Why are you a Democrat?

[woo me with science]

23. I stopped claiming an official party affiliation when I realized

that corporatists had largely purchased both major parties and were using them more as tools to divide voters and to get party faithful to circle around abhorrent policy, than to actually offer different visions for the country.

The entire reason for choosing to become part of a party has been and should remain that the party most closely represents your own values and principles and policy goals and actively works to achieve them. In recent years, we have seen a sinister and deliberate push to change that expectation. Parties are now demanding loyalty from voters no matter what they do, and those demands have become increasingly explicit and insulting. Even here on DU, we have witnessed astounding statements by the usual corporate posters that the party has no duty or responsibility to lay out an agenda for its voters or to prove to them that it will try to represent their interests. We have also seen brazen defense of lying to voters during campaigns, with the excuse that corporate money makes it necessary.

More and more often, appeals for votes take the form of empty celebration of the politician himself, lectures about loyalty wholly apart from policy, and threats that the other party will hurt you worse.

And more and more often, politicians in both parties are pursuing the same, malignant corporate agenda even though it does not even remotely resemble what voters have repeatedly expressed they want and need.

I think the parties, both of them, need a serious reminder that they exist to serve voters, and not the other way around. Candidates need to remember that they are vying to become representatives, not authority figures. Votes are not owed to any politician solely by virtue of the party membership he or she claims. They must be earned.