Why I'm NOT a Democrat

If the random person decides to read this blog, and looks at my profile, s/he will see that I list politics as one of my interests. One also may deduct (rightly) that I am a feminist, but one could search up and down this site and see something missing: republican or democrat.

I am not a republican. This shocks no one, it is hard (in fact, I think impossible) to be a committed feminist and a republican. About the only thing I agree with in conservative philosophies is a need to balance the budget (my solution, however, is raise taxes, not cut spending), guns should be available to the populace (but, again, I don't agree with full autos being on the market to the average gun owner), and the death penality (after full trials, because it is more humane than life imprisonment).

What shocks most people is that I am also not a democrat.

Democrats have proven, time and time again, they're williness to throw out women's rights, minority rights, envirnmental concerns, anything, if politically expedient. The fact that one of my own senators voted FOR Alito (and Robert's) nomination, and is supposedly a democrat, irritated me to no end and proved that they don't care about women's issues.

We have a fairly active College Democrats group at UND. This is not surprising, North Dakota has traditionally been economically liberal (*read* likes social security and farm subsidies) and socially conservative (*read* wants everyone to fall into the gender, race, Christian and hetero behavior norms). I was once asked why I didn't join, since it was obvious that I feel impassioned about politics (I suffer from the "not being able to shut up in class" problem). My answer? "I am a feminist, not a democrat".

I asked this self-same College Democrat a few weeks back what his feelings on the South Dakota abortion was. "Watch how people will be voting democrat now that the republicans don't have their favorite bogey-man to beat". (Paraphrasing because I can't remember exactly what was said, but he did say "bogey-man").

And that's all it is for democrats. Not the fact that women in South Dakota will no longer be able to get their health needs met, but that somehow democrats will get back in power.

To democrats: people aren't going to vote for you unless you show yourself to be something other than Republican-lite.

So, until the democrats show themselves capable of being more than just a useless group of back-patters, I'm voting Green.