Another political changer
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.
No, he will still vote Dem
The fact that he decided he could no longer be a Democrat but is not a Republican is gutless. By not voting for a viable alternative to the Democratic candidate he essentially continues to support the party he insists no longer represents him. He might as well have remained a registered Democrat and just not voted. If he thinks he’s making a principled stand he’s sorely mistaken. If he believes in what he’s saying he owes it to himself to vote — in a meaningful way — against the people who have taken over his former political home.
F; SHIREHOME:
I’ve never registered as a Republican except for primary voting. I’m not gutless. I have voted solely for Republicans since 2004, however. I don’t particularly want to join a party.
“It believed government could improve people’s lives without becoming the center of them.”
Um….that’s not the Democrat party I’m familiar with. Perhaps he was in a different one?
Even if that was their intent (and I don’t believe it is or ever has been), please name one government program that has “improved people’s lives without becoming the center of them.”
I’ll wait.
There’s a reason that charitable donations are consistently so much higher amongst Republicans. Republican altruism is expressed in giving their own money for worthy causes. Democrat “altruism” is expressed by taking other people’s money to filter through 15 layers of bureaucracy that skims 80% off the top, and bestowing the remainder on a public that has come to depend on it for survival.