What did your parents think of the Democrats while growing up?

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I work for an american tech company, co-workers make places like San Fransico and Seattle sound bad. Atleast those places have economic development, but it is very unequal, which honestly in some ways are worse given there is honstly nothing that justify such inequality and poverty in those cities and while poverty in poor areas of USA is simply due to economic development not even being present in first place.

Not really though.

That is self fufilling, if people just think the choices are between republican and democrat, that is the only ones that going to win.

 

[Gorbles]

That is self fufilling, if people just think the choices are between republican and democrat, that is the only ones that going to win.

It's not a matter of thought. It's how the political environment exists. It's a real, tangible, factual thing. No other parties have the resources to engage at a material level that makes voting for alternatives anything but a protest vote. Which there's nothing inherently wrong for doing, but the only "self-fulfilling" thing here is believing that because options exist, they're automatically a viable choice at the national level.

If your argument is "well if enough people canvassed and voted for one, singular, alternative, over X years it could theoretically get enough votes to become a viable alternative", that would be different. It also wouldn't be relevant to the here and now.

 

[Lexicus]

That is self fufilling, if people just think the choices are between republican and democrat, that is the only ones that going to win.

No, it's because just about everyone who votes votes for the Democrats or Republicans. It's vaguely insulting to suggest that they do this because they are unaware of alternatives rather than because they've decided to do it.

The two biggest minor parties are the Libertarians, who are basically just Republicans but slightly reskinned, and the Greens, who aren't significantly to the left of the Democrats on average and have a lot of weird cranks to boot. Senator Sinema, best-known for hamstringing Biden's policies with her comrade Manchin, was a Green.

There's also the Forward Party which is just the Democrats but rebranded, and then there are a bunch of splinter parties, left and right: the left parties are full of (mostly well-meaning) cranks and weirdoes while the right parties are full of cranks and weirdoes who are also Nazis.

My sense is actually that Trump has pulled a lot of the right-wing cranks into the Republican tent (not that there were no cranks there before Trump, of course).

 

[EgonSpengler]

Also, the Democratic and Republican Parties may perhaps be better understood as coalitions of multiple, smaller parties. We have a Green Party, but in truth most of the people who'd call themselves Greens in a lot of other countries vote Democrat. To my memory, none of the self-described Libertarians I've met have ever said they voted for the Libertarian Party, at least not in the big elections that become fodder for conversation.

 

[emzie]

No poll option for split affiliation? My dad renounced Democrats after Carter's handling of the Iranian hostage crisis. My mom is a left-leaning independent, who may have voted Republican every so often earlier in life, but now would never.

I'm conservative by disposition, leftist by experience.

 

[Ajidica]

While I was growing up, my mom was solid pro-union / welfare state democrat. My dad was an "independent" with a Libertarian bent*, but after Dubya, Palin, and Trump he is a pretty standard suburban Democrat with a libertarian bent and hangups on tech/copyright issues and H1B visas.
I ended up about where you would expect; lots of classic welfare state democrat positions but with dislike of 'nanny state' stuff.

*He was also extremely anti-union, having had a bad experience when his union went on strike. They had requested 10% pay rise, management offered 6%, and they went on strike. During the strike management had increased the offer to 8%, but union leadership persuaded the members to reject it, dragging out the strike. Unfortunately, my dad had just moved to New York City and needed income so he turned scab. After this went on a month or so management decided to stop negotiating in good faith and brought in professional 'negotiators'. After what I think was a four month strike the union ended up accepting 5% pay rise. The whole process ended up really poisoning the atmosphere. What had been a pretty comfortable and amiable medtech company joined at the hip to the big Catholic hospitals in New York basically got taken over by "consultants" and 80s Wall Street types who looted it. Yeah. An experience like that would definitely make you distrustful of unions.
Add in another instance where he nearly got fired for yelling at a unionized nurse who repeatedly mishandled and damaged expensive equipment by sheer laziness, and the union wouldn't even admit she had not followed procedures... (He worked with med tech in a hospital, and keyboards/button pads needed to be covered with a plastic film for sanitary reasons. This lady, despite being told to stop doing it many times, would stab at the buttons with the tip of her pen. This tore the plastic film and broke the button pads because the contacts got damaged and jammed.)

 

[Valka D'Ur]

As an American, I honestly don’t either

Parents Dems, although my Father much more so. Mom was not particularly all that political but cared about humans and animals....and cats.

I've never voted Republican... ever. I consider myself more moderate these days just as I vehemently dislike extremist views, but yeah, ideologically, I have always been Dem. I do have great respect for those Repubs that fell on their sword fighting against the disaster that is Trumpism. The Republican party though is an absolute huge mess.

This is my down-and-dirty, quick definition of Repubs and Dems:
Repubs = Love money, guns and hate big government
Dems = Love people and the world and big government

Huh. The closest we have here in Alberta to the Republicans are the United Corruption Party - excuse me, the "United Conservative Party" that contains people who are definitely more right-leaning than normal conservatives, and due to the backroom influence of Take Back Alberta (thank people like them for the truckers' "Freedumb Convoy" in both Ottawa and Coutts), it's not really that united. Some are really peddling the Alberta separatism thing and threatened violence toward anyone voting NDP if the NDP were to win the election.

Anyway, the UCP campaigns on "small government" and wags fingers at the other parties, when the insanity is that the cabinet is HUGE, with many more MLAs appointed to deputy and secretarial positions. That means most of the whole friggin' UCP caucus has a cushy position either as a minister, deputy minister, secretary, and the ones left out of all this will likely end up on committees. They get paid extra for these, well beyond the normal MLA's salary.

About the politest word anyone on Reboot Alberta (FB group I belong to) has for the UCP is "grifters."

 

[Zardnaar]

I work for an american tech company, co-workers make places like San Fransico and Seattle sound bad. Atleast those places have economic development, but it is very unequal, which honestly in some ways are worse given there is honstly nothing that justify such inequality and poverty in those cities and while poverty in poor areas of USA is simply due to economic development not even being present in first place.

That is self fufilling, if people just think the choices are between republican and democrat, that is the only ones that going to win.

Couple of years ago NZ housing was more than large parts of California. Americans were complaining at 400k usd prices that was entry level house in small city here.

We coukd gave sold up and bought a house in California. Brother could do the same and afford LA or Seattle. Watching a video on the villages in Florida wife said only the rich could afford to live their. Starting prices were cheaper than where we live and the McMansions around 609-700k were similar to Auckland entry level price wise.

On Colorado wages. Bubble slowly deflated though.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Couple of years ago NZ housing was more than large parts of California. Americans were complaining at 400k usd prices that was entry level house in small city here.

We coukd gave sold up and bought a house in California. Brother could do the same and afford LA or Seattle. Watching a video on the villages in Florida wife said only the rich could afford to live their. Starting prices were cheaper than where we live and the McMansions around 609-700k were similar to Auckland entry level price wise.

On Colorado wages. Bubble slowly deflated though.

Well a couple of normal middle class white collar workers should probably make $100k times 2 = $200k, so yes the $700k house should be quite affordable for them. If you make $100k you probably not going to care that much about money to be honest, assuming living in an average cost of living location. I suspect politics work similar, the better of you are, the less you probably going to care about politics, beyond maybe like voting.

From my experience, the people with highest incomes tend to be the ones in most in favor of higher taxes on income, maybe the opposite of what you may expect.

I say middle class roughly mean you reached the point you start to being able to save a significant amount of money per month without much sacrifice and also have like 20+ vacation days beyond national holidays and being able to do this while not working any more than 40h per week. Rich, I think mean you don't need to work anymore.

 

[Arwon]

No, it's because just about everyone who votes votes for the Democrats or Republicans. It's vaguely insulting to suggest that they do this because they are unaware of alternatives rather than because they've decided to do it.

The two biggest minor parties are the Libertarians, who are basically just Republicans but slightly reskinned, and the Greens, who aren't significantly to the left of the Democrats on average and have a lot of weird cranks to boot. Senator Sinema, best-known for hamstringing Biden's policies with her comrade Manchin, was a Green.

There's also the Forward Party which is just the Democrats but rebranded, and then there are a bunch of splinter parties, left and right: the left parties are full of (mostly well-meaning) cranks and weirdoes while the right parties are full of cranks and weirdoes who are also Nazis.

My sense is actually that Trump has pulled a lot of the right-wing cranks into the Republican tent (not that there were no cranks there before Trump, of course).

Also ballot access, party organisation, candidate selection, funding, are so heavily restricted by the prevailing electoral laws, it's just not comparable even to other two party systems in other FPTP systems. It's not a fair fight for basically anyone else, which means it's mostly just a few unappealing cranks who still try.

 

[Quintillus]

My family's been Democrats since FDR. Well, except for one of my parent's siblings and their family, who fell off the bandwagon at some point.

The crux of it is one set of my grandparents being poor in the Depression and FDR doing something about it, whereas Hoover didn't. I'm actually less sure about the other parental side's political history going back that far, but by the time my parents met, my mom's side has been solidly FDR Democrats for decades, and my dad's side was also Democratic.

For me, the economic basis of it has carried down, and I've become more pro-labor the more I've learned about economics. The cultural aspects of politics have never been dominant in my family, although recent GOP policies are making them more prominent than they have been traditionally, including for my parents.

We didn't really talk much about politics growing up though. I knew my parents voted and that they liked FDR and JFK and Carter and Clinton, and that was generally due to attempting to do the right thing not just for their country, but for the people of their country. But I'm hard-pressed to remember talking about politics at home until 2003, when the Iraq War started. Even then it wasn't so much "the other side is evil" as we often see today, just that it was an important event that wasn't as obvious-course-of-action as Afghanistan or the Pacific War had been.

 

[Crezth]

What answer should I pick for "daddy was an absent drunk and mom was too busy working?" Or is this thread only for middle/upper class people? Thanks, @Hygro

 

[Zelig]

My parents vote in every election, but don't talk politics with their kids, so I've no idea what they've every thought of specific political parties.

 

[Hygro]

What answer should I pick for "daddy was an absent drunk and mom was too busy working?" Or is this thread only for middle/upper class people? Thanks, @Hygro

Whatever maps best to their political opinions.

 

[Crezth]

What the hell is a “political opinion?”

 

[sophie]

poll options insufficient, voted joke answer

 

[Hygro]

What the hell is a “political opinion?”

What did they think of the democrats?

poll options insufficient, voted joke answer

It's more about your parents.

 

[sophie]

It's more about your parents.

Cool. Poll options are still insufficient.

 

[Hygro]

That's what posting is for.

 

[sophie]

i did.