Why did you become a Democrat ?

Why did you choose the Democratic Party instead of the Republican Party? What about the Democratic Party most appealed to you personally?

Was it one issue? Or was it a combination of issues? Were you a supporter of labor and union rights, for example?

In your opinion, what makes the Democratic Party different from the Republican Party?

I'm just not into the crazy.

My very first political memory is riding on my Dad's shoulders in a big crowd in New Haven, Ct, and a man with a nice smile reached up and shook my hand. It was JFK at a campaign rally on a sunny, crisp day in October 1960.

My father used to joke that he was the only Naval Officer in the US 5th Fleet who voted for Adlai Stevenson. My mom used to host UNICEF Fundraisers in our back yard. When I was seven or eight, a friend of my parents showed an independent film in our living room of his interview with Fidel Castro in Cuba, who had taken power just a few years earlier. Americans did not visit Cuba back then as tourists.

Guess I could have done worse.

I voted for Adlai Stevenson in the first presidential election that I was old enough. Stevenson was running against a very popular Ike and the Democratic Party, at that time, projected their effort on Vice President Richard Nixon.

and a good friend of Mrs. Roosevelt, a GREAT DEMOCRAT. :kick:

turned 21 and could vote. I always heard stories about Stevenson and what a great President he would have been - my father was always so proud of having been part of his campaign.

I was born into the family and raised by blue-collar liberal parents. I was thrilled to be a Kennedy Girl when I was in high school and JFK visited our town.

at the county fair. She bought the first television in the family so that she could watch the '56 Democratic convention. I paged for a Democratic state senator when I was in 8th grade.

and third parties don't have any chance at this point of doing much of anything constructive.

Eventually, once the Republicans are sputtering as a regional party, only, the Progressive Caucus will splinter off into a new party, since history seems to be repeating itself. Then we'll have a chance at a third party that is capable of effecting change.

Then a corporation became a person so I guess they decided to jump on board with our right wingy Supreme Court, you know, that OPPOSITION that hates everyone except for the exclusive white, republican christian.

The Party has left me, and there's no where else to go...

sorry for the pun... we need to work locally and spread our views through the internet and out in the streets.

And I was smart enough to see we were all getting fucked by the republicans. Now I guess I'm just getting fucked by everybody :(

1) I'm not a one issue voter. The GOP is packed with them. It is why their policy positions are so limited.

2) Try to picture a bar chart, on the X axis are individual issues, on the Y access, the extent to which I agree with the DEM or GOP on each item. What you get is a set of comparison bars for each policy item. Currently, I can't find one policy item in which the GOP would get a larger agreement score from me. In some cases, the GOP and Dem positions have very short bars (neither party is doing what I want) but even there, the Dems score better.

3) Religion. The GOPs effort to create a Christian Theocracy (Fundamentalist baptist style) transcends any specific issue in #2.

4) Misrepresentation of policy and its impacts. If find that the GOP will flat out lie about the impact of a policy to your face. They will remname their position to be the exact opposite of what they are actually doing.

5) Use of the media to lie. This is constant. I catch the media lying daily. Or they just ignore obvious GOP lies.

Items 3, 4, and 5, are attempts by the GOP to manipulate how any voters assesses my item #2 above. They use 3-5 to trick people so that the comparisons in #2 are based on false or misleading info.

my parents were union workers. Now the difference I see between the 2 parties are on what I call "cultural" issues: Abortion, GLBT rights, prayer in school, etc... I see very little difference on economic issues and that is a shame.

Under 50 registered republicans in my county when I turned 18. All local elections were decided in the primaries.










:smoke:

We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio

I saw who was saddened and who was gleeful about those deaths of kids about my own age.

It was the Republicans who were the most gleeful.

and really looked out for the interests of working
class and poor.

Social and Economic Justice are my cause. Working Class
warrior. I believe in my core, lose our Middle Working
Class and we lose Democracy.

FDR saved Capitalism and saved Democracy. He gave us
the real Middle Class. He saved Capitalism because, my
friends you better believe Capitalism failed. Yes, the
Great Depression meant Capitalism failed. EVERY COUNTRY
in the World collapsed. The Democratic Pary's legacy
was saving Capitalism and making it work for all classes.
He set up the regulations and laws which brought about
a thriving middle class. NEVER FORGET, in last 10 years
all those regulations were thrown out. The Banksters
went crazy and you know where we are now.

Those who do not know history are bound to repeat it.
MAKING THE SAME Sickening Mistakes over and over.

My parents were Democrats and my dad was a union man. My earliest memories of politics were helping my dad distribute Adlai Stevenson literature when I was eight years old.

My parents were always election judges, no matter where we lived. They did this for forty-nine years, and were active in other ways.

My family in Minnesota were DFA members.

When I was growing up in the fifties, only the kids from wealthy families had parents who were repubbies.

I just like them personally, platform be damned. The Democratic Party is about cults of personality, not issues.

/sarcasm

and while everyone else around me focused on Hell, fire, and brimstone, I was struck with how cool this cat Jesus was and how he was always trying to help the poor, heal the sick, turn the other cheek, share the wealth...etc. And as Christians we are supposed to be followers of Christ - the greatest liberal of all time.

I reserve the right to avoid punishment to my nose on occasion when warranted.

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789.

"Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man." Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1795.

The man of great heart, fundamental decency and enormous compassion who wanted to stop the Vietnam war, ensure a fair deal for the ordinary person and lift up those in need of a helping hand. I was 12 at the time and I have not looked back. Too bad that the national party no longer stands for anything that RFK stood for.

Unthinkable to be that other thing, the Hoovernixonreagan creatures.

politics with just about anyone. Mother hated the arguing, and I could tell she voted most of the time Democrat. When I was in high school, I began to 'debate' the ole man in politics as well. Just because he was louder than I was, he thought he was right. One day he began to complain about 'them bastards taxing my SS checks'. I calmly told him, "But dad, you voted them bastards into office, THEY wee the ones who voted to tax it!" He never uttered a response, because he knew his high school son was correct!

I'm a registered Independent. I didn't choose the Repub party because I disagree with absolutely everything they stand for. I didn't chose the Dem party because by the time I was old enough to vote (and cared to) the Dem party had already thrown in the towel on the working class and even started throwing in the towel on social issues (abortion, gays in the military, gay marriage, etc.).

I see little difference between the parties. It's all a big con game politicians play to keep the voters ignorant and give the illusion of democracy while they get rich off the corporations and the wealthy at everyone else's expense. They're all liars and thieves. The sooner the people realize that and do something about it, the better. But it won't happen in my lifetime... the people dislike having to come to the realization that they've been had and their system of government is a huge failure and has been for ages. In this country, politics is nothing more than a team sport.

My parents were Republicans all my life, and we used to argue politics.

Funny thing, about 5 years ago, they re-registered as Democrats. They voted for Obama.

We don't argue any more.

So for many races, the only way to vote was to be registered Democratic. By the time it changed (I am not sure when it did, probably bu 1980), I was a confirmed Democrat. No way in the world would I have registered with the party of Nixon and his plumbers!

I decided the ability to vote for the least likely to succeed in the repub primary in DE was not worth having my name associated with that party. I'd cringe whenever I received any mail, ads, etc. My daughter and I worked for Obama/Biden and Carney and I've voted Dem (except for Mike Castle) since I've been voting. I originally registered repub because it was the 'party of Lincoln' and my future hubby registered repub. Now I'm a dem and he's still contemplating changing. He comes up to renew his driver's license soon, so I'm hoping he changes then. It was painless :)

Actually, I still feel slightly bad for not staying registered as one of the few sane registrants they have. At least in the primary I could vote AGAINST the tea party candidate. As more sane people switch, it's becoming the party of nuckin' futs.

I was fairly politically apathetic until that point. I had the notion that people in office would work it out for the best one way or the other. I grew up in Southern WVa where it was very fiscally liberal but socially conservative. Everyone loved the unions and that influence was always there. But it wasn't until I realized that the current President at the time had just lied us into a massive war that I began really investigating politics to figure out where I stood on things. I would venture to say that George Bush created a LOT of Democrats out of people from my generation.

the good guys (when I came of age). LBJ took a mountain of shit for Vietnam and it ended up killing him, but I still felt the dems were on the "right" side of every issue. Bill Proxmire and Gaylord Nelson were among my heros as was Teddy (despite the constant attacks by the right--unrelenting).
\

My parents were Conservative Democrats. My father taught me the meaning of “party loyalty” as well as respect for the office of President...no matter who the occupant was. As I got older, I embraced the social agenda and compassion that the Democratic Party stood for. I don’t label myself as anything other than “Democrat” and get annoyed when others call me “Liberal”, “Progressive”, “Blue Dog”, etc. I am all of the above and damned proud of it.

:dem:
:patriot:

1. My parents were Democrats and loved FDR but also liked Ike. Unfortunately about the time my Mother passed away, my Dad became a Reagan Democrat and was for the last 16 years of his life.

2. Most of my education was either in Indian country of in the SF/Berkeley are in 60 and 70s (while living with relatives, boarding school or on my own at Cal). My Boy Scout Troop had a card table with Johnson Humphrey materials in 1964 in front of the local market in 1984.

3. My roomate as a sophmore at boarding school in 1968 had a mother that was big in NOW and Democratic politics. His younger sister was Eugene McCarthy's daughters roomate at the same time. I went to McCarthy, Humphrey, and Wallace political rallies in San Francisco 1968 as well as many anti-war rallies 68-73 in Berkeley and SF. Eric turned me on the Zappa and Philip K Dick that year too.

4. I was interested in the environment and science and not religious (nor was my family religious).

5. I was not rascist.

a political party.

I admired the Kennedys and loathed Nixon.

(Only a bit later did I delve into party policy, and lo and behold, my instincts were right.)

During the 1980 presidential campaign I leaned toward John Anderson and probably would have voted for him.

Fortunately my 18th birthday was a few months after the election.

I later realized what a mistake it would have been to waste my vote on someone who was not going to be elected. Better to have cast it for Carter in an attempt to keep Reagan out of the White House.

These days, if there's a Democrat running in an election, I vote for her (or him).

I also actually care about people and things outside of myself and my pocketbook.

Democrats believe in trying to make things better in the real world.

Republicans believe in fairy tale worlds; where all you have to do is work hard and you'll succeed, where if you aren't an entrepreneur you probably have a benevolent employer who will reward your hard work, where the "free market" can fix everything, where it's ok to "fix" the free market to help out big business, where prayer is better than just making sure everyone has health insurance, where big corporations are looking out for our best interests...

I think he said the Democratic Party looked out for the workin man, and the repukes looked out for the lily white hands.

Now I'm beginning to wonder.

Bush.

and the conservatives took over the party. I voted for Ford but that was the last time I ever voted repug, became a Democrat after that. Now I see the Democratic Party becoming more like repugs and I'm very unhappy, not sure where to go next.

At 12 I was inspired by JFK and the "bleeding heart Liberal" agenda. It made sense to me. Although the adults in my life never were fair they taught me to believe in fairness, The Democratic agenda of that time espoused the fairness to everyone that my 12 year old soul cried out for.

Sadly I see all sense of fairness, not only from the Democratic party but from the populace in general seeping away to be replaced by something far more sinister than the 80's "me generation".

It's an ugly world when the party platform I've always admired and lived by is being eaten alive by pragmatic bipartisan vermin.

I was old enough to vote. Didn't even realize that there was another party.

...and look at myself in the mirror every morning. I suppose if I were a sociopath wouldn't care, but I happen to have a conscience, as inconvenient as it is sometimes.

i mean really extreme is so offensive to me. breaking constitution going after clinton and then the whole monica thing. then bush is honest as he lied a shit storm and gore pretty much stuck to truth and the christian coalition hypocrisy and saying all dems heathons and nonchristians. cant stomach that.

lies lies lies

stupid stupid stupid

and that is without going to any of the policy. that alone made me say over a decade ago, i can never vote for a republican or be a part of the republican party

and let me repeat

that is even before we talk about policy.

just about everything the repugs are going for today, i oppose

hated Hitler. Because my grandfather and uncle were unionists, because my whole family except for one Beck loving ignorant con man uncle are democrats. Because all of my family are the working class, that's why I'm a democrat. Oh, and if the "new democrats" continue to screw labor, I'll follow my great grandfather as a democratic socialist, me and Bernie, YEAH!

(At least, the things I was aware he stood for). I saw him as a true populist; a champion of revolutionary virtues, like racial equality, sharing our largesse with lesser affluent nations, not getting suckered into a legacy setup like Bay of Pigs. Just to name a few. I also admired FDR and all that he did.

Ironworkers shopmens local 507 in Denver 1n 1974 then went on into the Boilermakers local 101.

The Catholic Church of my youth (I'm 49) focused almost exclusively on social justice. I went to a Catholic grade school .... aside from the academic lessons (the three R's) the only thing I remember were lessons of compassion , social justice and stewardship of our world.

At that time, growing up Catholic in Metro-Detroit = being a Democrat

I haven't considered myself a Catholic in decades (except possibly the consideration of being culturally Catholic)

My parents have always voted a pretty straight democratic ticket (very centrist Dem's).

The issues and my beliefs have kept me a Democrat.