CLEVELAND, Ohio – My mother was a lifelong Democrat. She never missed a vote and would work at the polls until the early hours of the next morning, counting and verifying every vote.
When I was about seven years old, I asked my mother why she was a Democrat. She told me that her party put ordinary workers above big corporations and advocated for equality for all. This made sense, since she was born in 1919 and had witnessed decades of economic hardship and the effects of war. The Democrats stood for what she believed was best for the country.
In 1909, recently out of high school, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech called “A Student of Politics” to a group of Democrats. At the time, the Republican Party was splitting into conservative and liberal factions. Young Dwight watched the struggles and arguments within the party, but he noticed that no one was leaving. He explains:
“[I]In reality, the party becomes a part of the person, because once a person is a member of a party, he never wants to leave it. The average person ceases to think impartially about the issues that concern him, and votes the same way as always. He continues to debate important political issues, but in a rigid, one-sided way, and refuses to admit any wrongdoing in his party.”
Now, read it again. I know you want to read it. Right?
When you marry someone, you marry their family, and with that family comes a whole host of traditions, expectations, ties, beliefs, and more. That’s how young Dwight thought about voting. People who vote along party lines the first time don’t just bond with a candidate; they marry an entire party, and that first vote loyalty lasts a long time.
Young people should be warned.
Is this a good time to tell you that I voted Republican in the first three presidential elections? Absolutely. Then, somewhere between “read my lips” and “the economy matters, idiot,” I realized that the Democratic Party’s beliefs were closer to what mattered most to me. It was scary to switch. I didn’t agree with everything on the party platform, but my blue alliances remain to this day.
It takes work to know and understand your political family. Every four years, the Republican and Democratic parties revise their platforms, writing new versions that are approved at their national conventions. At least, that’s the tradition. The Republicans omitted this in 2020.
I wonder how much we know about the current policies of our political parties, beyond slogans and short phrases in the news. How many of the main tenets of your chosen political party can you recite? I’m talking about documented party policies, promises and plans. No peeking.
I tried, and managed to rattle off about half a dozen Democratic policy talking points, but ultimately failed. Of course, I’m no historian or political scientist. How many did you get?
Poorly informed, I went to Democrats.org and learned that the platform committee had solicited input from people across the country through an online portal, listening sessions, and welcome testimony at conferences. I then went to Politico.com to read the draft 2024 Democratic Platform and found 80 pages of clearly stated, values-based goals, progress updates, and strategic next steps for moving forward.
Each major point also included a compare and contrast paragraph that explained the correlation between the Republican Party’s intentions and the past actions of the party’s presidential candidates. I was very impressed. It was intelligent, thoughtful, easy to understand, positive, and, naturally, I agreed with it.
I then turned to the Republican 2024 platform, recently approved by the Republican National Convention. It was a short read: just 16 pages. I’m sure the Democrats’ table of contents was longer, or at least it seemed that way, because the chapter titles and subtitles alone conveyed more information than the entire Republican document.
Two things really bothered me about the Republican platform. First, it boils down serious themes to a list mostly made up of campaign slogans and short conservative phrases, and concludes with a simplistic criticism of Biden. There’s almost no strategy, no measurable goals, just GOP rhetoric and empty wishes. It got me wondering: are Republicans really happy with their party’s guiding document?
What bothers me even more is that the 2024 Republican Platform was written behind closed doors by a small group of party members, with the review and approval of President Trump, but without any public input or insight. This is downright disrespectful. Some Republicans who attended the convention also took issue with the elite process. Some subgroups of the Republican Party are also upset by what they see as a dilution of Republican ideals, saying the party is straying from some of its foundational principles.
At least they knew the core principles of past conservatism well enough to complain about a vague version of 2024. And I believe them.
Perhaps the document was shortened to save paper and time, because everyone knows the Project 2025 plan replaced the 2024 Republican Platform, even if he publicly denied it.
There is no perfect party. There are no perfect candidates. There are no perfect policies. As voters and citizens, we need to understand both parties’ policies inside and out, because one of them will be what we’ll be walking with for the next four years or more.
I encourage you to read both party platforms, even if you don’t like every theme or idea, ignore the proper nouns, and get a sense of which plans have the most power and which ones seem best to you.
And vote according to your conscience, not your party affiliation. Vote courageously and enthusiastically, because we have a new Captain America — a smart, talented, powerful woman in the prime of her life. And we need to hoist her on our shoulders and carry her to the Oval Office in November to cast our vote.
Leslie Kouba was born and raised in Northeast Ohio and is the mother of four grown children. She enjoys writing and laughing and lives in Cleveland with her wife, three cats, and a thick-tailed gecko named Zenith. She can be reached at Leslie KoubaPD@gmail.com.
