>It takes spectacular incompetence to lose Michigan and Pennsylvania with numbers like that
One of us is a little fuzzy on the difference between state delegates to the DNC and state electors in a presidential election. Your boy Obama and Who? connived to disqualify MI and FL primary results in '08. Wouldn't it be comical if that episode informed --without aid of foreign agents-- Michiganders' preference for "spectacular incompetence". So it is. Trump won the MI popular vote by 10,704 and 16 electors in 2016, as is the custom.

>who ARE the republicans and Democrats (or Independents)...
The uniparty is already floating favored POTUS candidates. Why don't you know them? For example, Sen. Flake, one of the least distinguished in the wave of incumbents retreating from RNC #NeverTrump'16 to temporary obscurity, while Democrats besmirch the mid-term congressional recycle derby. What is Mr Flake's hook in I, D, R voters, Frank?

Independent a/k/a unaffiliated registered voters is NOT a partisan organization or incorporated enterprise. As such independent voters as a group do not raise capital or nominate candidates and are not regulated as such by the FEC and states' election boards. But individual independent voters are subject to FEC regulation limiting "donor" gifts to any party campaign. Further, independent voters are permitted only to vote for partisan candidates in open primary and general elections. Independent voters don't "put up" candidates. They make or break them.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.