"Trump has almost nothing but a national story, which he returned to with a vengeance in the closing days of this year’s campaigns. It happens to be a cramped, reactionary and racial story. Trump effectively defines America as a white ethnic nation that is being overrun by aliens — people who don’t look like us, don’t share our values, who threaten our safety and take our jobs... [B]lood-and-soil nationalism overturns the historical ideal of American nationalism, which was pluralistic — that we are united by creed, not blood; that our common culture is defined by a shared American dream... Republicans have flocked to Trump’s cramped nationalism and abandoned their creedal story. That’s left the Democrats with a remarkable opportunity. They could seize the traditional American national story, or expand it to gather in the unheard voices, while providing a coherent, unifying vehicle to celebrate the American dream. And yet what have we heard from the Democrats? Crickets. What is the Democratic national story? A void."
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Columnists from the United StatesJews from the United StatesCritics from the United StatesJournalists from TorontoJews from Canada
Original Language: English
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"The Central Challenge of the Age: Do Democrats know what unites us?" (5 November 2018), The New York Times
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(journalist)
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David Brooks (journalist)
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