And the Democrats, for the past fifteen years, have been like, "You're the liberal!" "No, you're the liberal!"

Me: No, I'm serious. I like that our candidates are all "I'm the conservative!" "No, I'm the conservative!" "I'm more conservative than he is!"

That depends on the issue, actually. What bothers me about this sort of argument is that a guy like George W. says, "I'm a conservative!" and then he turns around and creates big government and runs roughshod over almost every conservative stance he said he had. Ugh.

Now, now, Dennis Kucinich is upfront and open about claiming that he's the liberal.

And I think his 3% bears out the success of this strategy.

BTW! I was misinformed about what Barry said: Change this country! That's what we need. We have too many children in poverty in this country and everybody should be ashamed, but don't tell me it doesn't have a little to do with the fact that we got too many daddies not acting like daddies. Don’t think that fatherhood ends at conception. I know something about that because my father wasn't around when I was young and I struggled.

Back in college, when I wanted to grow up to do what you're doing now, I was *such* a liberal. Of course, it was much easier then: in the academic world I didn't have to think too much to be a liberal since there weren't too many people interested in disagreeing with me and, therefore, challenging my opinions.

When I wound up becoming a lawyer (against my will, but that's another story) I became a Republican... for many of the same reasons. Politics by osmosis, I guess you could call it.

Now I'm still a Republican - who happens to be pro-choice, pro-Gay marriage rights and increasingly against the way we're handling the war.

So my weird conversations go like this:

Q: Remember when we used to laugh at Democrats?
A: Shhhh. We still don't want them to figure out they were occasionally right!