Lucianne.com links to an American Greatness article by Karen McQuillan about “Nice Ladies Leaving the Democratic Party.” It’s not a bad read, but I’m not certain it is a particularly new phenomenon. Let me tell you a story.
My dear mother was a lifelong Roosevelt Democrat, scarred as many in her generation were by the Great Depression of the 1930s. My older father was a Southern Democrat, shaped by the lingering legacy of Reconstruction. Both were interested in politics which became a not infrequent dinner table topic.
I once asked her why she was not active in Democratic politics at the local level, since she was interested and voted the party ticket. Her answer will interest you.
She said she knew several women who were active in local Democrat politics and she didn’t like them. The women she liked, she said, were Republicans. I asked for clarification and she merely indicated that she didn’t “talk politics” with her friends, who I later concluded probably believed (incorrectly) mother had no interest in the subject.
Later in life I would replicate her experience, in reverse, as a conservative college prof concealing my political orientation while on a classically liberal campus. And, like her, I tolerated but didn’t like many of my leftist colleagues. Life is full of such ironic twists.
Conclusion: I suspect Democrat activists haven’t been “nice ladies” for some decades. If my mother’s observation was accurate, as she normally was, and her small sample was typical as I expect it was, the phenomenon isn’t at all new.
