Why are you a Democrat?

[Jamaal510]

103. Because...

1. Nixon, Reagan, and Bushes l and ll happened.

2. The GOP has been intent on taking my rights and other people's rights away. (e.g. the right to vote, the right to not be subject to discrimination, etc.) In contrast, much of the country's gains over the decades for minorities, women, the LGBT community, the disabled, and other disadvantaged groups have come under Democrats.

3. The Democratic Party is the party that is most likely to defeat the GOP while simultaneously caring about many different issues important to me (such as health care, enacting gun control, and jobs).

4. Whenever there is a Republican in power, unemployment and the deficit both increase. The opposite has been true under Democrats.

5. 3rd party candidates tend to have very little name recognition, they currently have no peers from their own parties in Congress to work with them, and they seem to prioritize a select few issues over others. If I'm correct, the Green Party's platform is centered around the environment, for example. With the Libertarian Party, "freedom" is of utmost importance, except what they never mention is that they really mean the freedom of the elites. The freedom of everyone else comes 2nd.
Many supporters of 3rd parties affectionately classify voting for one of the 2 major parties as "voting for the lesser of 2 evils", but I look at it another way: a political party is not necessarily "evil" just because they may not walk lockstep with all of my views. All political parties are man-made, therefore, there is no such thing as a "perfect" party. In addition, the electoral system basically allows for only 2 competitive parties, anyway. The party with a plurality of votes wins, even if 2 or more losing parties of a similar agenda earn more votes combined. It's not like proportional representation, where the amount of power a party has is proportionate to the number of votes received.