Here’s an interesting political change story (hat tip: commenter “Ilana”). The author is a lifelong Democrat, and the proximate cause of his change to Independent was the Democrats’ recent stance on Israel, but it goes deeper than that. The piece is described thusly at the link:

Lifelong Democrat Brad Goverman has finally left the Democrats. His views haven’t changed. It’s the Party that’s left him. Yet he hasn’t become a Republican. Instead he’s politically homeless, reflecting the position of many American Jews and Liberals in this new radical, political landscape. This piece shows America at a tipping point

From the piece itself:

The Democratic Party no longer feels like home. I never imagined I would write those words. …

I was a Democrat because I believed the party represented something larger than itself. It championed civil rights, religious liberty, pluralism, and the belief that Americans from every background could build a common democratic future. It believed government could improve people’s lives without becoming the center of them. It believed that immigration and pluralism wasn’t a weakness to be tolerated, but a strength to be celebrated.

For most of my life, I believed the Democratic Party best embodied those values. That is why this decision has been so painful. I’m not walking away from a political label. I’m walking away from a place that shaped my understanding of public life.

Sound familiar? I understand the sentiment. What is harder to understand at this point is his holding onto his identity as a Democrat for all these years in the face of so much evidence for so long that the Party isn’t what he thought it was (or what it was closer to being long ago). This is especially true because he seems to have been someone interested in politics and not someone utterly disengaged. It took the Democrats’ reaction to 10/7 to get him to see what I think had already been obvious.

On the other hand, I know how very very difficult it can be to admit to oneself, after decades of support for a certain party, that one was either wrong all that time or that things have changed now. It almost doesn’t matter which; it’s the change that matters.

Goverman makes it crystal clear, though, that he’s not a Republican. That is very common as well for left-to-right changers. It’s a bridge too far for most changers to declare a switch like that, even to themselves. Will he vote Republican? I don’t know, although in Massachusetts – where he lives – it doesn’t matter all that much. He may just not vote, or vote third-party.

It’s a start.