I have decided to leave the democratic party

In short, it simply isn't for me anymore. I can't stand by anymore watching these old fools run the party like it is still the 1990s.  I am an independent now and will only vote for candidates that aren't clueless.

I will not vote for any Republicans ever and I will not vote for roughly 80% of the current elected Democrats office holders ever. Sorry your incompetence and refusal to put younger Democrats in leadership positions was the final nail in the coffin for me.  Oh, that Tik Tok bullshit really pissed me off too. 

The sad fact is that the Democrats believe that simply having the moral high ground (our candidates aren't thieves, pedophiles, scammers, and traitors) and the practical high ground (we try to make your lives better; they try to make rich folks richer) is enough. It isn't.

These days, you have to know how to court the idiots and the goobers. There are too many of them to ignore. Sure, only adolescent bubbleheads put any stock in social media or believe what they see there. So be it. Flood the social media with appetizing bullcrap. Stop talking about universal healthcare; Bubba isn't sick TODAY. Tell Bubba that there will be free monster truck rallies for everyone.

The Republicans have been far, far more successful at appealing to the tiny-brained folk. The Democrats have badly misjudged how little the amorality, let alone the criminality, of the Republican party matters to Bubba and his kind.

And in the end, AMURRICA will elect a serial rapist as long as he PROMISES to make a bag of Ruffles cost $2.99 again.

Sorry to see you go, and I understand why. I just would ask you to consider that not voting for a Democratic candidate is, in effect, casting half of a vote for his Republican opponent.

@ Kevin..

Your above innuendo and offensive labeling represents a significant proportion of the exact causative reasons why Republicans / conservatives won the election/s and now control all three branches of govt. Your condemnation of your opposition in the end won't give you much room to negotiate your vision of utopia when the time comes for your kind, either. You haven't even physically met 1% of the people you routinely denigrate but yet you refer to the entire mass as idiots, goobers, adolescent bubbleheads, criminal and tiny-brained folks named Bubba, on and on ad infinitum. That behavior immediately distances you from any Mensa list..is exceedingly arrogant..and beyond judgemental..and is rife with total self-servitude. You're practicing what you're accusing your opposition of doing. 

If these R's / conservatives exhibit low thought processes, poor problem solving skills, and nil IQ's as you routinely charge, then they'll FUBAR every issue and thus be voted out starting 2 years from now in the midterms. Why are you so worried about them if they're so unskilled, selfish, and criminal in nature? You're concerned because over  half the voters checked their boxes? What caused that ( was it your party's policies/actions/ rhetoric?) You've already stated you don't have much faith in the separation of powers / checks and balances systems. Don't revive the Hitler argument again, either..or the Stalin one. Different govts...different rules..their historical administrative and governmental structures  just do not apply in the US and never did.

Why don't you spend your time and efforts trying to figure out exactly why your side was justifiably trounced in the recent election and help create a new agenda with policies that will appeal to the majority of voters again? Not as much fun as being routinely judgemental and raising hell about the opposition all the time while supposedly standing on / occupying the moral high ground, you say? Your prerogatives, sure.

British Columbia is a beauiful place, btw. Just a thought.

At least you're thinking about policy, issues, processes, and alternatives. Maybe you can find some solace over there. Good luck.

You were making a modicum of sense (in a way), until you used the idiot moron MAGA goober phrase "justifiably trounced." Really? What is the "justification" for evil triumphing over good? And yes, it IS that simple and stark. People like you dismiss, handwave, and rationalize the truly evil. malevolent, selfish, unethical, and immoral actions of your party and its leaders. Why do you do that? Well, some people have personal agendas, like being rabidly against abortion, or immigration, or health care, and they vote a certain way because one issue is paramount in their minds. You, I don't know what your hot button is. Nor do I give a shit. And some people are just plain STOOOOPID, like those who really, actually, truly think that the prices of consumer goods are controlled by whoever sits in the White House. (God, what idiocy--but the Republicans did a masterful job of selling that to the goobers.)

And yes, yea verily, I occupy the moral high ground here, simply because anyone who voted for Trump is presently occupying the very bottom of the moral septic tank. As far as policies that will appeal to the majority of voters---well, didn't the majority of voters just enthusiastically go for a 30% sales tax? Mass deportations and gigantic waves of human misery? A government devoted not to its people, but to gratifying the urges and revenging the grievances of one man--who is an utterly irredeemable piece of filth? It's evident that our electorate is so stupid that they don't know what's good for them. That, in the final extremity, it's what's wrong with democracy--eventually, at some point, a majority will vote to steer the bus off the cliff, while the minority who retain some sense can do nothing but hold on and scream in terror.

I'm sorry if you don't like the Hitler/Stalin analogy/comparison. It's extremely apt. I will further compare you to the cheering, adoring acolytes who filled the streets of Moscow in 1917 and Berlin in 1933, absolutely convinced that their new, adored Dear Leader was ushering them into a new golden age.

You can spell and parse a sentence, so that automatically places you, intelligence-wise, in the top 0.001% of Trump voters--but you're far more to blame than the rest, because you had the intellectual capacity to understand what you were doing...and you did it anyway. That's not the same thing as Bubba voting for the Turd because "he says what he thinks" or "he looks and acts STRONG" or "inflation was minus 90 percent under Trump."

Yes, the Democratic party fucked up big time. But I didn't. You, however, did. No matter what rationalizations you deploy or how robust your cognitive dissonance skills may be, you and all the other MAGA voters did something horrible and probably irreparable. You say that can be fixed in the next election(s). Let me ask you this, then:

Do you REALLY, truly think that the Republicans are going to ever allow another free and fair election, now that they are, as you note, running a one-party state? Do you expect them to relinquish power, or to hold onto it with all their claws and teeth?

Before you answer, read a history book or two. And discard that idiot notion that we're somehow unique in human history, that our institutions are so robust and resilient that they can't be corrupted, subverted, and destroyed. That's BOOOOOOOLSHEEEEET.

But hey, I hope you're right!

Its good not to associatte with any party.  It leads to tribalism and an inability to think independantly.   See David MIller.

I dont share your (Mark's) criticism of the Democrats but I have my own....mainly they have a hard time taking a firmer stand against the fringiest voices in their party (think trans athletes and pro-Hamas protestors).      I'd like to see the party take the lead from people like John Fetterman who has it right.    

In the end elections come down to a choice between two parties and two candidates.    THird party is a fun thought experiment but its really just a cop out.    We've had enough bad presidents to learn that picking the lesser of two evils is usually a smart use of ones vote compared to supporting Mickey Mouse.      We're about to learn that again this go round.

Yeah, there'll be more free , fair elections; I still believe in the basic prionciples//the systems that we're noted for here. We are unique..history books support that; that doesn't provide us with ' perfect 'label. What makes you think the R's won't screw up and piss off the electorate? They've certainly done it in some of those history books you reference.

Kevin kind of got schooled there by Nines.  Not much else to say after that post.  It's funny, Kevin says he "cares about people" but have we seen anyone here just rip large segments of the population more than Kevin?  He is more like Trump than anybody on this Forum and he doesn't even realize it.  

Mark, you are a good man.  The lean towards critical thinking is always a good one.  

Nines offered his opinion. Mine differs. Since you agree with Nines, you say that I was "schooled" by him. Uh huh. You're back in Nasty Jerry mode yet again...and you don't even realize it.

I didn't say that you thought we were "perfect"--I said that you were wrong when you thought that our institutions are bulletproof- so resilient that they will protect us from the likes of Trump.

The ANYBODYS, R or D, will "screw up and piss off the electorate," no matter what--some portion thereof, anyway. The salient question is whether the dissastisfied people, whoever they are, will have a voice--and whether they will have the ability to effect change. History tells me that they won't. We'll see, no doubt.