At age 8, I saw the guy that called “Dark Horse” (not knowing the metaphor but it sounded cool) John B Anderson who was the independent. I only saw a little bit of him on TV but he seemed like the “smart guy” but they locked him out of the debates. Ok, so the guy that sounded like broken John Wayne won and not the “Peanut Farmer” I did a book report on.
1984 rolls around. I’m 12 year old now. Where’s the independent candidate? It’s just two? BORING.
1988: I’m 16. TWO Candidates? BORING.
1992: 20. H. Ross Perot. FINALLY an independent. Voting for him. He seems alright, although I doubt govt should be run like a business but what can go wrong in four years right?
After the loss: Talk radio blamed the 17% who voted for H Ross Perot for being the reason that HW Bush lost to Clinton.
Oh that got me mad because I was NEVER going to vote for the guy that did the “video game warfare” push button bombing things. I’d have voted for the saxophone guy with the wooden robotic wife who was way smarter than him.
24: 1996: H. Ross Perot again. Knew he wasn’t going to win but it was my vote.
28: 2000. I forgot to vote. I just, I dunno, I didn’t see a 3rd candidate option so here we were again with two choices: Wooden Climate Change who was super smart but wooden or Gee Shucks, Like-me-please Texas he-he-lol son of former President guy. I just skipped out on it 2000.
32: 2004: Fuck it. No viable 3rd candidate AGAIN? F’it. I’ll vote for Bush. why not. All the same and I like his Cabinet. I don’t agree with the warmongers but they’re likeable and since we’re going to bomb the world anyway, at least have likable people trying to convince me why.
Jan 2005: Bush fires his whole cabinet, who came from his dad, and installed people I didn’t know.
Last time I voted for someone’s Cabinet.
36: 2008 Obama. It was easy. Yapper and dull but they seemed like the perfectly perfect average President and wife situation and as safe and traditional an introduction for a first black President we were ever gonna get. I think there was a 3rd party viable option that year but I wasn’t impressed by it. Forgot who it was.
He was no different than any other President to me and since I’m never impressed by any Presidents, that was fine. I don’t expect much. I like a few things he did, other things I didn’t just like any other.
age 40: 2012: Obama again.
2016: 44 No 3rd party available. Yet again, a ‘keep it in the family’ situation like with Bush. Oh well, at least she’s smart. But there’s no way a democrat is going to follow 8 years of democrat, so I knew who ever they got for Republican was going to get it.
2018: 46: finally moved away from Independent and after a lot of research into platform, I went with the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida: Action & Discussion Group which was not a separate party but a ‘wing’ under the Florida Democratic Party. It wasn’t ideal but I really wanted Andrew Gillum in. Such a smear campaign before and after, although the other day he was finally acquitted from some of the weird charges State of Florida put on him
What made me choose was they had a LONG list of values on their site: Like 3 pages of bullet-point values and I went through every single one of them and found I disagreed with about 25% of them, agreed with 75% of them. enough where I can no longer deny that it’s “close enough” and worth picking. Since Florida was closed primaries and still is, I had to choose to pick him in the primaries. when he got in, it was the first and only time I actively campaigned for any politician. No regrets but it was exhausting.
2020. 48: Biden. I liked his work on domestic violence in the early 1990s. I remembered him from that time. As a fellow stutterer as a child, I remember he did a lot of work with stuttering kids through his career. Otherwise, standard politician who knows people and having a guy that knows people around the world means some negotiations will be easier than they’d be with a celebrity president.
So, what I see now is a pretty standard President in place. Neither bad nor good. Just there doing what presidents normally do.
Still waiting for another viable 3rd party candidate to show up as I think the two party system’s ridiculous and did since I first discovered that 3 candidates at a Presidential election was odd and not normal. We should have many choices. But that’s another comment for another time.