Lifelong
When did you know you were a Democrat?
As a millennial having been raised in an apolitical home, I was blissfully unaware of American political parties for the first 18 years of my life. During the tumultuous Clinton impeachment hearings, I was more interested in earning laughs from my middle school peers by wearing my WHITE HOUSE INTERN shirt rather than the potential implication of a completely partisan trial. Prior to the 2000 election, I was more interested in the SNL parody skits of Al Gore and George W. Bush than I was their actual policies. In the aftermath of the 2000 disputed election results, the only thing that kept me interested in the recount was the idea of hanging chads, mainly because I had a cousin named Chad and couldn't help but giggle every time I heard his name on the nightly news. And in the days after 9/11, I purchased a mini American flag to attach to my car antenna and watched Washinton politicians vote to send young men and women to war that did not come from an affluent, White community like my own.
Like most people, I started to get more political during my four years away at college. I can hardly say that my liberal arts university was a hotbed of political thinking, but I did begin to formulate my own opinions, especially as I took more and more history classes and began to see the parallels between the Iraq War and Vietnam. In 2004, I saw firsthand the swiftboating of Senator John Kerry and submitted a social media post after the election that half the people in this country didn't know what was going on. Despite the beginning of my leftward political leanings, I still recall political conversations among my peers where I would bemoan the use of the straight-party ticket as I couldn't believe that someone would willingly select all members of a single political party as being superior to their political opponents.
By the beginning of 2008, I saw the economy in ruins and a disastrous war in Iraq, caused by a Republican administration. When my conservative teaching colleague asked why I was voting for Barack Obama, my simple answer was "We need a change in this country and I believe he is the person that can do it." The next 4 years, I saw an entire Republican Party work in unison to prevent President Obama's agenda, knowing full well that blocking him would, in turn, do damage to the American people. Simultaneously, I saw President Obama stake his entire presidency on passing the Affordable Care Act, brilliantly navigating the mere six-week window where he had a supermajority in the Senate and watching Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid miraculously keeping their caucuses in-line. Seeing each and every Republican openly vote against the ACA, despite the possibility of greatly reforming the American health care system, was yet another sign that they did not have the country's best interests at heart.
By 2012, I was all aboard Team Obama and continued to see the Republican Party more and more out-of-touch with my values. When the Obama administration chose to stop defending DOMA and then lit up in rainbow colors after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, I knew that this party was the one on the right side of history. In early 2016 as I was looking at how to work to defeat Donald Trump, I pursued becoming a Hillary Clinton delegate to the national convention. Unbeknownst to me, I was still a registered independent back from when I first registered to vote in California in 2009 and thus, I was unable to run. When I moved to Florida to work for the Clinton campaign, the first voter I registered in the state was myself and I made sure to identify myself as a member of the Democratic Party for the very first time.
Over the past 3+ years, there has not been a single day where I have questioned my political affiliation. I was proud to vote in 2018 to keep my state's congressional delegation all-blue and I proudly voted for local Democrats in 2019, despite being in a red town where 6 of our 7 state reps are Republican. Additionally, I've done my best to draw attention to those trying to undermine the progress of the Democratic Party. This includes Bernie Sanders, AOC, the Justice Democrats, The Young Turks, Our Revolution, and the Sunrise Movement among others. At a time when the Republican Party has gone full fascist, I have no tolerance for those playing purity politics on the left. It's the equivalent of saying, "Yes the house is on fire, but we need to make sure we have the best hose and use the least amount of water possible." Sometimes in life, you can't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. This is one of those times.
But ultimately, I see myself as a lifelong Democrat because of what we saw last week. We have one party in this country that still believes in the rule of law. That still believes in accountability. That still believes that each and every elected official needs to put the country ahead of party. That still believes in an America as the framers envisioned. That won't sell itself and its national security for the sake of personally benefitting the office of the presidency. What we saw last week with the house managers, and Adam Schiff particularly, was the one political party that chooses to recognize right and wrong in the age of Donald Trump. We saw that Republicans are willingly choosing to ignore witnesses and documents and ultimately the will of the American people. They got their tax cuts, democracy be damned. They embrace Donald Trump, his corruption, his racism, his bigotry, and his hated because he represents everything they've come to believe in. Once the party of the rule of law, modern Republicans now only care about themselves, regardless of the corruption that has become pervasive throughout their ranks. If supporting Donald Trumps keeps their party in power then they will be good little foot soldiers and support him to ensure that it happens.
They say your politics change over time. That you are more liberal when you are younger but gradually become more conservative over time. To quote Emma Gonzalez from Parkland, "I call BS." I call BS because today's modern Republican Party offers nothing of redeemable value. Health care. Immigration. Education. A woman's right to choose. LGBTQ rights. Criminal justice reform. Republicans are on the wrong side of history for every single issue in America today. This combined with complicity to deny the American people a fair trial and it is now obvious that the Democratic Party is the only party in America willing to fight for each and every American. The party may have divergent ideas about how to reach many of its goals but the fact is that it's the only party that genuinely is willing to fight for true American values. When people down the road ask me when I knew I would be a lifetime Democrat, I will tell them the honest truth:
I knew in 2020 when members of the Democratic Party were the only ones standing up to Donald Trump.