I just can’t anymore. The Republicans are nowhere near getting any better despite me hoping for a long time that the light would finally go on. In opposition, I could tolerate the stupid, because they were doing the job I wanted done: stopping Democrats from doing what Democrats wanted to do. But now, for the 2nd time in my life, they control everything. And for the 2nd time, they are doing nothing useful with it, and worse than that, seeking to do actual harm.
Now I’ve never understood people who just jump to another party when they are disgusted with their current party. I just don’t understand that “team” mentality that says that once you don’t like your current team, you get 100% on board with your new team. David Brock comes to mind, but also guys like Dennis Miller after 9/11 and some people on message boards I’ve frequented over the years. They just got fed up and did a 180. That’s not me either.
I could just be an independent voter, which for the most part I’ve always been anyway. But I’m also politically active and it’s tough to be politically active without consistent allies. Most truly independent voters have to avoid politics because no one really agrees with them. There are no compatriots in the fight with them except on an issue by issue basis. And then there are issues where I’m on one side, but I have little patience for some of the dumb arguments or policy proposals in pursuit of those ideals. For example, I’ve been in favor of gay marriage since 2000, but I don’t think I’ll be in favor of making people provide services for same sex wedding ceremonies ever. I’m pro-choice, but pro-choice in the European sense(unfettered access to early abortion, but strong limits after the 1st trimester). There’s no movement for those views.
So this sounds like it’s all about me, but the question I have to ask affects a lot of people. What are good ways to get involved, to be an activist, when your views don’t really put you in synchronicity with major players on the scene? When I was enthusiastic about the Tea Party, it was easy. Go to Tea Party rallies, network with other Tea Partiers. I didn’t agree with them on everything, but we did tend to agree on the things we felt most strongly about, so it worked. I’m still friends with a lot of Tea Partiers, but discussing Donald Trump with them is exhausting. Most of them, if not huge fans, are in his corner and reject most criticisms of his Presidency.
So where do people like us go if we want to make a difference?
I’d say the best ways you can be involved when you find both parties don’t really align with you is to look for candidates who YOU agree with, and spread the word about them. It may seem fruitless, but it’s at least a start.
Let me ask you though: Why aren’t you a Democrat? You’re certainly not welcome in today’s GOP with your support for abortion and gay marriage.
I relate to what you are saying. I don’t align with either party but proably lean more conservative on most issues. I like the fact that the Democrats call attention to important issues. I don’t like how they suggest dealing with them. I hate how the republicans choose to bury their heads in the sand on most issues.
The big issues for me are race, healthcare, education, energy, environment, economy and defense. It pisses me off that these issues become politicized. They are so afraid one side or the other will be given credit for fixing it that they sabotage each other at every turn.
Neither party has ever had a platform that represented me. Not even Libertarian. I’ve switched parties a time or two, not as a vote against the former party but only because if I want to vote, then I HAVE to register with one of the parties (closed primary state). I guess I could register as independent but I’m not sure what that means other than being on the losing side of everything.
But by the same token, my views on abortion and gay marriage also get a very negative response from activists for those issues. That’s one of the problems I’m seeing in the Democratic Party is that the activists are very strident and any deviation makes you evil. Republicans criticize me by saying, “You aren’t really a conservative.” Democrats criticize me by saying, “You’re a terrible person. And an idiot too.”
The biggest reason I can’t be a Democrat though is that I’m an absolutist on the Constitution and I demand that the budget not grow beyond the rate of inflation.
That’s why I typically vote to increase gridlock; I figure the Republicans come up with some bad ideas, and the Democrats come up with some bad ideas – and, so long as they keep each other in check, each side’s bad ideas at least have a really hard time getting traction. But any time someone comes up with an idea good enough to get approval from both sides, odds are it’s a better idea than most, right?
And so sometimes I vote for Democrats, and sometimes for Republicans: because, for decades now, I haven’t been able to come up with a less bad approach.
I actually don’t see politics as win or lose, never have. Elections of course are win or lose, and my guys usually lose. I have yet to vote for a winning Presidential candidate and that’s not because I vote third party. I have actually been unerring in picking the losing major party candidate since 2000(before that I voted for Perot).
But politics is only half elections, the other half is what happens between elections. Both sides lose elections but win battles in Congress and in the courts or among public opinion. That’s why I asked about activist groups, most of the time those battles are won through collective action, but who do I act with?
Controls on political speech. I can understand the anger at the Citizens United decision given the power of corporations in our government, but Democrats really don’t care to protect ANY political speech in the breach. They went pretty smoothly from “corporations don’t have the right to spend as much as they want on advocacy” to “individuals don’t have the right to spend as much as they want on political advocacy”.
Limits on religious freedom. Religious freedom is increasingly becoming narrowed to “freedom of worship”, when traditionally it’s also been the right to live your life according to your faith. And given some liberals’ general hostility to religion, I wouldn’t be surprised to see freedom of religion no longer even be a thing once a small enough minority cares about that sort of thing.
Limits on gun rights. While in my view the Constitution does allow for regulation of firearms, I do not believe you can do things like ban handguns or make people demonstrate a legitimate need for a firearm, subject to a government bureaucrat’s judgment on whether you truly need it or not.
Taking federal supremacy too far. Democrats do not seem to see a limit to what the federal government can legislate on, and states are supposed to obey. The Democrats passed a bill which attempted to coerce states to expand Medicaid, which was so obviously unconstitutional that two liberals joined the conservative majority on SCOTUS to strike it down. Prior to that, those who objected to this part of the bill were derided as “Tenthers”.
I don’t see how 1-3 are Democratic principles (outside the fringes) except in the fantasies of right-wing radio guys. There are reasonable concerns about those issues, but the way you describe them strikes me as fantasy, not the reality of what most in the party support. I don’t know enough about #4 to comment.
I can imagine, say, a libertarian who votes third-party because he figures one major party is correct about gun rights and incorrect about gay marriage, and figures the other major party is the other way around, and, oh, what to do?
I get that.
But if that’s the case, then I’m not seeing the trouble when it comes to what’s to be done between elections: just back a single-issue activist group that pushes for gun rights, and back a single-issue activist group that pushes for gay marriage. If you can’t bring yourself to vote Republican or Democrat because neither is 100% with you on various issues, fine: but a single-issue group can score 100%, so let it!
All four examples are issues that were either legislated on or executive action taken since 2000. Heller was decided because some overwhelmingly Democratic cities did actually try to ban handgun ownership entirely. I’ve heard very few Democrats recognize that Citizens United was correctly decided, Glenn Greenwald being one of the few(and also a Constitutional absolutist himself). And the Obama administration lost a lot of 1st amendment freedom of religion cases. It really looked as if they were trying to push the boundaries there.
I’m with you on this, but don’t see most mainstream Democrats as trying to limit the free speech rights of individuals. They may complain about the Koch brothers, (that’s free speech too) but there’s not much of an appetite to stop them via legislation. If there is, ill disagree with my party on that.
I think both parties have been guilty of that, ranging from Peyote use to polygamy. Neither party has been very good at letting people do what they wish as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. But, I’m a liberal that’s pretty hostile to all religions, so you might be right about this.
I don’t really follow the gun debate. I know I can get a CCW permit without government interference. And I can buy any gun I would ever want to own. And I live in a very Democratic state. Maybe it’s different other places.
Again, I’m with you on this, but see it as a bipartisan problem. Mandating a 21 year old drinking age, a .08 BAC level for DUI, and federalizing drug policy all seem like expansiion of federal power thatthan parties are comfortable with
I think there’s a pace in the Democratic Party for someone with your views.
Possibly, the Democratic Party is the big tent party nowadays, but the right wing of the party doesn’t really have much collective action going on anymore, at least in a purposeful way. The right wing of the party certainly has influence, they get all the corporate money and African-American voters seem to prefer the less progressive candidates in the primaries, but I’m not sure that’s really a coherent coalition. African-American voters can easily be lured to a more progressive choice if progressives ever figure out how to appeal to the working class in general(which would include African-American voters), and corporate money isn’t really grassroots.
My personal solution is to focus on resolving single issues and avoid getting into discussions and debates about “platform”. Find organizations and candidates that desire to address the issues I care about most and are able to present feasible proposals to address those issues. It’s a democracy; you can’t have it all when there are 323 million other people. I figure you cherry-pick a few issues you deem most crucial and see that they are addressed, and then just suck it up and learn to tolerate everything else.
Admittedly, the strategy is easier at more local levels than it is at, say, the Federal level.
Well for that I suppose there’s the old Concord Coalition, and Citizens Against Government Waste. I find that I side with the ACLU 95% of the time as well.
This is different than the language you used earlier – those are elements of the Democratic party, but they’re not representative as a whole. Your views on all of those issues would be entirely comfortable in the Democratic party, IMO.
For the positions that are much more “agree or get out of the party!” – same-sex marriage and gay rights, civil rights for people of color, maybe even abortion – IIRC, your views are actually on the “Democratic” side of the line.
The Democratic position is basically, ‘You have the right to live your life according to your religious precepts. But others have the right to live their lives by their religious precepts. You do not have the right to force your religion upon others.’ The Republican position seems to be, ‘The United States is a Christian nation. Period.’
Many Christians believe they are under attack because other people are allowed to have abortions. No, Christians would be under attack if they were forced to have abortions. They are not being forced to marry people of their own gender, or of a different ethnicity. They are not under attack because some Americans choose to wear a hijab, or wear a yarmulke, or to deny the existence of a god altogether. Freedom of Religion also means freedom from religion.
The problem comes in telling someone they have to run their business the way the government wants even if it interferes with their religious beliefs. I believe the Supreme Court struck exactly the right balance there. “Closely held” companies, as opposed to public companies, can claim religious exemptions. This is especially true if like Hobby Lobby, they have not recently found out they were Christian but have been openly Christian all along.
The Obama administration even tried to go after Christian non-profits. They tried to limit exemptions to houses of worship only.
