The independents are banding together. That is, 13 independent candidates who feel they don’t fit in the Republican Party in the age of Donald Trump are joining forces with a few Democrats who are planning runs for governor and Senate in 2018. The plan is to create shared infrastructure and funding for a slate of campaigns around the country, in the hopes of making this more than the latest go-nowhere whining about how awful the two-party system is.But with an historically unpopular Republican president in the White House and a Democratic Party in epic disarray, they think this is actually their moment.On Friday, leaning hard into the symbolism of declaring their independence, the group—put together by the Centrist Project, founded by Charles Wheelan, an academic at Dartmouth—will meet at the Union League in downtown Philadelphia for a weekend-long mini-convention.