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    elizabethcruikshank7
    Jun 04

    Why are you a Democrat?

    in General Discussion

    I find myself feeling despondency with respect to the democratic response to.... frankly everything these days. I have not always voted democratic, I'll be honest. But, the last few cycles I felt that it was more a statement on my morality and I found myself reevaluating what my priorities really are. And since, I have engaged at every level of government to vote blue. And they can't get anything done at all..... it's certainly not pushing me to vote Republican, and it's not going to convince me not to vote at all... but where can I make a difference? Democratic primaries? How is everyone else here feeling?

    29 comments
    29 Comments

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    Deanna C
    Jun 04
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    I am a democrat for voting purposes. I am a progressive in my heart. My head is a realist. I’m 61 in 16 days. I grew up in union family. I went to a (Northern) Methodist church. I only specify Northern, because I don’t know what Southern Methodists are like. I am no longer a Methodist, or anything for that matter. In my church, we collected clothes for neighbors who had a fire in their house. We worked meals on wheels to assist the elderly. we would have evangelists come around once in a while, but I only remember hearing stories about love, and helping each other. This was the early 60’s. I cannot comment on the state of the Methodist church today. In my day, there was no ‘Fire and brimstone” In my church. There was love, empathy, and tenderness. If you asked, you would be forgiven.

    At my grade school, there were about 20 white kids, and about 6 black kids. But they were just kids we grew up with. 55 years later, if I run into LJ, I squeal and hug her, because she was one of my friends.

    I grew up in a union household. I guess, I have never wanted much, except for fairness for everyone. Love for everyone. Peace for everyone

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    cath
    Jun 04

    I am not a Democrat, because I am not an American citizen 😁


    I support the nearly-defunct British Labour party.


    I'm a Socialist because I believe that human evolution was enabled by co-operation and mutuality.


    The Right seem to work on the principle of "survival of the fittest". Social Darwinism. Raw, unmitigated, competition. Well, we are animals, but we are distinct in our "intelligence".


    At the moment, that intelligence seems insufficient, because our embrace of competition is leading our species into destruction.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
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    One thing our state party did after Jane Kleeb became the state Democratic Party chair from her successful campaign against the Keystone XL Pipeline, was to launch a programme sending cards to every voter to let them know who their Democratic candidates were in their area for every office from President to cemetery board.


    Since Nebraska elections are by law non-partisan (no party affiliation is allowed on ballots or candidate campaign materials, except for federal office), that helped Democratic voters sort out the crypto-conservatives, particularly in areas where political coverage is very thin. (Amongst other things, that helped us flip our school board to Democratic control.)

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    LinnieMae
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    Yeah, that's a great idea! I think most people don't take the time to research all those candidates. Sometimes even I see a race on the ballot I didn't know would be there. That's why I love voting by mail, which we've had since 2016. I can sit at my computer and do last-minute research, then drop my ballot in the mail.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    @LinnieMae Same here. We've had mandatory mail voting ever since I moved here. It does help being able to look up news articles and such on down-ballot candidates who you might not be familiar with.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
    •

    One side note about Nebraska state senator Megan Hunt. When she announced her first candidacy for Legislative District 8, she filled in a "get to know your candidates" survey form for the Omaha World-Herald. In that, she outed herself as an atheist.


    That came to the attention of Hemant Mehta (The Friendly Atheist), who invited her on a podcast to ask her why she would do such a thing. Being an open atheist (or being outed as one) is usually the kiss-of-death in American politics.


    She noted in the podcast she wasn't concerned about Republican reaction: She expected attacks on her for being a single mother and bi. She brought out the atheism in the survey to head off Democratic Party attacks for being an atheist. By putting it out front, she hoped to prevent our own party from attacking her over religion, and she was right.


    She got that by observing the election of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) in his first primary. He took out attack adverts against then-sitting Rep. Pete Stark for being an atheist, and blared them all over California television. Stark was sunk in the primary by Swalwell for being an atheist.


    For all the praise Swalwell gets for going after Republicans in the House, if he ever ran for President I could not support him. As a minority "religious" faith, he attacked my community (Pete Stark) for how he worships, not on policy. Swalwell would not get support from me unless he was the last Democrat standing (and only because any Republican would be exponentially worse).

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    @LinnieMae I hope so. (It's not like you can get rich in this job. It didn't pay anything from when the town was founded until recently. The town actually had problems finding people to run for office, because all you got were headaches and no recognition for them. I introduced an ordinance based on average pay for village trustees our town's size, which passed. Trustees are now paid $100 a month—you ain't getting rich on that.)


    That brought out several candidates to compete in the election in which I was ousted. Despite losing the 2018 election by three votes, I was pleased the pay ordinance brought out people who were interested in running for local office.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    @LinnieMae See the article from the Harvard Politics Review about the attacks on Pete Stark by Eric Swalwell because Stark was an atheist.


    The War on Irreligion

    (Harvard Politics Review, March 3, 2014)


    In 2007, Pete Stark (D-Calif.) came out as America’s first-ever congressional nonbeliever—accidentally. When the Secular Coalition of America (SCA) sent out a form asking members of Congress about their views on various issues related to the separation of church and state, Stark checked the wrong box in haste and labeled himself an atheist. Instead of totally walking back, however, Stark announced that he was a “Unitarian who does not believe in a Supreme Being,” pointedly rejecting the “atheist” label and instead branding himself as merely secular.

    Just a few years later, fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell—a novice politician recently transplanted from Maryland, previously most famous for impersonating an MTV crew and hosting a fake bikini contest in Cancun—challenged Stark, a powerful 40-year representative who regularly garnered over 70 percent of the vote. Both of California’s senators, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), President Obama, the district’s labor unions, and all of Greater San Francisco’s major newspapers endorsed Stark. Nevertheless, after months of giddily reminding the district’s progressive constituency that Stark opposed the national motto of “In God We Trust,” Swalwell won the election.

    (more at the link)

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    LinnieMae
    Jun 04
    •
    Replying to

    @Anymouse : Well, THAT's disappointing.

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    TheyShouldHaveVaxxed
    Jun 04
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    The reason democrats aren’t seemingly able to get things done is republicans are blocking everything they can. As McConnell said when Obama was sworn in, he was going to block everything Obama tried to do so he would look bad and ineffective.


    The reality is democrats are getting things done but are slowed by all the other crap republicans throw into our way.


    We just have to double down. I will always vote straight tickets now with the finer choices made in the primaries.


    It really sucks we have such a large segment of the population so fucked up they vote for Trumps, Ozes, Desantises, Jordans, MTGs, Boeberts, Gaetzes, or Greenes, but that’s what we are stuck with.


    We can only do what we can. No matter how hopeless or discouraging anything feels, we still have to vote. Otherwise the bastards win for sure.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    @LinnieMae What turned me off to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election was the way her supporters behaved in the 2008 primary against Barack Obama (the famous PUMAs, or Party Unity My Ass). Although I could not vote in the 2008 election (I was disenfranchised having just come out of homelessness), I remembered those awful attacks against Barack Obama. The PUMAs were attacking Obama because he wasn't Clinton, not on his policy positions. Her supporters then offended a whole lot of people.


    I'm aware of the "vast conservative conspiracy" waged against her by both Republicans and Libertarians from the time she was First Lady of Arkansas. My support for Sanders was more predicated on Clinton's toxic supporters than anything else.


    As I noted though, I switched my support to Clinton when it was apparent that Sanders couldn't win, because PUMA is a really stupid way to shoot yourself in the foot.

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    LinnieMae
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    @Anymouse : I've always thought of Bernie as the Trump of the left: an angry, ranting old man who doesn't have the diplomatic skills to be president. The senate is a better place for him, IMO.


    I get that Hillary's condescending tone toward the Trumpies didn't help ("deplorables"), but she did win the popular vote. I do believe she was one of the most qualified candidates in modern times, experience-wise.

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    TheyShouldHaveVaxxed
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    @Anymouse I voted for Clinton but thought her run was selfish. I think she would have been a good president but she would have been very divisive. She shouldn’t have run and had she not, Biden might have instead and he probably would have beaten Trump. I blame Clinton for Trump for that reason. It might not be fair but she was just too controversial.


    We need candidates who are able to win. If someone isn’t likely to win and other candidates who are likely to win don’t run, we all lose. All candidates need to put the country above their own egos and desires.

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    LinnieMae
    Jun 04
    •

    Murphy Brown. In 1992 I was the divorced mother of 2, had gotten through business school but was still struggling financially at the time when Dan Quayle and the Republicans started their morality wars on single moms. That's when I went to my first Democratic caucus; by 1994 I was the senate district chair, throughout the '90s.


    I regularly voted before in the big elections, may have voted Republican once or twice but my first vote was for George McGovern in '72.


    The '90s churned on with Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh turning up the hate and peeling off white males for their brand of hateful conservatism. (I suspect this is where guns and white male grievance started their toxic mix.) I'd hear friends and family parroting that bullshit, feeling dread about the future.


    By 2000, when the GOP engineered the election by stopping the Florida count at the supreme court after the "Brooks Brothers protest", I was thoroughly demoralized when Gore conceded. Helped found a Minneapolis VoterMarch organization; we rallied for democracy, set up event tables for voter registration, and protested that steal. After September 11 it got worse as the GOP lied us into a war. I protested until those jackasses were out of office. It almost seems quaint compared to what's going on now.


    I will never vote Republican. We may not get everything passed that we want, but we'll get closer when 2/3 of the senate is Democrat and we hang onto a majority of the house.


    Maybe enough Republicans will wake up to how our kids are getting killed because the NRA owns the party? That's what I'm talking to people about right now, that the Democrats already have passed bills to protect us from getting killed. My Trump-voting ex-SIL agrees with me, wants to see a federal assault weapons ban. There's gotta be more out there like that.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    My first election was in 1980. I was at sea and used a federal mail in ballot (meaning only federal candidates on the ballot). My experience in the military is the officer corps is very conservative, whilst the enlisted branch is much more diverse.


    On a federal ballot, you must either have two witnesses and a notary public sign the envelope, or one military officer ranked O-5 or above. My command required you leave the envelopes open, so the command could ensure you voted "correctly" (for Ronald Reagan).


    Because I voted for Jimmy Carter, and my chain-of-command looked at my allegedly secret ballot, that was reflected in my next set of personnel evaluations (poor military bearing mark), which hindered my advancement. It was then I learned in the 1980 election that Republicans cheat.


    A few years later, when wingnuts went on their law-making frenzy that you had to show approved forms of ID to vote, then-Governor Sam Brownback informed the federal government that Kansas would not accept federal ballots, as they did not comply with Kansas law. They disenfranchised thousands of military members and their dependants, which is when I learned that the GOP doesn't give a fuque about military personnel or their families (only reinforced since). That refusal to accept federal ballots turned into a nightmare of court cases against the State of Kansas alleging they denied the right of military, diplomatic personnel, and their dependants the right to vote.


    All that goes back to the philosophy of conservatism as outline by Burke I noted above which the average voter doesn't pay any attention to. Military personnel and their families are not part of the ruling aristocracy unless they are senior officers. Doing things like "ensuring you voted the right way" is intended to keep your lessers in line.

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    LinnieMae
    Jun 04
    •
    Replying to

    @Anymouse : Dirty bastards! Keeping the military right wing was probably another trend leading up to January 6th, where so many ex-military and law enforcement pitched in. I know the Trumpies were intentionally recruiting them but they may already have been predisposed.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
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    Replying to

    @LinnieMae Note the sorts of military personnel and veterans who were at the Capitol Insurrection though. They were the sorts of people who could not make it in a racially-diverse military which also has a lot of women. Steve Bannon (who was not present but helped stoke the flames and is still doing so now) was a Navy officer.

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    Sen. Ron "Tiny" Johnson
    Jun 04
    •

    My parents grew up in large, poor families. Together, working in union jobs, they managed to achieve a comfortable life for our family. As a teen, when Mom was on strike, she brought me to the picket line with her-a great lesson!

    Also, my sister and I attended Sunday school in the 60's. (Baptist church, mind you...imagine that) Our teachers emphasized the social gospel. Of course, the pastor brought the fire and brimstone, but if there had been any ranting about guns or immigrants, my parents would have walked out.

    They weren't perfect. The Wisconsin community where they grew up was snow-white, and they grew up believing the racial stereotypes taught to them by their parents. At the same time,some of my dad's army friends married women from other countries, so that opened the diversity door a tiny crack.

    It saddens me that today's young lefties don't seem to recognize how instrumental the democrats have been in civil rights progress for women, minorities and LGBTQ folks. Even worse, they join the right in demonizing us.

    I do believe they hold the key to future progress in economic reform and environmental concerns. But until they demonstrate more evidence of critical thinking themselves, I'm not ready to hand over the car keys.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
    •
    Replying to

    A lot of that thinking seems to stem from the idealism of youth (we all did it at one time). That tends to lead to rash ideologues, who insist on getting everything they want now. You also see that attitude from older Democrats, particularly from the very liberal coastal cities denigrating middle America states and complaining Democrats in those states aren't liberal enough. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not going to be elected in Kansas no matter how much you'd like that. When we do elect a very leftie in a red state (such as self-described bi-queen, Democratic Socialist single mother atheist Nebraska state senator Megan Hunt), those officials get ignored by folks outside the state. Her election was a huge victory for lefties, and they ignored it if they don't live here.


    Local elections matter, and the youth are bored by them. As much work went into getting the XXVI Amendment passed (right to vote at eighteen), youth voters don't seem to appreciate it enough to exercise that right.


    For a sportsball analogy:


    Politics involves compromise. If you move the ball down the field ten yards, then you've made ten yards of progress. You work on the next ten. If you go for a Hail Mary pass to get the touchdown in one play, you're fooked (that's a technical political term) if the other side intercepts the ball. See the 2016 example from the protest votes for Jill Stein (the margin of which was enough to throw the election to Donald Trump in those states, before it came out Stein had dined with disgraced Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin at his head table.) See also protest votes for Ralph Nadar, enough to throw the Florida election in doubt and usher in Dubya as President.


    In my state, the widely-despised mayor of Omaha Jean Stothert (R) was facing a serious challenge from former state senator Heath Mello (D). Stothert had recently imposed a number of libertarian issues on the city (such as refusing to pave city streets in residential areas unless the residents themselves paid for it, and actually turning the main downtown streets to gravel: Omaha is the largest city in the nation with downtown gravel streets).


    Heath Mello was galvanising opposition to Mayor Stothert, but then Democrats from out of state discovered that when Mello was a senator in the Unicameral, in an effort to head off a draconian abortion bill by the GOP, he tried to negotiate the worst aspects of the bill out. He was successful, and the bill was actually tabled when it lost conservative support.


    Coastal Democrats were enraged, and poured millions of dollars into attack ads against our own party's candidate for being too conservative. They sunk Heath Mello and Jean Stothert was reëlected. She then went on a campaign (still ongoing) to get Omaha's Planned Parenthood shut for good.


    See also the attacks on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVa.) He is damn frustrating, and his opposition to abolishing the filibuster is thwarting a lot of good legislation. On the other hand, nearly all of his votes follow Democratic Party principles, and he has supported judges put up by Joe Biden. For all the younger Democrats saying "he should just join the Republican Party because he won't give us everything we want right now," well, welcome Mitch McConnell back as Majority Leader again if he does that. If he is ousted in an election in 2024, whichever Republican replacing him would be exponentially worse.


    Or when Joe Biden announced college debt relief in the amount of $10,000 recently. Instead of taking the money and working on getting more later, those pushing for complete debt relief viewed it as a broken promise and slap in the face. (Joe Biden never offered any debt relief during his campaign. He was convinced of that position later.)


    Such attacks play into the the media narrative "Democrats in Disarray" and do nothing but aid Republicans. Younger voters are also the least reliable to turn out for elections: If they want to have a say in politics they need to turn out and run for office.

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    Anymouse
    Jun 04
    •

    I have been a Democrat all my life. I started becoming interested in politics during the Watergate scandal. My mother and father were apolitical. Both were in the US Navy, and felt that military personnel (and my mother later a veteran) should remain apolitical (the strong indoctrination of military personnel to stay out of politics). My mother finally abandoned her apolitical stance when her former US Senator Mark Kirk was outed as a person claiming stolen valour in the Navy, and his opponent was the disabled veteran Tammy Duckworth (upon whom Illinois Republicans heaped an endless stream of lies about her service as the veterans coordinator in Chicago, her service, and of course, race and female). My mother now is a keenly aware political creature as she devours everything she can get her hands on (even calling me for political opinions).


    As I got older all I saw from the conservative side of the aisle was more cruelty and more power-grasping.


    I finally ran for office myself, for my village board (city council) in the most conservative US House district in the nation, and I won. I was reëlected in 2014, then lost in 2018 to a person who ran on a platform of "You don't want an atheist representing you on the Board" (literally all he ran on) and was defeated by three votes. (By the way, don't ever let someone tell you your vote doesn't count. A lot of elections in this country are decided by margins that close every year.)


    Third parties in the United States (or any first past the post system) cannot arise. Large groups of people will array themselves into two broad polities to achieve their goals, and that is true for any nation with such a system. The only way a third party in our nation has ever arisen is when a major party collapses into ruin. (The Anti-Federalists collapsing lead to the rise of the Democratic-Republican Party, the collapse of the Federalist Party lead to the rise of the Whig Party, the collapse of the Democratic-Republican Party and the Whig Party led to the rise of the Democratic Party, and so forth.)


    While the average voter doesn't pay much attention to the grand themes which unite political ideology, the foundation of liberalism is the Enlightenment and reason. The goal of liberalism has always been the spread of reason and education, and distributing power amongst more and more people. The foundation of conservatism as defined by Edmund Burke is the retention of power, so an aristocracy can be maintained with capitalism as a tool of control to subvert democracies. (Edmund Burke by the way was an aristocrat and very rich, so that wasn't a self-serving position. /s)


    All the apologetics for conservatism since Burke have been differing ways to justify the gathering of power and subversion of democracy in the service of power.


    As for Democrats not being able to get anything done, part of that is the nature of the Senate, which is an anti-democratic (small d) institution. The last election awarded the same number of seats to each party, though the Democratic senators represent tens of millions of people more than the Republican senators. The filibuster used to block legislation is a holdover from opposing Civil Rights legislation.


    All politics is local. To get a deep bench of capable national politicians, they have to start at the bottom. It is just as important to support, talk about, write letters to the paper, &c for local candidates as it is state or national ones.

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    Poida
    Jun 04
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    From a non-Americans point of view. What can they do? Simple gun reform is out of the question.

    It has been like this since Newt Gingrich showed up and now the Supreme Court has chimed in.

    Citizens United was a disaster for your country.


    I get the frustration but I think it's a bit rich blaming democrats.

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    Dip Dibbler
    Jun 04
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    i choose the lesser of evils.

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