I didn’t know my Dad - he moved out early. And my mom’s politics were kind of hardscrabble. She didn’t think about Democrats or Republicans. She thought about who made sense. I’ve been both in my life.

Miller links his political identity to upbringing rather than party loyalty. The absence of his father and his mother’s “hardscrabble” pragmatism suggest a worldview shaped by economic and everyday realities, where politics is judged by practical sense instead of labels. By saying he has “been both,” he frames his shifts in affiliation as consistent with that inherited approach: evaluating ideas case by case and moving across partisan lines when they no longer “make sense.” The quote also functions as a self-justification against accusations of ideological inconsistency, presenting flexibility as authenticity and lived experience rather than opportunism.