Questions for ATS Members that have left the Democratic party. When and Why?

Beginning in 2012 the state's Republican primary is an open primary, in which only electors registered as Republicans can vote in that primary election.

I had to declare a party for the first time. I felt it was absolutely vital to do my part to insure our first woman president was not HRC.
I was raised Democratic. My father was a politician. In the 1960's I could see programs being implemented that were more a hand out than a hand up. My generation grew up knowing how Hitler came to power, and I could see where these programs would lead if left unchecked.
Hitler's mistake was enacting his iron-clad control too quickly. If it had been done slowly, over many decades, you could make the people choose to become more and more dependent on the government. It's hard to bite the hand that feeds you.
Where society is at today is no accident. It's taken a lot of years,plausible deniability and a plethora of politicians to get us here.
I do not trust any career politician, and if they are a lawyer it's a double strike. I see the Republican party as the lesser of two evils, but not by much. If the Democratic policies are not curtailed, and soon, it will too late to save our great nation.
The End

Lots of smart people have left the Democrat party!

With approximately 54% of precincts reporting, President Trump has already received more votes than Presidents Barack Obama (49,080), George W. Bush (52,962) and Ronald Reagan (65,033) in their respective re-election New Hampshire Primaries.

Source: twitter.com...

I was raised as a Democrat, by Democrats in a very Catholic city, in northern West Virginia. My grandmother campaigned for JFK. I was raised in the belief, that Democrats represented the poor, and Republicans represented the wealthy.

Anyone living in the rust-belt in the 1970s/1980s, would tell you the same thing. Good rust belt Catholics voted in line with the labor unions. It was the way things were.

I joined the Air Force. I went to war, for politicians... Republican politicians. I still voted Democrat.

Ruby Ridge, and Waco were true eye-openers. I didn't run off, and join a militia... but, I did start thinking. I started reading. I realized, that I had been lied to my entire life. More importantly, I believe... I started really thinking about the oath I swore... "to support and defend The Constitution, against all enemies, foreign and domestic..."

I realized that the Democrats, were that threat. The Clintons were horrific. Obama was even worse. They are still a threat... Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, and Quid Pro Joe would destroy this nation, to satisfy their own agendas. Hillary could still pop up, again. (HRC is the most dangerous woman alive, on the planet... )

The Republicans didn't exactly help, for a long time. George W. is a shameless globalist. McCain had multiple, serious issues. Romney... Pierre Delecto didn't exactly impress, and is now a pariah among the GOP.

Trump has been a game changer. He actually respects real Americans. He embodies Republican values, better than most Republicans.

Oh yeah... those Catholic Democrats that raised me? They helped Trump win West Virginia.

After day two of Obama's Presidency. Tbf that was the only time in my life I voted for a branch of the corporate party's candidates. Grew up D had to do a report on Bill in High school, ended up pissing off my dad after advising him that I voted for Mickey Mouse. In sixth grade I was sent down to the Principals office for voting for Lyndon Larouche in a mock election (one of my earliest recognition of the institution of indoctrination called public schools.) Technically still am registered D because in my state if you register as I you can only vote for I candidates but if you are a member of either branch you can choose anyone on the ticket ((excluding primaries.) IL politics.) I did partake in 2016 to vote for Bernie (I was ni-eve) but after their flagrant outright abuse of him and the Seth questions I formally Demexited in 2016. I will never return as I never felt I belonged since I like to think for myself and not pay people to tell me how to think.

a reply to: Krakatoa

The bigger question is why havent you left the democrat party yet?

realized in the 80's that democrats and republicans were 2 sides of the same coin.
Been voting 3rd party ever since; Not because I believe in any fringe ideologies,
but as a vote against the big 2.

a reply to: madmac5150

I was raised as a Democrat, by Democrats in a very Catholic city, in northern West Virginia. My grandmother campaigned for JFK.

Here's a great picture of JFK campaigning door-to-door in West Virginia.

a reply to: Krakatoa

Man, that is a good question. I've always wondered the same thing.

originally posted by: underwerks
I left the Democratic Party when I came to the conclusion that they are just Republican-lite, and far too centrist. America is the only country in the developed world where their policies are labeled as “left-wing”. In the rest of the world their policies are center to center-right.

They are slaves to their corporate masters the same as Republicans. There isn’t a party in America that’s left wing enough for me. What got me here? Talking to Republicans on ATS.

Tell us all the truth...you are a ANTIFA member arent you?
Communism doesnt work dude.

a reply to: HalWesten

If it were just his personality Hal, that would be one thing. But looking at his history, not only as a con man but his checkered business history of failure and questionable practices brings his whole facade into question. At least for some of us. As well, watching him in his rambling monologues and ''free associatvie'' speeches brings his mental strength in to question as well.

And if you noticed in my earlier post, I don't so much support a party, but rather chose to register where my vote can do the most good in my opinion. Likewise I mentioned that I have mostly been a third party voter.

a reply to: Krakatoa

I didn't tow the party line,I was a registered democrat
and voted for Obama in 2008.I had my eyes opened some
and voted against Obama in 2012.I voted for Trump in
2016 and after watching the democrats go completely off
their rockers,I have decided to NEVER vote for another
democrat ever again.

The first time I "left" the party I voted GWB over Gore. As bad as GW was, he was still better than Gore in my opinion. I wouldn't piss in Al Gore's ear if his head was on fire.

I was young and still pissed off about big government's hilarious attack on "heavy rock" and "obscenity" in music. To (mis)quote the cigarette smoking man in The X-Files, "As long as I am alive, no Gore will ever be president."

After that, I voted "strategically." A little D here, a little R there. I kept my head down and paid attention to local campaigns more, or raising two great kids while struggling with a suicidally depressed wife who suffered from spinal injuries she got on the job. I stuck my head up for Obama because I thought it would be cool to elect a black American to the nation's highest office. I think a lot of people felt that way. It didn't hurt that his opponent was total FN clown-shoes.

I'm not all-in for a lot of the GOP's talking points and never have been. I like sleazy glam rock and punk, especially the highly original stuff that veers off in its own direction and doesn't stick to the "revival" formula so many classic rock punks get into when they turn 30. I rate unusually high on the "openness to new experiences" scale, which often gets me into trouble with my right-wing "friends" if I talk too much.

I voted for Hillary under protest. My entire social circle at the time was fairly centrist libs who thought they were radicals. I had a grand total of one interaction with Trump or his brand in 40-something years and that was when he made a video trying to sell me on an MLM videophone. I heard about (but never watched) his show. He often sounds like a complete dipstick when he talks (I later came to view this as one of his many "strengths").

Over the past two years, I've been through stuff. I won't get into it because nobody cares but there it is. It was during this time that I started paying attention to the media's portrayal of the Trump presidency. I noticed a pattern of behavior where (so-called) "journalists" would nakedly push a corporate DNC agenda. I watched in horror as most abandoned the basics of the Society of Professional Journalism's "code of ethics." They don't even contact ALL living sources before publishing another party's "opinion" on that source, and it is appalling. The cable news is the worst, obviously, but the NY Times is in the tank and the Washington Post is an Amazon.com finger-puppet. I am honestly ashamed that I ever earned a degree in Journalism at this point.

As I began to speak out about this, my friend group evaporated. I still have a lot of great friends from childhood and my 20's but most of my later friends bailed when I told them that the continuous investigations and impeachment were solidifying the oppositions "lead" with regular people who don't tell other people what to think for a living.

My GF has stuck by me and she's a keeper. My son has my back and he is smarter than most of us (and dumber too. You 50+ dudes will know what I'm saying). He likes Trump. Our portfolio likes Trump.

I've warmed up to him considerably. He keeps his word. Often in strange/warped ways but the intention feels right. I believe he genuinely wants to make my country "great" and I don't believe Mayor Pete or Joe Biden cares about that at all. I just want to put my head back down and play D&D with my kids. On the other hand, I'd love to see a true battle of ideology this fall around all of the issues our media are terrified to question themselves.

Why is it a far safer bet to loan the coast of your tuition to someone else than it is to earn any degree? Why do we teach people that hard work is how you better yourself when putting money to work for you and being aggressive with your "risk" is always better, financially?

Why do we, as a nation, pay more than twice the first-world average, per capita, for our healthcare, and people with good insurance need "GoFundMe" to cover their expenses as they die from cancer?

How is it ok for a billionaire with his own propaganda channel to buy his way onto a first-party ticket in a presidential election?

That's why I am not a democrat. Or a republican. Give me something better than President Trump and I'll vote for them.

Thank you everyone for the great responses. So far it seems most here started out as a Democrat (for one reason or another) and then left when they got older and began to see a pattern in the Democratic party that moved away from their own ideals.

Yes, very interesting.

a reply to: Krakatoa

I left over the summer. I just don't like the fact that there is a lot of open hostility towards Caucasians. To clarify, if they had this level of hostility towards ANY race of people I would have been just as disturbed. When any political party starts to target people based on race, its time to leave IMHO. If they stop the nonsense, start to have a coherent platform, and lose the racism, maybe I will give them another look.

originally posted by: openminded2011
a reply to: Krakatoa

I left over the summer. I just don't like the fact that there is a lot of open hostility towards Caucasians. To clarify, if they had this level of hostility towards ANY race of people I would have been just as disturbed. When any political party starts to target people based on race, its time to leave IMHO. If they stop the nonsense, start to have a coherent platform, and lose the racism, maybe I will give them another look.

It seems to me the "game plan" is to shame people into submission. To subjugate their feelings and get votes by guilt. Not a great plan, since those that would fall for this already seem to vote in that direction already. Those that do not, will merely have their resolve hardened and push them to evangelize that position to others. Thereby taking votes away from those attempting to shame others into voting to "ease their conscience".

This is part of the reasoning I am seeing for folks leaving the Democratic party. It goes alongside the rapid movement toward a more socialist platform, which further alienates folks that would likely remain had the radical socialist wing not become so powerful in the past 8 years.

Very interesting hearing all these stories. Please continue folks, I welcome everyone's personal reasoning.

Feel free to share your frustrations here in this thread.

I left the Dem party in 92 with the nomination of Bill Clinton.There was just something about the Clintons that I could not stand.The double speak out of that couple was tremendous.

a reply to: Krakatoa

I left sometime in 2014, right before the #WalkAway movement started.
Watching how the media and the Republicans were called racist just for disagreeing with Obama.
I left mostly because of PC culture and identity politics.
What really did it for me was how the Democrats totally flipped on illegal immigration. They were 100% on board with doing whatever had to be done to stop the flow of illegal migrants into America.
When Trump came onto the scene with the same talking points that the Democrats stood by for years, they flipped.
I would return to the Democrats if they went back to being sensible, unfortunately I don't believe they can ever be sensible again. They're too far gone now.

originally posted by: Krakatoa
Thank you everyone for the great responses. So far it seems most here started out as a Democrat (for one reason or another) and then left when they got older and began to see a pattern in the Democratic party that moved away from their own ideals.

Yes, very interesting.

I explained this in another thread recently, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it. There's a quote from Churchill that any man under 30 that isn't a liberal has no heart and any man over 30 that isn't a conservative has no brain. The idea is that when you're young, liberal policies make a kind of emotional sense. Those poor illegal immigrants, why not just let them all in? Don't you care about people? But as you get older and you get more life experience, you develop some pragmatism. Sure, in a perfect world, we'd like to help everyone, but in the real world we simply can't. We don't have the resources, not to mention there are bad people in the world that will take advantage of us. It's the same reason you don't invite homeless people to live with you, just on a larger scale. Sadly, some people take til way past 30 to develop these insights, and some never do. The brainwashing of the media, entertainment, colleges, etc etc is really strong.

Like many here I grew up in a largely Democrat area with a largely Democrat family. I don't think there was any one thing that made me start to lean conservative. I actually didn't pay much attention to politics until my 20s, although once you do you realize that liberal ideology is ingrained in almost everything you see whether you want to pay attention to politics or not. My earliest memory of an "aha" moment is in one of the Bush-Gore debates where Gore kept trying to explain why Bush's tax cut proposal was so bad. He kept repeating that his tax cut gives a bigger break to the wealthiest 1%. This was no shocker to me. I understand math, percentages, and basic logic. Of course people who make the most money would see a bigger break. Even if they only got a 1% decrease in their marginal rate, the difference in outright dollars they'd pay in taxes would be much bigger than if you gave a 50% decrease to low-income earners. I realized Gore thought we were all a bunch of idiots and would think he was making a legitimate point. I wound up voting for Bush, although I still didn't follow politics closely until years later.

By this point I had joined the Air Force. This was a big cultural eye-opener for me. The liberal Democrat area of Pennsylvania I grew up in was almost entirely white, and I heard my fair share of racism growing up. Now I was serving with people from all over the country, of every race and ethnicity you can think of. I found that most of the stereotypes you learn about blacks, Hispanics, and people from the South from movies and TV are bogus, which made me realize just how bigoted Hollywood is. Hearing these bigots in Hollywood espouse liberal ideology on ET certainly didn't help me want to lean back liberal. None of the Southerners I served with were racists. They were actually very tolerant and for the most part very intelligent people, again the complete opposite of media portrayals, where they pretend the South are just a bunch of inbred idiots.

I served from 2004 to 2016, so I served under Bush and Obama. There was a marked difference in serving under Obama. After his first few years, we started experiencing serious budget problems. Our training changed. Everything got more PC. I heard various explanations for why this was from people I worked with having water cooler political discussions. That was when I started paying more attention to politics. I started watching the news (I started watching CNN - I didn't know any better at that point). I quickly realized how biased CNN was. I tried MSNBC. Same thing, maybe worse. I watched Fox News. Same thing, although not quite as one-sided. They actually did positive coverage of Obama mixed in with the negative, whereas CNN and MSNBC was almost exclusively kissing Obama's ass. I learned you can't really trust any of the cable channels, but you can learn how to kind of read between the lines.

Over time I learned my views are actually almost entirely libertarian, which doesn't really fit into either the Democrat or Republican party. But as the Democrats get farther and farther away from real liberalism (naive as some liberal views are, at least they believe in freedom--these new Democrats aren't liberals, they're authoritarians, they want to control everything), the less likely it is I can ever vote for a Democrat in a major election. The Republicans are definitely the lesser of 2 evils for me.

In recent years, 2 members of my family have given up the ghost on the Democrats as well. My mother switched in 2015/2016 as she saw the way the media went all in trying to stop Trump. She voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. She wound up voting for Trump in 2016. With others, we turned a blue district of PA red in 2016 and helped Trump win that key swing state. My brother has gone through the same in the last year or two. Union guy, staunch Democrat, Obama supporter in 2008/2012, wrote in Sanders in 2016. He's just sick of the insanity. He's voting for Trump in November.