Vote Yellow

In a time of negative partisanship, to be a Liberal American is to never lend any credence to the words of Conservatives. Likewise, to be Conservative American is to never believe that Liberals have anything approaching good intent.

So is the fact that my attitude towards partisanship may be charitably described as "a pox on both your houses" what lands me in the "Independent" camp? Although I suppose that the "Independent" label doesn't really apply to me, given my voting behavior. While the expanding scale of political space means that I perceive both parties as moving steadily away from me, the apparent motion of the Republicans has been farther and faster than that of the Democrats. And as someone who is committed to voting in pretty much every election for which I am eligible, that means that I tend to vote for Democratic candidates.

I would prefer to vote for "third" parties, and I do, when the opportunity presents itself, but I do have standards; this rules out votes for people like "Mike the Mover" and "Goodspaceguy." (And yes, these are real people.) Although Goodspaceguy, even with his mercurial partisan alignment, has done fairly well for himself from time to time (once breaking 15% of the overall vote for County Executive), I tend to regard him as a bit too, well... out there, for my tastes. In any event, given the generally hopeless nature of running outside of the Democratic/Republican Party duopoly, candidates that come across as both serious and mentally balanced can occasionally be hard to come by; they aren't present in all races. And while I don't have anything against Republicans broadly, Donald Trump is one of the few politicians that I've anything approaching an active dislike for; accordingly, an endorsement from him is a hard "no" in my book. So at this point, it's impossible for me to describe myself as a "swing voter;" the chasm between the parties is too broad for me to Tarzan my way from one side of it to the other.

And, to be honest, it's made me rethink my commitment to voting in every election on more than one occasion. Which is a shame, really. The most basic act of participating in participatory government shouldn't feel like that much of a chore.