I am not whatever “Independent” means on a form that was designed to make that choice feel like surrender.
I grew up with a Republican Party that meant something specific, a set of principles, a temperament, a way of approaching governance that I could argue with or agree with but at least recognize. That party is gone. What carries the label today bears no resemblance to what the label used to mean. Calling yourself a Republican in 2026 means something that would have been unrecognizable, and I think deeply alarming, to most of the people who built that party.
So I am not that either.
What I am is a moderate. A person who believes in making decisions carefully, in recognizing complexity, in not burning the house down because you’re angry at the neighbors. A person who wants others to make their own informed choices rather than be handed a script.
There is no checkbox for that.
There is no party infrastructure, no primary, no institutional home for the person who looks at both options and says, honestly, clearly, without drama, neither of these fits.
The labels don’t fit anymore. And the system was not built for the moment when the labels stop fitting.
I am 79 years old. I have been voting since 1968. And this is the first time I have felt genuinely politically homeless.
But here is the thing about being lost, recognizing it is not the end. It is actually the beginning. Before you can define where you are going, you have to be honest about where you are. That is what this is. The first step in figuring out what a political identity looks like when the old labels have stopped telling the truth.
This is the beginning of that conversation. Not answers. Just honest questions from someone who has been paying attention for a long time and is tired of being handed choices that don’t fit.
