Note: This is my first Diary, please keep that in mind.
I first registered to vote in 1980 and I registered as an independent, just like my Dad. I had always told people that I would vote for whichever candidate I thought was best, "regardless of their party". If I haven't lost you yet, please continue below the squiggle.
"Regardless of their party", I always said. Well, I remained a registered independent all those years but to this day I have never voted for anyone other than a Democrat. Carter, absolutely!, Mondale, you bet! Dukakis, yes I did. Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry and of course Obama. I voted for local Dems, State office Dems, Dems for Congress and Dems for the Senate. I have been unable to justify voting for anybody who wasn't a Democrat for 32 years. So why did I hang on to that independent/no political affiliation registration for so long?
It was my Dad. I thought of him as someone who judged candidates by who they were, not what party they belonged to, and in his day I think it was actually possible to put a Republican in office and not have that necessarily be a bad choice. He was a Kansas boy, my Dad, a career military man who had a great deal of respect for fellow Kansan, Dwight D. Eisenhower who was perhaps the last decent Republican president we will ever see.
Now however, especially now, Eisenhower Republicans are an extinct species. The religious and neoconservative extremism that is controlling that party is completely out of control! Democrats aren't perfect but there is absolutely no degree of equivalence here, none whatsoever.
With all due respect to my Father who has been gone now for over six years, I went on line today and I changed my political affiliation to Democrat, and I am proud to finally call myself one. I really had been one all along, I just didn't know it. I'm sure my Dad would understand my decision. I lost my Mom a few years after my Dad, she was a life long Democrat. Happy (belated) Mother's Day, Mom and Happy (early) Father's Day, Dad.
Thank you all so much for creating and participating in this place, this refuge that is Daily Kos, and thanks for reading.
10:13 PM PT: Thank you everyone for your comments and warm welcome. I am so gratefully and humbly honored to have made the Recommended list.
Go Dems!