I was talking with someone yesterday about local politics when the topic of one of our legislators at the federal level came up. As it turns out, person I was talking with (who shares my political affiliation) absolutely cannot stand this legislator (who is also of the same political affiliation).
I was not terribly surprised, as it goes back to something this legislator said early in their political career. A lot of people were upset about it and much political hay has been made out of it in the years immediately following the kerfuffle.
The thing the politician said was dumb and kind of offensive. For me personally, I am willing to cut them a bit of slack; it seemed like it was probably the result of a novice politician + bad political advice. They have apologized, there has never been a repeat of anything like it in their subsequent political career, and they have done great work ever since.
However, this person I was talking with was still hopping mad about it and went into great detail as to why.
That’s fine. I disagree, but this person is welcome to their opinion and I didn’t need to try convince them otherwise. However, it was a reminder to me that—no matter how much political analysts and pundits want to talk about policy preferences—politics, political affiliations, and whether or not vote for a candidate are very personal and idiosyncratic decisions for a lot of people.