An Identity Crisis for the Democrats?

Abstract

Although Democrats reject the Republican Party’s exclusionary definition of America, they nonetheless struggle to articulate an alternative vision of national community capable of mobilizing a governing majority around a national program. I explore the challenge of national identity and national purpose for the Democratic Party—and the country—by finding sources for it in features of America’s creedal identity, but also in twentieth-century party developments and governing choices. Blurring the meaning of key terms of the party’s public philosophy and national liberal identity, embracing administrative expertise as well as party and interest pluralism, and relying on procedural solutions to escape value differences between coalitional partners, the history of choices made by the Democratic Party has left it ill-equipped to persuade voters that it has a singular, substantive vision of national community that acknowledges, and yet unites, citizens across their diverse concerns and aspirations.