I registered as independent when I first registered to vote, because I wasn’t sure about associating with a party. That was about two years before Obama was inaugurated for a second term. (Yep, I’m a young’un.) My parents were, I think, still registered as Republican at that point, but for years they had considered themselves Democratic-leaning, nonpartisan voters (they were more likely to pick the Democratic candidate, but that wasn’t a given. It depended on the candidates.) I don’t think this had much of an effect on me—actually, both of them urged me to register for a party so I could vote in Presidential primaries.
As this last Presidential election campaign began to gain momentum, I was bothered by the rhetoric of a certain Republican candidate. I wanted to be part of the statistic that was pushed away by that kind of behavior/demeanor/thinking, so I registered as a Democrat. So did my parents and my sister. (That was when we thought more of the country agreed with us than it turned out did.)
It wasn’t much of a leap. If I had registered for a party from the beginning, it would have been Democrat. I knew I agreed with more of their positions than I disagreed, and I agreed with more of their positions than any other party. I’ve since been told by someone in my life that “no one would mistake you for anything but liberal,” I guess for better or worse, depending on the views of whoever’s reading this.
I knew I had a steep learning curve ahead of me when it came to politics, but these last few years have really shown me just how steep it is. I’ve been trying to climb my way up ever since.