I was raised a Democrat. My parents, like most people of their generation (Depression and World War II), were Roosevelt Democrats. I, like most of their children, followed in their footsteps.
The first election in which I could vote was 1968 (the voting age was still 21) and I voted for Hubert Humphrey. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either Richard Nixon or George McGovern in 1972, but I did vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Carter turned me into a Republican. As Ronald Reagan said, I did not leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.
But despite my estrangement from the Democrats at the time, there was still room in the party for a Scoop Jackson, a Sam Nunn, and a Phil Gramm. It claimed the mantle of the middle and working classes. It was anti-communist and patriotic. It was committed to free speech and freedom of religion. But those days are long gone. Today’s party would have no place for John Kennedy.
It is now the party of rich bi-coastal liberals who disparage those who grow their food and make things work—the “deplorables” clinging to their guns and religion. It is the party of dueling victimization narratives (mirror, mirror, on the wall/who is the most oppressed of all?).
Read the rest in the Providence Journal.
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