When Did You First Realize That You Were A Demmacrat?

[littlebittybobby]

But yeah---was it at puberty or later on? I'm taking this mini-survey, to develop a stereotype that is even more accurate than that already held by normal people.

[catherine]

What an interesting question!! At first I didn't think I'd be able to answer--how do you pinpoint when you adopt a particular platform?

If I go WAY back...my early political consciousness started when I was in grammar school, and I experienced a profound sense of loss when Kennedy was shot, and he obviously was a Democrat. My parents were mostly Republican. They wanted Goldwater for President, but I didn't like him at all--I do remember that. During the Vietnam war I had one "hawk" brother and one "dove" brother. I don't recall having strong feelings for or against Vietnam--I was in high school by then, and I kind of bought into both sides--on one hand the Domino Theory somewhat made sense, and on the other hand, I saw the complete tragedy of so many soldiers being killed and maimed. I actually did a campaign gig for Nelson Rockefeller in high school, but only because it was a fun experience--I wore a paper dress with his picture splashed on it, and my friend and I were in the news. I knew nothing about his policies. I think I was about 16-17 at the time. My best friend took me to see Joe Duffey, a Democratic candidate for Senate in CT, and I think was starting to definitely have Democratic leanings by then.

From that time on, I don't know if I consciously became one party or another. I don't believe I was old enough to vote for McGovern but probably would have. But I know I voted for Democrats since then: Carter, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Clinton, and Biden.

I don't believe I "became" a Democrat. I think what became important to me were my beliefs that skewed Democratic: the belief that some people need safety nets, that the environment is something that heeds to be protected against Big Business with strong regulation, that healthcare should be nationalized.

I still consider myself more independent than "democrat" but my voting behavior would certainly peg me as blue.

[iris lilies]

I remember the year I left I left the Democratic Party. Does that count?

I’ve said this 1 million times here so I won’t go into details, but it was the year that this happened: the Federal bureaucrats from Housing and Urban Design presented a plan for public housing that included my flower garden as part of their $&+%#$**% expansion for cheap public housing. This was land I owned, mind you, land adjacent to my house.

HUD threats are big government threats I can do without. There was a Democrat in the White House at the time, but I don’t know that really matters, it’s really the concept of the Federal government overstepping its bounds that turned me.

my neighborhood was already impacted negatively for decades by the public housing complex just a couple blocks away. We had sit down meetings for years with those Housing Authority idiots. They are slimy snakes.

[Rogar]

Nixon pretty much made a convert of me. Not much more to say about it. I came from a Republican background.

[jp1]

I was always a consistent democratic voter but never particularly engaged. 9/11 was the event that got me to actually start reading about world affairs because I wanted to know why some people hated us enough to do that. Bush’s ’they hate us for our freedoms’ was potentially partially true but rang kind of false to my ears given our long term actions of meddling in the Mideast. I’m not naive enough to believe that democrats are especially better about Mideast policy but as I became more politically aware domestic issues also became something I cared about and democrats always had values and policies that more closely aligned with mine. Currently the Maga incarnation of the Republican Party is so far from what I think the government should be doing that it would take an incredibly dramatic change in their priorities before I’d ever consider voting for a Republican for anything above the level of county dog catcher. And if it was Kristy noem on the ticket for dog catcher I wouldn’t even vote Republican for that.