I have been a lifelong Democrat. My parents are from the South and moved North during their early work years. There they were introduced to unions, which at that time were wonderful institutions to ensure fair treatment of the workers and decent wages. Thus, my family were Democrats.<\/p>\n
I was taught that Democrats<\/a> were for the people and Republicans<\/a> were for business. As a new voter, in my first presidential election I voted for Jimmy Carter’s re-election (who lost to Ronald Reagan) because he was a “real person”.<\/p>\n My parents did teach me not to be a “lever puller” however – so I’ve always tried to look at the candidate and not vote for someone because they were a Democrat. As a result I have frequently had a mixed party ballot through the year.<\/p>\n Life changed, my parents became Republicans. I married a Democrat who is a small business owner. Our church was Republican. I found myself defending my right to be a Democrat – to both sides.<\/p>\n A couple of years ago my husband had enough, he left The Party and registered as a Libertarian<\/a>. Last year when our son turned 18 he registered as a Libertarian (I blame Ron Swanson<\/a> from Parks and Rec). I have held on. Until now. This year’s election has broken me. I find that none<\/i> of the parties represent me anymore. For the first time ever I am seriously considering re-registering as an Independent.<\/p>\n I am not giving up on voting, I do believe my vote counts – but I have given up on political parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been a lifelong Democrat. My parents are from the South and moved North during their early work years. There they were introduced to unions, which at that time were wonderful institutions to ensure fair treatment of the workers and decent wages. Thus, my family were Democrats. I was taught that Democrats were for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7zbKo-KI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2896"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sheilascribbles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}