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“#DemExit”: A Chronicling of a Political Transformation

As originally published via my private blog:

A change of heart is not something that I easily endure, but sometimes it is necessary. I always face an internal struggle with these transformations. None has ever quite matched the significance of when I begrudgingly converted from being an outspoken Christian who led his immediate family in the faith to being an agnostic. When I reached that shift in October 2011 it completely devastated certain members of my family, I still hear criticism about it, and I believe I will never hear the end of it. Over the past month I have experienced a similar transition. This time, it is political in nature.

Before I go into detail about that transition, let me lay the foundation with some background information. I was raised by my single mother. She was a Democrat until her dying day in 2012. She was also someone who didn’t blindly vote for anyone, though. She used to proudly note that she had voted for Ross Perot. The best part about her was that she NEVER told me or my siblings how we should vote or think. The only thing she insisted upon was that we participate. To her, voting was essential as a citizen in a free country.

My maternal grandfather (her father, for the sake of simplicity) has always been the patriarch of our family. He is a centrist Democrat to his core and his deep devotion to the cause of organized labor helped instill in me an appreciation for unions. Even so, while he has lived his entire life as a Democrat, my grandfather has never held back on criticizing the party or the leaders thereof. My mother and her father taught me very important lessons throughout my life about the value of fighting for what you believe in.

Remaining silent and obedient is not in my blood. I can’t simply just shut up and tolerate wrongdoing or be quiet when something upsets me. I saw my mother struggle throughout her life and she always had to fight for herself. The same has gradually become my experience (though, nowhere near the degree to which my mother struggled).

It should be well known to all those close to me by now that my early life experiences involved near-endless chaos. From being homeless a handful of times – including living for a few weeks in a tent on a campground when I was 8 years old – to my parents separating a year later. We moved around once a year for several years in a row and I nearly failed in school several times as a result.

My life experiences in early childhood and now as an adult – including battling management at Goodwill when they punished me for taking time off work when my son was born, dealing with being an uninsured asthmatic for about two years, and then when I spent two years struggling to provide for my family bouncing between being unemployed and working as a temp – have instructed me and have made me someone with deeply-rooted core principles which guide my activism and my choices as a voter.

It is also worth noting that I am a passionate student of history and follower of current events. Learning about how we got to where we are and why things are the way they are has helped provide further guidance in my decisions. I’m profoundly open-minded and I take great pride in the fact that I am never blinded by allegiance to one group or another. If I see something which needs to be addressed I will address it, no matter how unpopular my opinion on the issues may be.

As a member of the Democratic Party since I was 18 (though, I’ve called myself a Democrat since I was 10) I have never sat silently and just voted for the Democrat like some programmed robot. There was a time when I used to defend the Party more willingly, but as I learned more about how things work and about current events I became more and more willing to criticize the Democrats and insist on them being better. This was something I did simultaneously with fighting hard within the party to make it more progressive.

At the age of 18, the first presidential candidate I ever supported was Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Interestingly, when I first got involved directly in politics (instead of just watching from the sidelines as a minor who couldn’t vote) I had considered myself to be a Conservative Democrat. I was deeply religious at the time (I attended a Pentecostal church several times a week from 2002 through 2004). I was strongly conservative on social issues but open minded on economic issues and foreign policy. Kucinich was the first candidate to fire something up in my “soul”.

Kucinich spoke passionately about the poor and the working class overall. He spoke passionately about ending our endless wars. He spoke passionately about Medicare for All (the first presidential candidate I had ever heard mention it). He spoke passionately about confronting the dangers of George W. Bush’s policies and the precedents they were setting for the powers of the presidency. I was excited about Kucinich and proudly voted for him in the 2004 Presidential Primary.

When Kucinich dropped out I shifted my support to former Senator John Edwards, who also spoke eloquently about the desperate condition of average Americans. His “Two Americas” speeches inspired me and directly resonated with me. John Kerry choosing Edwards as his running-mate made it easier for me to support Kerry in the end. I wholeheartedly volunteered in that ill-fated campaign. Doing my first phonebanking, Guest Column and Letters to the Editor, as well as canvassing. It was an exciting time, but my heart was broken for the first time in my life of observing politics when Bush was declared the winner of that race.

After the 2004 campaign, I took a few months off from politics to deal with the natural post-election depression. Then, I focused more on activism as well as online blogging about my viewpoints. This was a time of major change for me as I was becoming more progressive over time. I was questioning everything, from religion to how the world works. This was an awakening of something within me, and I wasn’t going to let myself slip back into blindly following anything or anyone (this was the timeframe when I left my former church out of protest, choosing instead to practice my former faith independently).

I also increasingly became more critical of the Democratic Party during this period of time. As I read more and more about Bush’s abuses of power (primarily as it pertained to the facts that were coming out about war crimes, unconstitutional exploitation of signing statements, and the use of torture) I became increasingly frustrated with the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to confront those abuses and say what needed to be said: Bush’s actions were impeachable. In May of 2005, I met John Kerry in person as he came to Utica, Ohio to do an event on the farm of Gene Branstool. Kerry talked before I briefly met him about how he supported the weak proposal to “censure” Bush (which is basically the congressional equivalent of wagging your finger at someone). Historical note: Democrats were actually in a strong position politically at this point as they had blocked