not totally sure how i developed politically, but i remember first starting to pay attention in 1992. i think when it comes to choosing candidates, i'm more attracted to people who seem to genuinely think and ponder and weigh the issues. one of the reasons why i find Bush so repulsive is that he's essentially the antithesis of everything i'd look for in a leader -- he's crass and quick and lazy and anti-intellectual. of course politics isn't an intellectual excercise -- it's about getting people to do what you want -- but the demonstration of a strong intellectual grasp of both sides of an issue strongly attracts me to a candidate, on the right or the left.
as it stands now, there's no possible way i could ever vote for a Republican for president. that could change, but the party has so aligned itself with rabidly anti-intellectual forces -- the Religious Right, mostly -- and forces that have stated that they are excited about my potential social death, that it doesn't matter how liberal Giuliani might be on social issues. the new influx of religion -- which in this country is Christianity -- into politics terrifies me to a great extent, because it is anti-intellectual, concerned with emotion and sentimentalism rather than logic and reason.
on a personal level, growing up, the biggest issues for me were the environment and a general sense that some things were deeply "unfair" to certain people. i think you see it replicated in every junior high school across the world. some kids are born into a life of ease and get everything they'd ever want and use that to taunt those less fortunate, and they walk around thinking they deserve it. the phrase, "so many people born on third base go through life thinking they hit a triple" was always very relevant to me. even though i was relatively quite fortunate in this regard, i always felt a kinship with those who seemed to be tortured by "the system," as it were. those who were bullied, who were ridiculed for having the wrong clothes, who had different interests, who were fat, had glasses, etc. i guess i always knew that, deep down, i was different, and i could be abused for my difference, though at the age of 12/13 it was far less obvious. so the kinship was also an expression of self-defense.
and in politics, while i can't quite say that the Democrats actually care about the little guy, i think i can definitively say that the Republicans actually don't care about the little guy. the sense of entitlement and assumed superiority -- that gets whitewashed with, "i deserve it/that's how capitalism works/i have no responsibility to the society that has given me everything" -- has always driven me crazy, and it seems to have come to a head with our current president. has anyone, ever, been given so much and been asked so little of in return?
i suppose the overriding narrative is having grown up with a strong sense of obligation. and the Republicans seem to feel that they have no obligation to anyone but themselves.
so i'm less of a Democrat and more of an anti-Republican, with a splash of social libertarianism thrown in.