Losing My Religion

My parents were Democrats.

I feel it is necessary to say that right up front because it tells you something about how I was brought up. It should tell you something about what I value.

In case it isn't clear, let me spell it out for you:

• I believe in truth even when truth hurts.


• I believe in fair and equal treatment for everyone in every situation or endeavor.


• I believe justice is a two–sided coin, and it isn't always what the majority may think it should be.


• I believe in individual freedom, and


• I believe that, while respect must be earned, everyone is entitled to a certain amount of respect from others simply because they exist.

There are other things I believe, too, but that will do for openers.

Being a Democrat was like a religious faith in my family. My roots run deep in Southern soil, but my parents, who spent the first several years of their marriage living abroad, always identified more with the Democrats from the other regions of the country.

They were rarely in sync with many of the Democrats in the small Arkansas town where I grew up. They supported things like civil rights, and they were against the war in Vietnam.

I remember accompanying my mother when she went campaigning door to door for George McGovern in 1972. We encountered few positive responses on our sojourns through our county. I don't know how many doors were slammed in our faces. I just remember that there were a lot of them.

I also remember that the kids with whom I went to school reflected their parents' (and, as it turned out, the state's) political preferences. Richard Nixon got about 70% of the vote in Arkansas that year.

Kids always want to be accepted by their peers, and they are sensitive to the things that they think are barriers to that acceptance. I was quite young in 1972, but I remember feeling that supporting the Democratic ticket was keeping me from gaining the acceptance I craved.

Anyway, I remember one October afternoon when my mother and I were driving into the rural parts of our county to try to win one or two supporters for McGovern's quixotic presidential campaign. Henry Kissinger had just announced that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam, and I mentioned that to Mom.

And then I asked her a question. Mom wasn't given to icy stares, but she gave me one on that occasion.

"If Nixon ends the war in Vietnam," I asked, "couldn't we be for him then? Isn't that what we want to do, end the war?"

Mom stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. "Yes, we want to end the war," she finally said, "but there is more to it than that."

I didn't understand that at the time, but I understood what she meant when I got older.

And, for most of my adult life, I was a Democrat. Until 2008, I supported Democrats in every presidential election after I turned 18.

But I just couldn't vote for Barack Obama. It wasn't that I disagreed with him on many issues. Just the opposite, in fact. To be honest, I was bewildered at the time. I even told some friends, "I can't believe a Democrat is about to be elected president ... and I'm not going to vote for him!"

My friends were even more baffled than I was. I tried to explain it to them, but I couldn't. It was just a gut feeling, I said. I didn't trust Obama.

You must be racist, my Democrat friends said dismissively. But that conveniently overlooked the fact that I was raised by parents who were active supporters of civil rights in the American South at a time when white Southerners who did that wound up having crosses burned in their yards — or worse.

I just didn't trust him. Never have. But I couldn't explain it any better than that in 2008. And my uneasy feeling has continued to grow, along with the unemployment rate. As I wrote here about 18 months ago, I have become an independent.

I have tried to understand it better, and I think I do. In fact, I think there are lots of others out there who are beginning to experience the same nagging doubts I have had about Obama since he emerged as the Democrats' frontrunner three years ago.

They may be just as bewildered as I was — although they shouldn't be because there was much less evidence to support my position in 2008. Folks who are having doubts about Obama today have had 30 months to observe his actions — and inactions — in office.

For the most part, all I had to go on were my suspicions. I'll grant you, they were nothing more than gut feelings three years ago, and I tried to persuade myself that there was nothing to them — or, if there was, I hoped he would overcome the shortcomings that I feared he possessed.

But I have seen nothing since this president took office that has led me to believe that my suspicions were mistaken — or that Obama has made any progress in overcoming his weaknesses.

Persuasion really is the operative word here because that is a big problem I have perceived in not just Obama but many of the prominent members of his party in the last several years. I think it predates Obama's election — which, I suppose, would make him more of a product of it.

It really should come as no surprise when folks on the left and folks on the right disagree — that happens frequently. But I have seen an outright unwillingness on the part of the so–called liberals to treat dissenting opinions with enough respect to listen to them and respond to them. Instead, Democrats tend to dismiss the dissenters as stupid — and/or racist or sexist or whatever.

Say what you will about Rush Limbaugh and the other right–wing radio hosts — and most of it is true — but they treat callers with dissenting views with more respect than their counterparts on the left. They listen to what they have to say (usually), and they respond to the points that are made.

But Democrats too often skip the persuasion part. It's hard work. It's much easier to treat dissenters with contempt or condescension.

When I was growing up, both political parties were positioned more in the middle of the road, and they worked together to resolve their differences. Today, both are so far to either extreme that there is simply too much that stands in the way of compromise.

That's under normal circumstances. It's even tougher to persuade people to come around to your side when you've been demonizing them or dismissing them as fools.

A basic fact that many Democrats seem to have forgotten is that people respond positively to politicians who act as if they respect the voters' intelligence. Democrats like to accuse Republicans of being country clubbers — and many may well be — but, in fact, many voters see Democrats as smug and elitist with no respect for ordinary Americans' beliefs, fears and values.

I have often observed that the Republican Party veered far to the right when it nominated Ronald Reagan in 1980, and it has largely remained there for the last 30 years after striking its deal with the Christian conservatives.

It is harder for me to pinpoint when Democrats veered so far to the left, but I think it took root midway through the last decade — in the aftermath of Republican mishandling of the Terri Schiavo tragedy and the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The pendulum swung back to the Democrats, and they began seizing the components of the federal government — but it turned out that all they had learned from Republican control of Congress (and, later, the presidency) was how to bully people into doing what they wanted.

That kind of politics, as Democrats should have learned by now, has a short shelf life.

Independents' Day

Barack Obama's job approval has matched his presidential low, according to Gallup's three–day tracking poll.

As Michael Memoli and Peter Nicholas write in the Los Angeles Times, that could be attributed to "gas prices, the budget debate, or simply the usual ups and downs of public opinion polling."

And it is true that some presidents receive something of a "bounce" in popularity after their parties experience a "shellacking" in the midterm elections. It is usually understood that the recipient of such a bounce will come back to earth.

That bounce comes around at different times for different presidents.

• Bill Clinton, for example, saw his popularity decline to about 40% between Election Day 1994 and the end of the year, but he began to turn things around in 1995.
  
  Clinton, of course, had his ups and downs for the remainder of his presidency, but he (a) never fell to 40% again, and (b) went on to win re–election.


• Similarly, Ronald Reagan dropped to 35% by the end of January 1983 after losing more than 20 seats in the House in the 1982 midterms.
  
  Reagan also rebounded, had his high and low moments and won re–election.

But there have also been those presidents like Lyndon Johnson who won by wide margins, then saw their parties go down in flames in the midterms and ended up not running for another term.

In Johnson's case, he was elected by a landslide in 1964, but his party lost a ton of seats in Congress in 1966, in no small part because of the public's souring on the Vietnam War. Shortly after the midterms, LBJ's popularity was a respectable 48%, but it seldom got that high again, and he dropped out of the race in 1968.

Obama's bounce came shortly after the midterms, but it seems to have peaked rather quickly and is making its way back to earth.

There's a cautionary tale in there for the president, I think. A president must seize his opportunities while he can.

In those roughly six months in late 2009 when the Democrats held a filibuster–proof majority, they chose to wield their power on behalf of a Supreme Court nomination that was in no way threatened and the health care reform bill — and alienated, I believe, many Americans who may have, at one time, identified with one of the parties but now call themselves independents.

Independents have been part of the political landscape all along, but most of the time they have represented a fairly small portion of the electorate.

Many of those independents, especially the newer ones, had misgivings about Obama but were willing to give him a chance because they were disappointed in (or discouraged by) Republican leadership. And many independents opted to give the Republicans a chance in 2000 because they were disappointed in (or discouraged by) Bill Clinton's leadership.

If their numbers are growing, it is because they are increasingly disenchanted with all politicians.

Now and in the future, it seems to me, presidents can be less certain of the continued support of those who voted for them in the last election. For many more people than was true when I was a child, the last election simply does not equal a long–term commitment.

Be that as it may, Gallup says Obama's decline in job approval is most pronounced among those who call themselves independents. Gallup doesn't discuss the portion of the electorate that says it is independent. But it reports that Obama's average in that group was 48% between 2009 and 2011.

Thus far in 2011, his approval among independents stands at 44% — and, even more ominously, Obama's approval among independents between Tuesday and Thursday of this week (a period that includes Obama's speech on fiscal policy on Wednesday) is — wait for it — 35%.

A president who has recently launched his campaign for re–election (nearly a year before the first presidential primary) should sit up and take notice of numbers like that.

Gallup's raw numbers underscore the polarized political climate in which we live. A Democratic president enjoys high approval numbers from Democrats (although they aren't as high as they were). He also receives low approval numbers from Republicans (lower than they were, but, frankly, they couldn't drop too much).

Everything hinges on the independents.

The situation was the same for Republican George W. Bush, who emerged the winner of two close presidential races, and Democrat Bill Clinton, who never got a majority of the popular vote in spite of winning by landslides in the Electoral College, as it is now for Obama.

The faithful in both parties give their knee–jerk approval to and march in lockstep obedience behind their leaders, defending the indefensible.

But they can't win by themselves.

And, as Charlie Sheen could tell you, it's all about winning.

Why I Won't Vote in the Texas Primary

Last month, I wrote that I have turned my back on a lifetime as a Democrat and now consider myself an independent.

Here in Texas, we have open primaries, which means there is no official party registration. I can go to my polling place and simply declare in which party primary I wish to participate. I voted in the Democratic primary in 2008. This year, I could walk into my polling place and tell them I wanted to vote in the Republican primary and I would be allowed to do so. No questions would be asked.

Now, if it turned out that the primary in which I did not vote produced a high–profile runoff, I could not participate in the runoff. Texas isn't that liberal (actually, Texas isn't "liberal" about most things).

It was a different situation when I lived in Oklahoma. When I registered to vote there, I had to declare my party allegiance. If my allegiance changed, I had to go through the procedure of re–registering. It was possible to register as an independent, but, unless the independents held their own primary, you couldn't participate in a state primary if you were registered as one.

It is interesting that many people who have known me most or all of my life — and therefore know that I have been a Democrat all my life — have asked me, upon learning that I now regard myself as an independent, if I am going to vote in the Republican primary or if I support Republicans for various offices.

I can only wonder when being an independent became synonymous with being a member of either political party. Perhaps it has to do with one's disenchantment with one's original party. If it does, then maybe the logic — as twisted as it is — is, well, he's not a Democrat, anymore, so he must be a Republican.

Maybe that would be true of some people today, but I believe I am honest enough (with myself, at least, if not with others as well) to acknowledge if I am actually switching parties. And that is not what I did. I am now an independent.

There was a time, not so long ago, when independents were seen as allies of Democrats. In recent months, though, they have been increasingly seen as friendly to Republicans.

But the reason I am an independent — and the main reason why I will not vote in the Texas primary on Tuesday — is because I am disgusted with both parties.

As I mentioned last month, politicians will have to earn my support by demonstrating satisfactorily that they are acting in my best interest. And I am simply not convinced that any of the candidates on either party's ballot is acting in my best interest.

For awhile, I did think about voting in the Republican primary — but only because Gov. Rick Perry is on the ballot and I loathe him so much that I wanted to vote against him.

Perry was the lieutenant governor when George W. Bush was governor, and Perry became governor when Bush resigned to go to Washington. I think of it as Texas' version of Dumb and Dumber.

If the polls are to be believed, I may get the chance to vote against Perry in November if I want to (I've done that before, though, and it hasn't helped). He's being challenged in Tuesday's primary by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who was, at one time, a bigger vote–getter than Bush in Texas. In 2000, more than 4 million Texans voted for her when she ran for a second full term as a U.S. senator. She outpolled Bush, who was running for president that year, by more than 200,000 votes in Texas.

But Hutchison may turn out to be the Martha Coakley of Texas. When she entered the race last year, many polls showed her leading Perry, although her leads were never as impressive as I thought they should be. I heard many political observers speak of her as the inevitable nominee, although I was never convinced that she was inevitable. And, indeed, it seems that lead has disappeared, and Rasmussen Reports says Perry is close to majority support in his bid for the Republican nomination.

Close, but not there yet.

Modern polling techniques are usually pretty reliable so a "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment doesn't really seem likely here, but it's possible that recent polls could be wrong. If they are right, then Perry is a couple of percentage points away from a majority, with Hutchison more than 20 points behind him.

What's more, nearly one out of every 10 Republicans hasn't decided how to vote, Rasmussen says. If the poll is right, Perry still has time to win enough support from the undecided group to secure a majority — and, hence, the nomination — without having to make a pitch for Hutchison's supporters.

Or the supporters of the third candidate, Debra Medina. She's kind of like Texas' Sarah Palin — except she hasn't been elected governor yet and, from the looks of things, won't be the GOP's gubernatorial nominee this year. Probably the less said about her, the better.

For awhile, she seemed to have some momentum, and it looked like she might make this a genuine three–way race. But she started making controversial comments about alleged 9/11 insider conspiracies, and the momentum went away.

I thought about voting for Hutchison and perhaps helping to force Perry into a runoff that he might lose, but I decided that voting against is not something I want to do anymore. I want to vote for someone. I don't see any real difference between Hutchison and Perry so the best reason I could have for voting for Hutchison would be that she isn't Perry. And that isn't enough for me.

The movement from Medina seems to have gone in Perry's direction, and there is a lesson in that for incumbents across the country who have been anticipating an anti–incumbent mood in this midterm election year. Such a fervor does not seem to be evident within either party, except in certain cases, so there isn't likely to be much evidence of an anti–incumbent wave during the spring/summer primary season. Where that is likely to be encountered is in the general election this fall, when independents are thrown into the mix.

Of course, independents can vote in either primary here — and in several other places as well. I could vote in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, but the front–runner, the former mayor of Houston, is far ahead of his opponent.

So I've decided to be merely an interested bystander this spring, then I'll see if either nominee persuades me this fall that he/she is concerned about my best interests. If neither one does, I'll sit that one out, too.

As a bystander, I will say that I find it curious that, regardless of the lead Perry apparently has in the primary, his lead over the presumed Democratic nominee is smaller than Hutchison's. But neither seems to have a majority — yet — in this state that hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in 20 years.

My vote might yet matter to both sides in the fall. It probably means a lot to the candidates in the primaries on Tuesday. But no one has met my standard.

I put too much value on my vote to just give it away to the one who comes closest to living up to my standards. That seems to be one of the problems in America. We seldom get good options, but, because somebody has to win, we give to whichever candidate the voters decide is the "lesser of two evils."

Well, I have voted for the lesser of two evils far more often than I care to remember, and I have decided I simply will not just give my vote away to someone who just partially meets my requirements.

I want an exact match.