it frustrates

[anotheranon]

Understand: I will not vote Republican for love or money.

But: It frustrates me that of the Democratic contenders, one seems willing to pander to the religious right and the other seems squeamish about gay people (hat tips free_of_whip and ellid).

Indeed, one of my running complaints about the Democratic party at the national level is that they seem unwilling to play to their base, so confident of having the votes of women and racial/sexual minorities ('cos where else can they go?) that they ignore them to chase the conservative religious, who are NEVER going to vote for them because they already control the social agenda of the GOP.

Of course I've not been paying attention as well as I might during this campaign season so I will cynically check and double check the stories above to see how much water they hold. But still, it's discouraging.

Full disclosure: I didn't vote in the primaries today. I'm not registered with either party and in this state you have to be one or the other to vote in the presidential primaries.

Comments

[dustdaughter.livejournal.com]

I didn't vote in the primaries today. I'm not registered with either party and in this state you have to be one or the other to vote in the presidential primaries.

My bad, I thought the primaries for this area were next week. But CNN has MD and DC listed on their site tonight. Whoops.

I'm a registered independent so I can't vote either. Not that I've decided who to vote for, but still it would be nice to have a say in who's nominated.

[geekchick]

MD, DC and VA's primaries are all Feb. 12. Are you in VA? If so, we have open primaries and you can vote in either one.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they are next week - for some reason I remembered hearing in the news that they had been moved up, but I could be remembering wrong!

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

You guys seriously need more political parties ... two is not enough. :-(

[flummoxicated.livejournal.com]

That is a disappointing report on Obama, who I'm more interested in than Hillary (While I'd love to have a woman in the White House, I am way too creeped out by this country becoming an oligarchy ruled by Bushes and Clintons).

The only explanation I can come up with is that typically the conservatives have voted in masse (and therefore had more power) than have the liberals - also there are more flavors of liberal (affluent, people of color, etc) than there are of conservative, so it's easier to identify the conservatives. I hope that makes sense.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

You may have a point about the diverse aims of different liberal groups. Back in the 1980s the Republicans went for that whole "big tent" thing whereby the 3 main flavors of conservative (social, fiscal, defense) made their peace for greater goals.

This may be somewhat falling apart this election cycle though: The GOP: From Big Tent to Three-Ring Circus (http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2008/01/gop-from-big-tent-to-three-ring-circus.html) is an interesting read on that.