The previous post got me to thinking about politics in my own life.  What I articulate below I have said before in various ways.  I doubt it will surprise anyone who knows me.

In my early times I had no particular interest in politics.  Dwight Eisenhower was President in my high school and college years, and I liked Ike (as everyone did).  He could have run as Republican or Democrat and won under either label.  He’s my first memorable President.

I was too young to vote for Kennedy or Nixon – voting age was 21 in 1960 and I was 20.  My guess is that I would have voted Kennedy.  I saw Nelson Rockefeller in person in Valley City in 1961 and he was impressive.  He was vying for the Republican nomination at the time.

The rest of the 60s were a blur for me – life got in the way of politics, so I wasn’t an activist politically.

Since the late 60s I’ve been pretty comfortably Democrat – a party which has the strength and the weakness that comes from diverse people and opinions.  Truly a “big tent”.    In 2020 I described Democrats s the party of “We”; what remained of the Republican Party as the party of “Me”.  You’ll find this defined in blog posts about August 1 2020.

Of course, labels are tricky.

The Republicans were founded as the party of Lincoln, and the segregationist south was Democrat for many years.

There have always been offshoot parties, but they are very small.  In my memory, the only declared Independents who did pretty well in national elections were George Wallace, H. Ross Perot and John Anderson.

Today, most people declare themselves to be Independent, but invariably the only parties that get many votes are either Republican or Democrat.

Numerous times I used this graphic to describe what I believe is the body politic in America: I see the “Hard Left” and the “Hard Right” as essentially identical twins – passionate, fairly small and unruly minorities.  Most Americans simply want the country to work, and in the end vote for who they think is the most reasonable choice.  I think the Tuesday election in Wisconsin reflected this reasonableness.

Just my opinion.

POSTNOTE: “Politics” and “Politicians” are things people love to hate.  In a democracy, we ARE politics and politicians, whatever we do, or don’t do, or try to evade responsibility for.  POLITICS is US.

Having said that, in recent times I’ve become aware of having a closer call than most to the institution called Politics.

Very Briefly: I didn’t expect Gov. Tim Walz to get the nod for vice-president nominee last summer.  He did.  I only met him in person one time, at a fund raiser in the summer of 2006, when he was doing his first run for public office.  (I recall him as a bit green then, but what else would you expect in a rookie.). He makes this small town teacher’s kid proud, cuz that’s what he is proud of himself.

June 23, 2011, I went to a local DFL (Democrat) picnic, and one of the speakers was the new chairman of the Minnesota DFL, Ken Martin.  Martin recently became the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  I know he’ll do a good job in an always impossible task.  Here’s a photo I took of him at the 2011 meeting.

When Martin left Minnesota his position was open, and on February 24, 2025, I was at a local meeting where a candidate for the vacancy met with us.  Richard Carlbom recently became the new chair of the Minnesota DFL.  Here’s his photo:

Richard was a young Mayor shortly after college graduation, won reelection, went to work on the first campaign for then school-teacher Tim Walz near 20 years ago and the rest is history.

Long and short, I’m privileged to have seen the real humans who now are in the news.  They are more than equal to the challenges they have to face.