The Democratic Party left me behind — and I'm not alone

[irish_thug]

This is why America needs Ventura

 

[Trotsky]

Textbook ad hominem.

I don't care.

If I made a thread about how I used to be a Republican until Trump took the helm, people would dismiss it as dishonest and pretextual hackery - just as I'm doing here

 

[K1levelgrappler]

True story: I was a lifelong Republican but they finally left me when they...errrr...ummmm....kept doing the exact same shit they've done for the last 40 years, except more of it.

 

[all caps]

Except this person wasn't a Democrat and shows no policy leanings of ever having been a Democrat.

This is just clickbait nonsense in the garbs of actual political commentary. Notice how she doesn't actually cite actual policies (as do the *real* dissidents from the GOP)? She just talks about cordiality without daring to hint on the hypocrisy of her criticism given the complete lack of good faith governance by the GOP over the past 30 years.

Maybe you're right. This could be a (pretty smart) tactic to nudge people towards doing the same thing, I really dont know. No clue who this person even is. But I know I felt the same way as her not too long ago

 

[Diamond Jim]

Reminds of me of the Bernie Bros who claimed the votes for Trump. Might as well come out and say you only vote for old men who yell because they couldn’t be anymore different policy wise.

 

[MayhemMonkey]

This is why America needs Ventura

agreed

 

[bad seed]

@TidWell only gets his news from right wing aggregators, so when he comes across bait like this he thinks he found a clever retort to own those libtards.

 

[M3t4tr0n]

I'm just so sick to death of all this identity politics that now I support the racist foxnews grandpa who spends half his time fighting the culture wars over twitter.

Did I mention how much I dislike identity politics?

True story: I was a lifelong Republican but they finally left me when they...errrr...ummmm....kept doing the exact same shit they've done for the last 40 years, except more of it.

This.

How do you go full retard in the other direction because you don't like a few things your party did. It's not like the right is doing anything different than the usual.

 

[VivaRevolution]

Thought I would share this article from USA Today, its not a typical article you see, would like to read your opinions on it.

USA Today Network Saritha Prabhu, The Tennessean Opinion

I’m no Trump supporter, but I’ve been repulsed by the political and cultural left’s hatred, demonization and mistreatment of the president.

I am a Democrat who has spent the last two years often criticizing my own party and fellow Democrats.

Yeah, I’m a bad Democrat, I know.

I have friends and readers asking me, “Are you still a liberal?” and “Have you changed parties?” and “Why are you seemingly defending Trump?”

I’ve been a loyal Democrat for about 15 years. As someone who became a citizen in 2006, I became a Democrat during the George W. Bush years, because I liked the party’s anti-war, pro-minority, pro-environment, pro-little guy positions.

But the 2016 election was an eye-opener for me. To use the current political jargon, I became “woke,” in some very different ways, and I got “red-pilled.”

It was the year I recognized that our two political parties have become dinosaurs, ossified beyond recognition. Yes, there’s grassroots energy in the Democratic Party, but party leadership is essentially bereft of ideas.

It was the year I joined millions of Americans in losing faith in the ruling class of both parties and in many of our political institutions.

It was also the year this voter became increasingly frustrated that our national media outlets — cable, network and legacy news media — have self-bifurcated into stark pro- and anti-Trump factions.

It's us against the establishment
The real divisions, as I see it, aren’t between Democrats and Republicans, but between the political and corporate ruling class and the national media establishments that support them, on the one hand, and the rest of us. All the other divisions are less consequential.

Politicians from both parties have gotten away with letting down ordinary Americans for decades because millions of Americans are culturally wedded to their tribal political identities of Republican or Democrat, and can’t think outside the box.

Looked at this way, the election of Donald Trump made perfect sense to me. Sixty-three million voters — including African-Americans, Hispanics and Democrats — rejected status quo politics and voted for a strong, rank outsider to shake the establishment from their comfortable perches.

Would President Donald Trump’s supporters have preferred a decent, moral, well-behaved, well-informed populist? Sure, but in dire times, you take the populist who shows up because beggars can’t be choosers, etc.

The Democratic Party and its followers have left me for many reasons, but here are a few examples:

• The party and its followers have been showing illiberal tendencies for some time.
• It has gone off the rails on immigration, free speech, identity politics and some other issues — a topic I’ll defer for another day.
• I’m no Trump supporter, but I’ve been horrified and repulsed by the political and cultural left’s hatred, demonization and mistreatment of President Trump, his family, his administration officials and his voters, which is even worse (if that’s possible) than what the right did to President Obama.

I view the current political climate both as a citizen and a writer.

As a citizen, I see myself more as a political orphan — neither Democrat or Republican.

For an opinion writer, self-identifying as a Democrat (or Republican) can be constricting. It can consciously or unconsciously make you hew to positions, make you defend the indefensible. It can give you cognitive dissonance.

For example: Defending Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the Democratic Party’s current far-left stance on immigration would’ve required me to be dishonest about my views or to contort my opinions into impossible positions.

I see myself as a political independent these days, who’ll opine based on what she sees and thinks, not along party lines.

For what it’s worth, renegades like me are like that canary in the coal mine: We’re trying to warn Democrats when they’re tone-deaf or still don’t get it.

Saritha Prabhu is a columnist at the Tennessean,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...09/democratic-party-left-me-column/766561002/

The media that offers narratives different than this, in my opinion, are the equivalent of Bagdhad Bob screaming there are no tanks in Bagdhad.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

I don't care.

That's a shame.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Democrats would be wise to stop brushing off all the people sharing stories like this. At a certain point I'd think (and hope) theyd say hey wait a minute.. maybe were doing something wrong?

Unless of course their goal is to just push everyone right and get a real nazi party started?

People always switch (and more commonly than people switching is people falsely claiming to switch). What would be significant if more switchers were going one way or the other. That is the case, but it's in the opposite direction.

 

[HomerThompson]

The current Democratic Party is to the right of where it was in the 1930's for Christ's sake. The current Republican Party is a party of pure kleptocracy at this point.

This thread, and that article, are completely asinine.

 

[Gandhi]

Standard both sideism, with a dose of blatent hypocracy (so meanie to Trump/Derr left wing identity politics), devoid of any rational policy analysis, under a veneer of crass and meaningless populism.

It's an awful article.

But we do need to pay attention as this article does explain how a retarded narrative helped get Trump elected.

 

[Trotsky]

That's a shame.

As is the breadth of your political interest.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I used to oppose progressive taxation, think that climate science was a hoax, oppose the safety net, and want to have more theocracy, but then I saw people criticize Obama, and I was like, fuck that shit. Not my president. Not on my watch.

 

[Greoric]

I used to oppose progressive taxation, think that climate science was a hoax, oppose the safety net, and want to have more theocracy, but then I saw people criticize Obama, and I was like, fuck that shit. Not my president. Not on my watch.

A brief respite from your autism I see?

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

As is the breadth of your political interest.

You gonna ad hominem me now too?

 

[Greoric]

You gonna ad hominem me now too?

I was worried he was banned.

 

[JamesRussler]

Prabhu is a pandering dolt. Whether she is or was a Democrat or not, no one cares about her opinion.

Also, I really fucking doubt she's a Democrat, since all of her contributions have been anti-Democrat and for right-wing outlets. She's a contributor for The Federalist ffs. You can google her name and find several "omg, the libz are losing it" stories.

Exactly. She's doesn't agree with the direction of the Democratic Party, so she must not be a Democrat!

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

I was worried he was banned.

He was, to my knowledge. Somebody had a change of heart for some reason, I guess.