Liberal does not automatically mean Democrat

Aubrey Carr/Staff Writer

According to the Democratic platform which was updated in July 2016, I should be a Democrat.  Among many other core values I share with this party, I am a supporter of civil, women’s, and LGBT rights.

I am a strong advocate for energy efficiency and postponing the climate change we cannot avoid; I believe in making it easier for immigrants to become citizens while rebuilding relations with the indigenous peoples of the United States; and as a college student, I am more than in favour of “making debt-free college a reality,” the way it was during my grandparents’ lifetime.

Based on this information, it may seem odd to anyone convinced of the necessity of bipartisanism that my voter registration card reads “no party affiliation” instead of “Democrat.”  

There are two major reasons for this: Firstly, while I find myself cheering for most of what President Obama has suggested and changed, I do not agree with everything his party advocates. Secondly, the two-party system is extremely exclusive, leaving out the largest voter population in America at 39 percent.

Democrats account for 32 percent and Republicans only 23 percent, according to a 2014 analysis. Why group myself into a party that shares only some of my principles when there are other avenues to explore?

I stand in strong opposition to the Democrats when it comes to fiscal policy, where I tend to switch to a more conservative Republican agenda. I support eliminating the cap on income taxes, meaning taxing the wealthy the same percentage of their entire incomes as everyone else, but that is where my financial agreement with the Democratic Party halts.

For example, it’s unrealistic to continue extending social security to everyone simply because everyone pays into it. Social security should be an account paid into by everyone but only available to those who direly need it, the way food stamps and other aid resources are dispersed.

It should go to the handicapped and otherwise disabled, to those in inescapable poverty, to women and persons of color born before 1960, as women wouldn’t have been able to work full-time jobs with benefits until the early 1970’s and both demographics are still severely underpaid compared to their male or white counterparts.

To make views murkier, I am sympathetic to both sides of the debate for and against gun ownership, making me again an outlier on either side.

Just because I agree with the majority of the modern Democratic platform does not mean that this identity is sufficient. I also concur with a small portion of the Republican platform.  Choosing to label myself as a Democrat is unfair to the parts of me that are in fact Republican or neither.

I refuse to align myself with one member of a two-party system that has gone too far in battling each other back and forth for decades, swapping roles in the House, Senate, and Oval Office; and this is why I voted third party in this presidential election, even though I am also not necessarily affiliated with the Libertarian nor Green party.  

When there are more than two parties to choose from, people are not required to misrepresent themselves, consistently choosing the lesser of two evils or affiliating with a party with which they are not completely in a consensus.  Political parties are not friends with whom we look over flaws and accept for who they are, and we certainly do not limit ourselves to the same two friends and only those two friends for decades on end.  

Political parties are our catalysts to drive change in our countries and across borders. It’s not good enough to choose the lesser of two very different kinds of evils in something as important as a presidential election and especially one like this.  

It is your civic responsibility, more than this, to change for the better, and that has never meant settling for less than everything you stand for just because you are more revolted by the other option — especially when there are multiple options on the ballot, like third parties and write-ins.

Who we vote for doesn’t define our political identities, but we define the entirety of our core beliefs and desires for change with the political identities we claim.  It is a ridiculous notion to group the majority of one’s ideals into one group with confidence, knowing that other core values are left out.  

There are too many quietly-available parties to make “liberal” automatically synonymous with “Democrat.”

 

DISCLAIMER:

The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of FIU Student Media Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.

 

Image retrieved from Flickr.

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