, too. 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.

Sanders trump gid