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Jim Buckley's avatar

Nice piece, Celeste. Welcome to the club; hope you'll stay awhile!

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Polly Frost's avatar

Wonderful piece, Celeste. I also registered as a Dem when I was old enough to vote and I also voted for Nixon in the first election I could, 1972, for the same reason you did. My Santa Barbara friends at that time were shocked I voted for him. My response was “And who did we protest against about Vietnam? Right, a Democrat, LBJ.” I do think Nixon took too long to get us out and there are things he did, like with agriculture, that were not good. But basically I agree with you that he was a better president than he's given credit for. Although - and I'm repeating myself here - he did ask my father to head the IRS after his first election to use it to punish his enemies list. He was brilliant, but his own worst enemy.

I didn't like the Clintons, but my own alienation from the Democratic Party and my Democrat friends began in 2000. I was living in NYC where all my friends were Democrats. And it shocked me that they couldn't see how stupid a choice it was for the Democrats to go with him. When I said I was going to vote for Nader they went ballistic on me. It was when I realized how superior these people - many of them worked in the media - felt. Where my Democrat friends protested against Johnson in the 60s, they now were becoming like cult members. No criticism of the Party allowed. The tv show that for me embodies this change is West Wing which my Democrat friends all loved. For me it was insufferable self congratulatory schlock.

Then I voted for Obama twice and ended up protesting his policies, especially his surveillance, more than any other president. I never saw a single friend at those protests. Obama could do no wrong. Obama was the perfect real life West Wing president for them.

A number of my Democrat friends stopped talking to me after 2016, when they found out I voted for Trump. I tried to talk to them about what the Democratic Party has become, and why I left, but now they did call me a fascist. They finally entered the tv screen and have been living in West Wing ever since. Thank you again, Celeste.

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