As a young PUMA, I have to say that the Busters probably are more scary than the PUMAs were for Obama's supporters in '08.
I was 16 in 2008. I pretended the issues mattered to me because that's what I needed to project, but in reality... I really just *liked* Hillary. I believed Obama wasn't up to the job (and I still think I was right and that it took the guy far too long to grow into his responsibilities, but I digress 
). So I supported McCain. In hindsight, if I had actually been an intelligent person, I probably should have gotten over myself and realized that Hillary's values were not John McCain's values. But I couldn't, because I was young and stupid and didn't really understand what was at stake in politics.
Most of Hillary's other supporters, though, were older. They'd been through it all and knew that it just made sense to support Obama in the end. PUMAism didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, draws most of his support from young people who are more likely to not really understand why voting for Hillary is the right thing to do come November. That's what's a little bit scary. They're political n00bs who, like me in 2008, think they know everything.
Didn't you support Romney in 2012 because you were still upset over Obama owning Hillary in 2008?
I'm sure that was part of it. I let my id steer my ego, so to speak. I always thought of myself as more of a centrist, and at that time I let my instinctual anti-Obama feelings compel me to go down the Republican rabbit hole. But in so doing I did still "believe" what I believed. I could defend my reasoning on most things and I trusted my arguments. So I don't regret supporting Romney and I still think he would have been a decent president.
Even now, I have a green avatar for a reason. It's just that when a candidate is so completely inflammatory, all the good "hard" policies in the world would not be able to undo the "soft" damage that would result from the despicable rhetoric. And as someone who came to terms with some things about myself over the last two years or so, I'm definitely more keenly in tune with what the consequences of divisiveness can be. Coming out definitely complicated my political identity a lot and made me face up to the harder truths about which side I wanted to be on. Add onto that the fact that Trump's "hard" policies
aren't good
at all (he has no f-cking idea what he's talking about), and it's not surprising that I'd have few good things to say about the Republican Party in its current form.
So back to that green avatar... I'm still pretty right-wing/hawkish on foreign policy, believe in free trade, think raising taxes is a bad idea, and am pro-pipeline/drilling/fracking/etc. On the other hand, I'm mostly pro-affirmative action, hate Republicans' approach to the school system, support amnesty, am increasingly okay with Obamacare even though I think the timing of the whole thing was shi-tty, am obviously for gay rights, support sensible gun control that the GOP isn't even willing to budge on, can engage on topics around race without being a total dingus (white conservatives who advocate colour-blindedness and think they're being "progressive" are literally the worst), and am pro-union.
But when one side decides it's an electoral strategy to begin defying logic in general, the half of me that would have otherwise been inclined to support that side gets a hell of a lot less enthusiastic. I'd add that Romney has proven this cycle that he's not one of the complete and total dopes, so I take a bit of gratification from that.
Anyway, yeah. If y'all think psychology doesn't play some role in role politics (and how politics shapes identity), I don't know what to say. I will readily admit that I am partly a product of my post-facto adjustments to decisions I have chosen to make based on gut. Maybe it doesn't make me the most reliable partisan or give me a strong ideological core, but now that I know a bit more about who I am (or at least want to be), I can feel things "locking in" in a way that they weren't before. And I did not completely go over to the other side, either. The GOP just eliminated itself from contention. I hope one day there'll be a time when I can actually have a real choice.
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