What's with the focus for some people on Bernie's joining the Democratic party?

[TCJ70]

Is the (D-XX) by someone's name just a label, or a set of ideals? Does someone who represents those ideals completely need the label by their name to be worthy of consideration?

We're talking about a guy who has spent nearly his entire career trying to bring attention to issues that effect the vast majority of the citizens of this country. He sees a better future for everyone and has identified the Democratic party as the correct vehicle for it. Would anyone here really not vote for him because he hasn't had a D by his name his entire life?

[gollygee]

1. There are two groups in the US: the left, and the right.

He is certainly on the left side of that, and if you want to be president, you have to choose the current left party or the current right party to have any chance of election. It makes sense that he's running as a Democrat and this is a ridiculous non-issue.

[kristopher]

2. What is particularly nuts about that is the number of Rs that the DNC recruits. nt

[MisterP]

3. the people saying the Dems are the party of XYZ and are riding on that are the same DINOs

that have hollowed out the party and got it fighting XYZ

it's "the party of FDR" as much as the GOP is "the party of Lincoln"

[liberal_at_heart]

4. Both the Democratic Party and the Republican party rely on party loyalty votes.

Unfortunately for them 40% of Americans now consider themselves Independent and do not vote based on party loyalty. This strategy and tactic is beginning to fail for both parties and they are desperate to hold on to that tactic for getting votes.

[treestar]

5. No the party is made up of the people in it

It's absurd to state that people outside the party are a better representation of the party.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. I don't vote for labels.

Or, gender, or ethnicity, or sexual identity, or the ability of the candidate to play hockey.

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789.

"Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1795.

[liberal_at_heart]

7. +1000000