I am an Independent; an economic conservative and a social liberal. There is no party that I fit into, (although civil liberty libertarians come close) and even if there were, my parents taught me to think for myself, to pledge allegiance to no party, to pay attention to the individuals and to vote accordingly.
That being said,
Andrew Sullivan, who is not a U.S. citizen and is actually a conservative, kind of summed up my feelings well enough that I'll borrow his words:
"As someone once said, in the unlikely story of America, there is never anything false about hope. Obama, moreover, seems to bring out the best in people, and the calmest, and the sanest. He seems to me to have a blend of Midwestern good sense, an intuitive understanding of the developing world that is as much our future now as theirs', an analyst's mind and a poet's tongue. He is human. He is flawed. He will make mistakes. His passivity and ambiguity are sometimes weaknesses as well as strengths.
But there is something about his rise that is also supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.
And the world needs that America now as much as it ever has. Can we start that healing, that rebirth, tomorrow?
Yes. We. Can."
Whatever your political affiliations, if you're an American citizen, exercise your right to vote tomorrow.