What makes you a Democrat?

At first I thought about "hot button" issues like abortion and the death penalty. But obviously there are pro-choice repubs (Giuliani) and pro-death penalty dems (Edwards) And so on with most issues. So what determines whether someone is a Democrat or a Republican seems to lie more in the broader philosophy of the two parties. But again, there are a ton of people who would say they were republicans because they favor small/er government, yet they're huge admirers of Bush.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is...where someone stands politically doesn't necessarily seem depend on where they stand on the issues, which seems odd.

SO, I'm looking for people to tell me *why* they're democrats, what it means to them. Or maybe even more importantly (as far as drawing distinctions) why you're *not* a republican.

There should be health care for all, and the Democrats come closer to this than Repubs do.

I want a clean environment. Alternative fuel sources.

I'm against the death penalty, and more Democrats agree than Republicans. I'm against most abortions as well, but unfortunately this is the only issue I side with Repubs on. I also believe that the way Republicans attack the abortion issue is unrealistic and hypocritical, and that they should work on strengthening adoption programs so that people are less likely to have one in the first place.

I want people who "stick up for the little guy" against corporate negligence.

I want foreign policy that is "strong and right" rather than "strong and wrong," as James Carville would say.

I want an education policy that goes deeper than testing and vouchers.

I want sensible, moderate gun laws that allow for hunting and self-defense but keep guns out of criminals' hands.

The right to organize (unions, etc.) is important.

I want someone who realizes that tax cuts do not always help the economy, and sometimes other measures are needed.

I am not in favor of more taxes on the rich since I own two small businesses and have better uses for my money in MY life than what bottomless pit the Government wants to do with it. My stance on enviromental issues is obvious everytime I get into my Hummer. I am pro-firearms to the core. Fall on the pro-life side of the debate.
Believe wholeheartedly in our young men and women in uniform.

But come november, 90% of my ballot will be marked on the "D" side.

not that we don't appreciate it..but damn, you are against the majority of our party on almost all of those issues...

There is always education. There is always the hope for a "workable" health care program. Prescrition drugs for elders. Social Security.

is just as much a Democratic belief as it is Republican -- if not moreso, since we don't believe in wasting lives to make profits for big business.

My son is a Marine leaving for Japan tomorrow for two years -- you can bet I support him!

Most of her wounds were to her arm and leg, but she also took some hits to the face and has developed vision problems in one eye over the last few days.

You need to explain no further than that, your desire to remove Bush.

I'm with on everything except abortion, but I do think abortion should be the last possible thing to do; I just don't think the government should be allowed to make it illegal.
I believe that if our government can give health care to Iraq, then they should be able to do it here.
I don't believe in handing out checks for welfare, but I do believe every once in a while there are people who need a helping hand through no fault of their own, and our government should not ignore them. I know of a lady who lost her job and now lives out of her car because she has a dog and a cat that she can't bear to give up; shelters don't take pets. This lady is clean in every respect; just down on her luck for hopefully a brief period of time. I believe this lady needs a break and a helping hand although she will not take money for no work.
Of all the Republicans I know, they are the most self-centered, mean, greedy, me me me people and a lot of these people are in my family. Yet, they do not think a thing of using Medicare or any other government program that helps them save a dime; stupid people.
I know Democrats are more tolerant of others, more logical in their thinking, and more willing to help others. Well, this could go on and on, so.....
Damn it - is anybody else having serious problems lately with Microsoft pop-ups? Any solutions that really work?

(Just kidding, Mrs. IconCat!)

No, actually, I really do consider myself a hardcore indie. But I am a registered Dem because I believe that the party stands for respect for diversity of all sorts.

why a democrat? i have a soul AND a mind.

I help others before myself if I can help it.

Republicanism is now irrational. It only appears rational if you have a twenty year horizon. If you want your grandkids not to live in a living hell, the Democratic party is the only game in town. We are going to need to do a lot of thinking to keep the world decent for human life. We can't have a ne'er-do-well former drunk who brags about being a C student driving the plane. That's just crazy. Republicans have gone crazy.

Like I said, I'm against almost all abortion, which makes me a minority in the Democratic party. But if you want to truly call yourself pro-life, you had better support a health care policy that makes damn sure everyone has health care.

You want to call yourself "pro-life" just because of your abortion stance? Get the hell out of here. (Rhetorical question for repubs, this is not directed at any of you)

If someone chooses not to abort a baby with clear birth defects, runs up thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of dollars in medical bills as a result, and you don't have a way to help them out, you are not pro-life.

If you can't guarantee that a single mother with 4 children will always have health care so that she can get better, continue to raise her children, and not go into debt, you are not pro-life.

If you make someone's grandparents choose between food and medicine, you are not pro-life.

If you're the former governor of a state that executed 10 times as many people as almost every other state, you are not pro-life.

But most importantly, if you get the most powerful country in the world into an unnecessary (at least at that time) war, killing and maiminh almost 1000 Americans and many innocent Iraqi civilians, alienating many loyal allies in the process, YOU ARE MOST DEFINITELY NOT PRO-LIFE!

You're doing great :P

Not on every issue, and rarely far enough on the right side, but hey, if I wanted perfection id move to a cabin in the woods.

Empathy for those who are discriminated, for those who are working as hard as they can but still can't make it, for those who are the best student in their school and still struggle because their school is the worst in the country. Empathy for those who served their country and yet have to fight and argue over health care. Empathy for the forgotten and the ignored.

I'm not necessarily a Democrat because of my social liberalism...I'm a Democrat because it's the only party viable enough to defeat those who are against my beliefs.

1) I want to maximize the individual's ability to make his or her own lifestyle choices. The freedom to swing my fist ends where your nose begins, but until my fist threatens your nose you have no right to restrain the movement of my arms. Thus, I feel if your blow weed in the comfort of your own home it is no business of mine. Get high and go for a drive, well that's a different matter. If you are gay, it is none of my business. If you are gay and want to marry your lover, who am I to complain? I'm straight. Your happiness does not threaten my masculinity, nor the sanctity of my own marriage. Deal with God afterwards ... if the marriage is loving, I doubt He will be all that pissed. (God seems to be reasonable. Priests, on the other hand ... but I digress.)

Additionally, I remember the days of coat hanger abortions. Screw that crap. A woman must have the right to exercise the dictates of her own heart and conscious, and to exercise control of her own body. If this right is not preserved then what human rights are not on the chopping block?

2) I want the American experiment to continue, and American culture to thrive. This means we sometimes have to have priorities other than corporate profit. We are Americans, and we have to a certain degree take care of our own. By doing thus we invest in the robustness of our culture.

BTW ambition is OK, but greed is not good ... though since Reagan the alleged virtue of greed has become part of the American neo-con mythos. Strange, given that greed is clearly identified in Christian theology as one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

3) I am a upper middle class professional. It is oft said the Democrats want to plunder my bank account and the Republicans want to control my bedroom. I feel far less anxiety about paying taxes. What my wife and I do with our college girlfriend of the week, the whips and chains, and the donkey are not your business, nor Asscroft's.:evilgrin:

If the choice is paying higher taxes and retaining my liberty, or having more disposable income at the expense of my personal freedom, I'll pay the taxes.

4) I'm upper middle class, with kids and all that ... I'm having a tough time making it. I can only imagine what those who are less well paid are experiencing right now. Rethugs call this a great economic expansion, but I personally know no one who is experiencing its benefits. That being the case, I stand with my friends, who shoulder heavy burdens.

5) Freedom is a two edged sword, one edge being liberty and the other being responsibility. Examples of responsibility: ecological sanity, sensible regulation of commerce, etc. Libertarians and Freepers talk a LOT about one edge (liberty) but simply do not want to talk about the other edge (responsibility). To do so would admit requirements for laws limiting the ability of businesses to exploit workers, pollute their surroundings, and manipulate markets. In brief, they are irresponsible, self centered swine. (But at least Libertarians want to legalize pot ... )

I could go on, but I have probably vented my spleen enough for one night. Thank you in advance for your forbearance.

I recommend everyone who is curious about politics take the following survey. It does an excellent job of helping people understand where they fit in the political spectrum.

(and my parents and I just discussed this yesterday)....

The first two politicians I was aware of as a child, in terms of understanding who they were and what their jobs were, were Dale Bumpers and Richard Nixon.

Shocking that I ended up a Democrat! ;)

Caring for people, their rights, and for the environment as well as education and the advancement of science.

when I looked up "liberal" and "conservative" in the dictionary and got the shock of my life (well, almost). According to everything I've read, Jesus was a liberal. If you like old movies, with the exception of a few blood and guts thrillers, the winner is the person who suddenly realizes he is a liberal and starts acting like it, no matter what his history. The mean, nasty villains are always conservatives of one sort or another. Love for others, especially the ones you aren't expected to, stamps you indelibly with the liberal (tolerant) D!

After being a registered Democrat since 1965, I will finally abandon the party and join the Greens after this election and stop holding my nose.

I'm a Democrat because America is really one big melting pot - if you were born here, you're automatically an American, but if you weren't, you came here because of all the opportunities that the U.S.A. has to offer. Either way, someone in your family at some point was a foreigner who came from another country. With all of the various religions and races living in this country, how can you enforce one frame of mind, one way of life on everyone? It seems to me that the Democratic party just understands that better than the Republicans do. Also: Democrats look at the all-around situation of the entire U.S. population, not just the wealthy, etc... They understand that we have a wide variety of people and classes living here, and they do their best to accommodate everyone. Whenever there's a Republican in, it seems there's a war. Then, it takes a Democrat to fix everything and make the peace again. Yet, we're criticized as being an un-Godly party who support all the wrong things, etc... We also respect the Constitution more - we're not the ones trying to rip it apart. I think we're the compassionate, non-judgemental, peaceful party. I don't know how anymore Jesus-like we could be! O8)

I hang with the Dem party. I lean more to a Democractic Socialist agenda. I'm pro domestic Social programs/policies...republicans don't seem to like that idea. I prefer capitalism with a conscience. Level the playing field so that even the least among us has a chance to at least put a modest roof over his/her head and still have enough left over to go to a movie once in awhile. It's the simple things in life that make a world of difference in terms of quality of life. One doesn't need to be a billionaire to enjoy living.

People shouldn't have to go to bed at night with a stomach full of ulcers worrying about what tomorrow will bring...will the job be there next week, will my healthcare be there when I need it, will there be a retirement for me when I'm too old to work, will I have enough time off from labor to spend time with my family camping, fishing, yachting, skiing whatever??? Too much worry, too little time before we depart this plane.

Republicans could give a damn about their neighbor(the community) in this regard. It's every man for himself with them. I can't be part of that. I have no place else to go but the Democratic Party. :shrug:

As a lad, my grandfather told me many things, but when it came to his politics, there were a group of five sayings he always said, and that is why I'm led to the Democratic party.


What my Grandfather told me.

1. "Be kind to your fellow American
The Right-Wing Dead Wrong All-Star Team and their TV shows and books and cries of traitor grossly violates this one. However my Grandfather usually laughs at that stuff. As he would say, "Most them folks couldn't make an honest living, some liars like that Limbaugh need some kind of work."

2. "If anythings trickling down on you, you are being either rained on or pissed on, and with Republicans its usually the latter.
The older I get the more this makes sense. Voodoo Economics built the two biggest budget deficits in our history. That's the rain part.

The scary thing is that they admit that they are doing it in the name of small government for you and big government for profit for them. That's the piss part.

3. "If you send a man off to war, he deserves a square deal when he comes back.
An illness kept him away from Korea, but he had two brothers go, and a father serve in World War I.
They returned to a segregated America in many respects, but they all traded one battle for another for equality here at home, and in many ways won their square deal.
And notice who helped building those square deals (Expended G.I. Bill, voting rights, civil rights, equal education, etc..) Yep, them Liberal folks.
What's going on now in Iraq, irks his brothers. And how the VA has gotten backed up and underfunded irks them.

4. "I like money, but money is not my master.
My Grandfather over dinner last week. "You know something," he said. "I'll bet Dick Cheney would sell his own mama. These people are worse than a junkie. They worship money."

5. "I have to live within my means and my Government should, too.
Being a business owner, its isn't so much the taxes that irk him, its the fact that all the hoops he has to jump through, Washington wastes money, and he's really felt the pinch in the last three years as his "tax cut" led to every other tax taking an upturn.

He'd always gripe, "Them damn politicians spend my money faster than I can make it!"

The older and more active I get, the more I see these five things in action.

You and your granddad have nailed it. Those are the values I look for in the Democratic Party; I hope the party will remember it's roots and your granddad's ideals...it's too precious to let slip away...

"If anythings trickling down on you, you are being either rained on or pissed on, <----this I have to steal :D

Best wishes to you and your family~~Peace

sorry man. But it's true.

And every time I see what they're doing in this campaign I think "they must want people to HATE them"

Like me, I already do. I hate them more almost every day. It seems they're getting worse and worse all the time.

I want people to have good jobs, health care, education, retirement. The Dems fall on the right side of these issues. That's about it. I guess you could say it's about quality of life.

You name it.

Abolishing child labor.

Giving women the vote.

The 40 hour work week.

Workplace safety regulations.

Having workers allowed to go on strike without getting shot.

Seat belts.

Abolishing slavery.

Getting the rat shit out of our food.

Getting the feces out of our drinking water.

All of these were liberal ideas and resisted by CONSERVATIVES.

I say FUCK conservatives, they are HORRIBLE PEOPLE.

as the control freaks on the right.

Plus, I think that we need a decent social safety net and other institutions to keep multinational corporations in check. While I certainly believe in free enterprise, our capitalist system (which is not the same thing) does tend to accumulate wealth in ever more concentrated hands and larger and larger amounts, at the expense of the folks at the bottom. I don't think this is because it's inherently designed to be evil (or good), but nevertheless unchecked, it seems to work like an anti-robin hood mathematical equation, taking from the have nots and giving to the haves. I think history has borne out that when government acts as a mitigating force, working to lift up the folks at the bottom and make it possible for everyone to obtain an education or opportunity (a la the GI bill) the entire society does better--- including those at the top.

I also believe, strongly, that the US Needs a Single Payer Health Care system, and while the Dem. party hasn't entirely embraced this as a proposal, I think it's the only viable long term solution to the current situation and the 40 Million uninsured.

I strongly believe in reproductive rights, a woman's right to choose, and the right of consenting adults of any gender or orientation to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home. Likewise, I am opposed to any form of censorship that would tell consenting adults what they can read or watch in the privacy of their own home, again, provided we're talking about material involving consenting adults. While there are certainly would-be censors on the left, (i've come across a couple here) I think there are more of them, and they're more dangerous and out of control, on the right.

Hmm. Those are just a few. There are certainly issues, particularly of personal freedom, that I wish the Dem. party would take a stronger tack on, but I've voted for the Democrat in 2 Decades of Presidential Elections, I've almost never voted for anyone of a different party (maybe Green, once, as a statement), and overall I can't imagine voting any other way.

I am NOT talking about freedom to not pay taxes, freedom to screw up the environment, or freedom of corporations to hire 12 year olds to make shoes.

I'm firmly of the opinion that we have granted way too many rights to corporations, and too few to individuals.. The system is wholly ass-backward, especially when you realize the capacity a large corporation has to do widespread damage to the body public..

And I support environmental regulation and protection, and I also think another important part of dealing with the problems that face us is good, targeted governmental funding of research into problems like global warming. We really should have a manhattan project type affair to wean us off of foreign oil and ideally come up with workable environmentally friendly modes of power generation and transportation. That is an excellent place for the muscle of collective government. The problem is, now, we do pay a lot in taxes, and we have a huge centralized government apparatus-- but it's wasting our money on ridiculous shit that no one needs. Cut out the drug war/prison industrial boondoggle, pare back the military-industrial complex to something somewhere resembling reason, as opposed to --what-- is it a Trillion Dollars a year, now? And we could afford to do lots of things without having to have the crazy tax burden that conservatives flip out about when people talk about stuff like a Single Payer Health Care system.

and politically in this country has been because of Democrats.

From Jefferson to Clinton.

Adams almost destroyed this country right after it was born, and almost every single Federalist, Whig, or republican administration has been a disaster since then.

If it were not for Democrats, life on earth might, literally, already be extinct. Look at what Bu$h has done to the economy, the environment, foreign policy, civil liberties, national defense, etc.

He is the ideal, consummate republican president. A total and complete deliberate fuck-up that benefits .0000000001% of the populace - super rich old money.

nt

pushed me into the Dem party officially. I joined it to support him and his ideas.

And I'm no kid. I'm 46 years old.

Dean gave me some hope. I'd gotten pretty jaded. I'm still pretty jaded.

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I grew up. The Democrats, as a political party, are closest to my ideals right now as a viable political position. To tell the truth they aren't even close to my true ideals, but they will be whom I vote for right now.

How do we get people to buy one? I don't know. :cry:

being unemployed and having the time to read news ALL DAY, and this gawd-awful misadministration