[bryan]

Just joined, so some background and putting some beliefs/wishes out there.

I'm a mid-50's CA resident, though I lived in TX for a bit back near 2000. I worked in tech for over 20 years in various areas, engineering, marketing, business development, project management.

I'm retired now and spend my time mostly reading, listening to music, and attending to family stuff.

I've been a Democrat for most of my life. Tried to change to Independent a couple of years ago when I moved, mostly because I got tired of being called by the party for fundraising/donations, but also because I got tired of the back and forth and extreme partisanship on both sides. But my paperwork must have gotten lost as I still seem to be registered Democrat. But I decided that's OK as I do tend to lean that way and voting in primaries can be a good option to have.

I don't adopt all my positions/beliefs based on what the official/traditional positions of the party might be. I don't like to be limited that way and don't think we need to fit into predefined belief boxes based on which way we lean or what we've affiliated ourselves with.

Like I'm sure many of you are, I'm disappointed by obstructionist politics and politicians adopting party line positions simply because it favors keeping themselves and their party in power. I'd like to think I'm open minded and will call BS on faulty logic and rationalization simply in an attempt to support a desired outcome, regardless of which side it comes from.

I don't particularly like the electoral college system because I think every vote should count and a winner takes all system (for a state's electoral college votes) doesn't lend itself to all votes counting equally. While it's true that this would currently favor Democrats, I'd feel the same even if it currently favored Republicans.

In my idealistic, simplistic worldview, when it comes to contentious issues that divide us, I wish that both sides could start out with a set of principles/rules/laws they can agree upon (even if the overlap is very small), pass legislation to put those in place, and continue an ongoing process to try and enlarge that overlap (or negotiate some acceptable compromises) so we things could move forward.

The end result may be that very few are extremely happy with the result, but the majority of people are generally satisfied and can live with the tradeoffs.

Look forward to engaging in some healthy debate and conversation, though you'll find me mostly steering clear of threads where the blinders are on and there's more name-calling than real discussion.