Politically, I’m most definitely an independent. Invariably, this leads to healthy disagreements with people from both sides of the political spectrum. Generally, I tend to be more socially liberal, and more fiscally conservative. From Republicans, especially the tow the party line sort that I tend to be exposed to these days, I tend to get a liberal label, and they seem to use this label in a very mean spirited manner, although I think I’m much closer to centrist Republicans than I am to most Democrats. I tend to differ from Democrats in terms of practical matters, at least in my viewpoint. I find some of their stands to be just silly. I’ve been studying up a little on possible candidates in 2004 from the Democrats, especially since Dori and Tom have been covering it once in a while. This has led me to believe that the person who has announced for 2004 that is the most similar to my viewpoints thus far is Howard Dean. This leads to somewhat of a problem for me, he really doesn’t have the fund raising or organizational support that is necessary to win a nomination. I find this especially troubling because I was the first person to be critical of people throwing their support behind non-practical candidate Ralph Nader in 2000. I wish that Bush’s policies resembled those under which he campaigned in 2000, but they don’t and they seem to be going further right as time goes on. We need campaign finance reform in a big way so that people like Howard Dean have a practical chance of winning.