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Student Official for College Democrats Announces He’s Leaving the Party

Student Official for College Democrats Announces He’s Leaving the Party

“Now I am considering becoming a Republican.”

Michael J. Hout is a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and he’s been very active in the College Democrats. Until now.

He writes of his recent defection at The Hill:

Why I’m leaving the Democratic Party

Today, just before the next president is to be inaugurated, I have chosen to leave the Democratic Party.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a loyal Democrat. Growing up in a Catholic, Massachusetts family, I sometimes ask myself if I even had a choice to begin with — one can only read so many Kennedy biographies before coming to the realization that they tended to associate with a particular party.

But I digress. Now I am considering becoming a Republican.

My concerns that led me to this point are many, but they can essentially be divided into three larger qualms.

Identity politics

First is the increasing reliance of the party on identity politics, and the circumvention of earnest debate that results from this strategy. Not only is this brand of politics untenable — and unattractive to an overwhelming number of Americans — it stifles debate in that it simplifies and seeks to accuse in a way that is alienating as well as condescending and undeniably exclusive.

Not since the days of McCarthyism has the demand to conform been greater — and that should concern all Americans.

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Comments

Your block quote repeats the first three paragraphs of the article twice. I clicked through, and this mistake is not in the original.

McCarthyism was about “conforming”? Not outside of the Bizarro universe, it wasn’t.

What a weirdo. This guy should stay a Democrat.

He’s bound for further disappointment, there isn’t a good political party in his country.

Zachary is right. He’ll get to (l)ibertarianism eventually.