What makes you Identify with the Party you do?

[Free Bird]

A few reasons for me. Let's say I caucus Republican.

Guns: I know that there are pro gun Democrats, but the vocal part of the party like Dianne Feinstein overshadow them.

Spending: Demorats are a bit too eager to throw money at something and hope it improves. I feel we need to spend very cautiously and make huge budget cuts

Education: It is a state issue. Period.

Regulation: My local Democratic city council loves to regulate everything in sight for absolutely no reason. It is very arbitrary and comes off as micromanaging

Leadership: Reid, Pelosi, and DWS are absolutely insufferable

You guys?

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

The Republicans are crazy and white.

[Free Bird]

The Republicans are crazy and white.

Straw men like this isn't what I'm looking for

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Why am I an independent?

Congressional Leadership: I see Reid, Pelosi, McConnell, and Boehner as only part of the gridlock and as people who don't care about getting anything done.

Desire for Compromise: We have a class of politicians in both parties who are only concerned about their reelection and never try to give and take a little to find things they can both tolerate passing through. Democrats and Republicans always talk about compromise, but when one side finally gets its act together and makes an offer, the other side almost always shoots it down without question no matter how reasonable it may be. I see no point in this endless bickering, and I would be willing to make reasonable concessions even if it meant my political death.

I would be expelled from the republican party on Day 1: I support massive defense cuts, minimum wage increases, equal pay for women, most of ObamaCare, a ban on Assault Weapons, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, a ban on conversion therapy, eliminating the payroll tax cap, limited civil unions, and the department of education. I oppose the Paul Ryan Medicare Plan.

I would be expelled from the democratic party on Day 1: I oppose Abortion, Gay Marriage, Forcing people to join unions, requiring health care companies to provide free birth control, and forcing anyone to perform wedding-related services for gays and lesbians. I support raising the retirement age for SS and Medicare, North American Energy Independence, The Keystone Pipeline, and a balanced budget amendment.

At the end of the day, I fear the far right more than I do the far left, so I'd probably caucus as a conservative democrat, but both parties would love me one day and hate me the next.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     The Republicans are not in power where I live.

[Cassius]

The purpose of the Labour Party is not to represent people like me. The purpose of the Conservative Party is to oppose the Labour Party and prevent it from gaining power (not that they do a very good job of that nowadays). Therefore I support the Conservatives.

[Marokai Backbeat]

The Republican Party as it is now and has been for a couple decades is completely and utterly insane. Like, every once in awhile I have to step back and remind myself how crazy it is that this is a party where Ben Carson can be a leading candidate in a primary. Where someone like Sarah Palin can get millions of votes for Vice President. Where thinking Moses is basically an honorary founding father is completely normal, believing we should allow guns in bars is sane public policy, and one of the party's most prominent Senators can waltz onto the Senate floor with a snowball as proof that global warming is a hoax.

I can't think of literally any issue in American politics right now where the Republicans offer a sane and reasonable alternative. Their positions on womens rights are terrible. On gay rights they're terrible. On police brutality, they're terrible. On healthcare, the environment, drugs, taxes, welfare, campaign finance, torture, trade, guns, wages, uniformly terrible, if not downright childish and occasionally evil. When it comes to foreign affairs they routinely expose themselves as cocksure incompetents who don't even maintain coherent positions, across the board. It also goes without saying that I grew up during the time of a President (Bush) that probably deserves some sort of medal for handling just about anything he ever tried tackling awfully. In fact, I may as well just repost an old quote of mine instead of retreading the same ground:

6. George W. Bush.
*Bush deserves the last spot on here for being the most directly damaging Presidents on this list, as well as having the unbelievable skill of being able to f**k up damn near everything he attempted or did.

9/11? He ignored all reports and threats of terrorism before it happened. Bin Laden? Couldn't get him. (Thanks Obama!) Tax cuts? Were so wasteful and unstimulative that he did them twice. Medicare Part D is one of the most incredible stories of legislative clusterf**kery that you could ever read, and was a total mess to boot. The PATRIOT Act. No Child Left Behind? Plenty, actually. Afghanistan? Mismanaged. Iraq? A lie from the very beginning. All told, his middle eastern excursions will cost us trillions of dollars that we could've used for anything else. His first veto? Killing a stem cell research bill.

Illegal wiretapping. Torture. Rendition. Sold his plan to privatize Social Security to the public so hilariously badly that it was abandoned within weeks. Completely lied about his promise to reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban. Riddled mining and oil drilling regulations with loopholes for his industry friends and raised a middle finger to every environmental cause he came across. Neutered FEMA due to a lack of any interest in qualified governing, and New Orleans paid the price. Wanted to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, for Christ's sake. Vetoed a children's health insurance program expansion bill that was fully paid for. Ruined America's image abroad and made us the laughing stock of the first world. This is just the stuff off the top of my head.

In addition to all of that, his term ended with the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, the damage of which will be felt for generations. Everyone who acts like we can't treat Bush like a terrible President because he's too recent and we're biased? Screw you. George W. Bush is one of the worst Presidents in the history of the United States. End of story.

What makes all of that worse is that, in the ensuing years of such complete and utter demonstrable failure a party traditionally retreats into the minority for a few cycles, moderating and maturing, emerging as an alternative after the governing party grows stale and tired. The exact opposite happened here, for some bizarre reason. They've only become more bats**t.

Over the last year, for unrelated reasons, I've grown to despise hackish thinking in general. I don't like partisans. I generally think you should try to listen to everyone, regardless of who they are, regardless of background, regardless of other crazy s**t they've done, to try and come to a greater understanding. But there really is nothing, anything at all that I can think of, that is well-reasoned and has a basis in reality from the Republican Party that I can support. And this is so astonishing to me that every once in awhile I feel like I'm being too unfair, that there must be something that they have over the Democrats, or just have a decent idea about in general, because for that to not be the case in any way whatsoever is so logically unlikely. But they really are that incompetent, from top to bottom, at this point in time.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Caroline Lucas came to me in a dream.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

I want to vote in the primaries.

[Mr. Smith]

Given that the GOP:

Guns: Don't even believe in background checks anymore

Environment: Deny global warming and shill for the companies most responsible for air and water pollution

Intervention: Worship the idea of invading anywhere they damn please, and seemingly prefer to regulate everyone else except the local people

Regulation: Needlessly cut social services and lower taxes for the rich arbitrarily

Education: Gut it at every chance they can, especially at the federal level when that's exactly where we need it

Military: Spend needlessly on it

Leadership: McConnell and Boehner are beyond insufferable, and now Tom Cotton's rising...

The Poor in General: Keep being compared to animals and dehumanized


And the only way to effectively minimize such views is to vote Democratic

[TNF]

I left the Democratic Party when I came to understand that liberals and I have fundamentally different outlooks on the structure of society and the meaning of politics. I used to think that liberals were on the same page with those of us on the left, and that we just had tactical disagreements. Lived experience (working as a Democratic Party functionary in college) and the historical record proved that assumption incorrect, and ever since, I have stopped identifying with liberalism and picked up the banner of communism.

Liberalism is more or less the ideology of the bohemian bourgeois' contempt for workers. Its chief representatives look the other way as the American industrial base is gutted and sent abroad, as the right of workers to free association is eroded day after day, as young workers are sent to jail in rhetoric numbers in its phony 'War on Drugs', and actively asserts the 'right' of the United States to bomb other countries into the stone age if they do not except the dictates of its capitalist overlords. It is the raising of rule by bureaucrat to its logical conclusion, where freedom ends where the feelings of the bourgeois bohemians begin. It says that guns should only be in the hands of racist cops, that the state should be able to read your emails and monitor your phone calls, and that it should keep you safe from things like violent video games. It substitutes fake anti-racism and fake anti-sexism (like arguing that promoting more women and minorities to leadership positions in the capitalist system will somehow act as a panacea for the lived experiences of women workers and workers of color) for the genuine article, and in doing so weakens both and emboldens the identitarian right.

Liberalism as an ideology can never be truly liberatory in the capitalist epoch, because it has sacrificed every bit of what made it a revolutionary, liberatory creed in the 18th and 19th centuries on the alter of profit.

Conservatism, like liberalism, is an ideology full of contempt for workers, but on a different level. Whereas liberalism represents the trendy, bohemian version of hating the working class and apologizing for the parasitical upper crust, conservatism is its knuckle-dragging cousin. Conservatism doesn't have any of the pretensions of liberalism and knows it, openly using sexism, racism, and other bigoted ideas to divide workers into separate, hostile identities so as to better exploit them. In spite of saying that they're against 'identity politics', the conservative is the most able user of them, embracing the dog-whistle politics of white supremacy, exalting the patriarchal family unit, and defending 'traditional' gender roles and sexual norms. It promotes the idea of a white, christian male society constantly under siege by the 'other', when it obviously knows better. Like liberalism, conservatism is very concerned with what you're posting on the Internet, who you're talking to and why, and wants to keep bad ideas out of your head, although in their case the ideas are ones that challenge their retrograde view of society as a divinely ordained system where the good and virtuous are rewarded while the evil are always punished or whatever.

I can't identify with either of those ideologies because, at their root, they are the ideologies of the class that exploits my labor, robs me of my free time, and dictates the course of my every day existence by way of its ownership of the means of production. As a member of the exploited class, the working class, I can only view myself as a communist because I want to end that exploitation once and for all and build a society that truly values all of humankind, i.e. a stateless, classless, race-less, gender-less, sexual orientation-less¹, etc. society.


¹Obviously in saying this I don't mean that we'd all be some kind of gray blob with no sexual desire whatsoever (although this seems to be the end goal of some of our liberal friends, if we take their rhetoric seriously). I mean this in the sense that socially constructed identities, like straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc would be dissolved and society constructed in such a way that we reject the idea of biologically determined sexual preferences and the like

[Free Bird]

Given that the GOP:

Guns: Don't even believe in background checks anymore

Environment: Deny global warming and shill for the companies most responsible for air and water pollution

Intervention: Worship the idea of invading anywhere they damn please, and seemingly prefer to regulate everyone else except the local people

Regulation: Needlessly cut social services and lower taxes for the rich arbitrarily

Education: Gut it at every chance they can, especially at the federal level when that's exactly where we need it

Military: Spend needlessly on it

Leadership: McConnell and Boehner are beyond insufferable, and now Tom Cotton's rising...

The Poor in General: Keep being compared to animals and dehumanized


And the only way to effectively minimize such views is to vote Democratic

I believe in background checks and environmentalism. The federal government has no place in education, either.

[Türkisblau]

I believe that the Democrats are truly the party of the people, to put it bluntly. I think that I still identify as a Democrat despite all odds such as demographics and social views as I have a deep skepticism of corporations, whether rational or irrational as well as a foreign policy outlook much more compatible with the Democratic Party.

Overall, it's pretty much because I'm a total statist!

[Türkisblau]

Given that the GOP:

Guns: Don't even believe in background checks anymore

Environment: Deny global warming and shill for the companies most responsible for air and water pollution

Intervention: Worship the idea of invading anywhere they damn please, and seemingly prefer to regulate everyone else except the local people

Regulation: Needlessly cut social services and lower taxes for the rich arbitrarily

Education: Gut it at every chance they can, especially at the federal level when that's exactly where we need it

Military: Spend needlessly on it

Leadership: McConnell and Boehner are beyond insufferable, and now Tom Cotton's rising...

The Poor in General: Keep being compared to animals and dehumanized


And the only way to effectively minimize such views is to vote Democratic

I don't like this sort of thing. I think that you should be a member of a party because you believe in that party's ideals and platform (generally). I'm definitely not a Democrat because I dislike the GOP.

[Murica!]

So I guess this means the Democratic Socialists of America?


Mostly because a democratic socialist society is preferable to Capitalism, and the DSA might eventually manage some electoral success.

[Brewer]

I support raising the minimum wage, I support basic gun control measures, I support equality for the LGBT community, I'm pro-choice, I don't believe more tax cuts for the rich are what we need to grow our economy, I believe that the Affordable Care Act has been a tremendous success and we should seek to expand on it, I believe climate change is one of the most if not the most pressing issue modern-day America must face and I believe we must wean off fossil fuels ASAP in order to combat it, I oppose attacks on collective bargaining and on the public school system, I don't believe money is speech, and I don't support our democracy being placed on an auction block for whoever can afford the most to bid on it.

Let me know when the Republican Party aligns with any of this, or when a vote for a third party is not a vote for the Republicans.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

The Indian Removal Act. I can hold a grudge.

[Redalgo]

I am with the SPUSA because in spite of having major economic, gun control, and foreign affairs-related disagreements with them there's more for me to agree with in their platform than with other parties that encourage their people to run for office.

[Mr. Smith]

Given that the GOP:

Guns: Don't even believe in background checks anymore

Environment: Deny global warming and shill for the companies most responsible for air and water pollution

Intervention: Worship the idea of invading anywhere they damn please, and seemingly prefer to regulate everyone else except the local people

Regulation: Needlessly cut social services and lower taxes for the rich arbitrarily

Education: Gut it at every chance they can, especially at the federal level when that's exactly where we need it

Military: Spend needlessly on it

Leadership: McConnell and Boehner are beyond insufferable, and now Tom Cotton's rising...

The Poor in General: Keep being compared to animals and dehumanized


And the only way to effectively minimize such views is to vote Democratic

I believe in background checks and environmentalism. The federal government has no place in education, either.

So what, that's diddly squat against the likes of Jim Inhofe and the rest of the base controlling that, claiming Al Gore "politicized" it and so on.

And the NRA clearly holds the party hostage as well.

Also the States Right's argument for Education? That just leads to quiet resegregation via charter schools, textbook dissonances, and a gap state by state.

Given that the GOP:

Guns: Don't even believe in background checks anymore

Environment: Deny global warming and shill for the companies most responsible for air and water pollution

Intervention: Worship the idea of invading anywhere they damn please, and seemingly prefer to regulate everyone else except the local people

Regulation: Needlessly cut social services and lower taxes for the rich arbitrarily

Education: Gut it at every chance they can, especially at the federal level when that's exactly where we need it

Military: Spend needlessly on it

Leadership: McConnell and Boehner are beyond insufferable, and now Tom Cotton's rising...

The Poor in General: Keep being compared to animals and dehumanized


And the only way to effectively minimize such views is to vote Democratic

I don't like this sort of thing. I think that you should be a member of a party because you believe in that party's ideals and platform (generally). I'm definitely not a Democrat because I dislike the GOP.

That's just the reality of two parties having all the power, and one of them goes too far. All you can do to effectively regulate things is to vote for the party that still has some grip on reality and once in a while might do something right and stop the one with no grip at all.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

I only see two viable parties in my country and I identify with the party that is more on the left socially and economically, supports and is backed by unions, generally stands for environmental protection, and opposes the Republican Party; which I perceive to be run by plutocrats and vicious evangelicals.

Obviously I'm far to the left of most Democrats, but pragmatism is a thing. 

[Lief 🗽]

The Republican Party is an insane troll fascist cult, and the Democratic Party is the only party with a realistic chance of preventing them from gaining further power.

[Gustaf]

I do not deeply identify with any party.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Because there are some good Republicans left.

[King]

My state's Democratic Party sucks ass and the Republican Party here sucks significantly less ass.

[Cranberry]

Basically it is a lack of alternatives that makes me support the Austrian Greens. Of the horrible bunch that are the politcal parties in Austria, the Greens are the ones that I least detest, if I may say so.

Starting with the two big parties, SPÖ and ÖVP, that could, if you want to, be considered one big party (only significant difference - the one is ruled by the mayor of Vienna, the other is controlled by the Governor of Lower Austria), because they are an ideology-less, delusioned from reality mess that claim to be a political power and still scores results around the 25% percent (and they are considered the two major parties!) only precisely because there is a large group of 60+ people that vote red or black because they always did so. The only thing they are better at than pottering around this country and securing jobs for their former functionaries in semi-statal companies is staying in power, and this very efficiently so - the ÖVP is the European party that has the longest continious streak of forming part of a government - since 1986!

The main problem here is however, the main alternative to those two parties is even more horrible - I speak of no less than the notorious FPÖ, your friendly neighbourhood neo-Nazis. Need I to say more? (Yes, that when they were in power, they were doing an even worse job than the two above mentioned parties - ever heard of HYPO Alpe Adria?)

This leaves us with the Greens and the NEOS, problem just that the latter is a liberal (in the European sense) party, so not much more than the ÖVP without the baggage of 70 years and farmer associations - obviously not the choice you would expect from a red-avatar wearing Atlasian (then again, looking at the Democratic Party's programs...). Since the mayfly-parties that plague Austria in a regular rhythm (LIF, BZÖ, Team Stronach...) are mostly no more than a personal vehicle or of any other horrible quality, and I see no real reason to support a one-percent party, this does leave me with the Greens. Given, I do like their (on paper) stances against corruption - the only real party than can credibly tackle this problem - on environmental, social and also most economic issues. On paper, the Greens of Austria are objectively not bad. Put this into reality however - they form part of the government in six of the nine Austrian states - you have a party that in exchange for one tiny little point that comes good to their base sells its soul to guarantee either ÖVP or SPÖ five years of government as if they had an absolute majority... Welcome to Austria...