Well, GG, it's not that I'm so terribly loyal to the Democrat party ~ it's just that, in this era, at the Federal level, I definitely intend to vote against any and every Republican.

I've been a regisered voter without party affililation for many years, and have voted for members of both parties, especially on the local level. I've been living in Louisiana for years, dating back to the time when all the Southern states had, in practice, a one-party system, and that one party (the Dems) included the economic ruling class, people who would normally have been Republicans in other areas of the country. For a while there, when the tide began to turn, the most attractive "reform" candididate in many local and statewide races was a Republican. But those days are long gone by now.

The national GOP these days, as I see it, is owned by multinational corporations who have no allegiance to the US or to American citizens. They manage to win the votes of huge numbers of innocent salt-of-the-earth people by cynically appealing to "values" that they have no real intention of actually implementing, and no realistic prospects of doing so.

I realize that not everyone can get enthused about holding one's nose while voting for the lesser of two evils, but I think it's quite important to do so.