One Man's Credo...(very much like my own)

Sean at FiveThirty-Eight.com put his sentiments into an excellent essay prior to Hillary Clinton's speech endorsing Obama. It's fairly long but from the heart. Highly recommended reading.

...As a Democrat and Obama supporter who has been horrified by some of what I have seen this year, I want to explain how I got to where I've gotten with Hillary Clinton, and explain what I think I need to hear to ever change my mind about her as a national candidate in my party. ...

Let me be clear. I did not become a Democrat in a vacuum. Core values got me to this party. Speaking as a white man belonging to virtually every majority demographic this country has, I am a Democrat above all other reasons for the most fundamental principles and values of fairness and equality. That civil rights and equal rights have had to be fought and died for, that the notion that all people are created equal is even controversial... is mind-blowing. I knew those values by the time I was 4 years old. (The things you learn by kindergarten, indeed.)

I came to the Democratic Party at the most basic level because after 1964 and during my entire lifetime the Democrats were the party of civil rights and the Republicans were the Southern Strategy party, the one turning hatred and mistrust of Americans against each other into electoral advantage. Conservatives blocked women's rights. They backed their beloved Reagan as he went out of his way to refuse funding for AIDS research and prevention when the disease was in its incipiency when an aggressive education policy could have saved many lives of my fellow human beings. I don't need to be a gay man to know that is morally corrupt at the deepest level. Just a human being.

These values represent a moral bright line that make me a Democrat and not a Republican. They matter to me. One reason it was so easy to pour the personal energy of grueling hours and negligible pay into defeating Conrad Burns in 2006 was his racist tendencies. This value is no light thing for me.

More at the link.
Lots more.