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Monday, March 28, 2005

2005 Virginia Governor, Tim Kaine?

Posted by Bob Brigham

I had been planning on closely following Virginia's gubernatorial race with Democrat Tim Kaine. But that was before I found out Kaine is a self-hating Democrat.

Hopefully, Kaine be enough of a leader to fire whoever is giving this awful advice. Here is his website, somebody drop me an email if Kaine decides to grow up and stop triangulating.

Posted at 11:57 AM in 2005 Elections, Virginia | Technorati

Comments

How's the bandwagon? I'm sick and tired of a number of things:

1. Blue-state Democrats who have no idea how much their arrogant secularism is hurting red state Democrats.

2. Bloggers who hop on the Stalinesque loyalty-or-purge bandwagon and trash anyone who criticizes the party.

3. Hypocrites who criticize fellow Democrats for criticizing fellow Democrats. If you're so sure that orthodoxy is going to get us back into power in Washington, maybe you ought to practice what you preach and shut the $%#@ up.

4. Bloggers who pompously pontificate on a race they obviously haven't been following in a state whose politics they obviously don't understand. As I commented on MyDD, Virginia is not a swing state, and the California fantasy that the route to the White House lies on the path of liberalism are sticking their knives in the backs of Southern Democrats who are uniting behind candidates who actually have a snowball's chance in hell of winning a race here.

Go back to the books and educate yourself on Virginia politics. Take a look at Jerry Kilgore, and see if you really want to be taking shots at a Democrat just so you can have your 15 minutes of fame in the blogosphere's latest episode of "I'm a more loyal Democrat than you are" game.

Posted by: redsoxkangaroo at March 28, 2005 03:22 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I think anyone who is interested in this issue would do well to read the entire mydd diary linked by Bob. There are some excellent points there made by both sides.

Posted by: Steve M at March 28, 2005 03:23 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Redsoxkangaroo has quite a litany of complaints. However, no one around here - and certainly not Chris Bowers at MyDD - is guilty of any of those things.

Side-note: Virginia was in the top ten "least red red states" in 2004 (coming in at 8th) according to the partisan index.

Posted by: DavidNYC at March 28, 2005 09:09 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Bowers attacked Kaine, calling him "power hungry" because he criticized John Kerry. Then Bob decided he was right, added no original thought, pronouced Kaine "self-hating", and linked the post.

Calling someone a "self-hating Democrat" and advising them to "grow up" is absolutely playing the "I'm more of a Democrat than you" game, and it's a game played daily on many blogs, though not necessarily this one - today may well be an exception for the Swing State Project. I hope so.

Bowers had the good sense to retract his invective - and so should Swing State.

Kaine was asked a question in a liberal journal about how he thought the party could do better in red states, and he answered honestly. His experience, and that of many others shows that he, a statewide elected official in a red state, knows more about how to win here than John Kerry does. If no one from the south is honest with John Kerry, he'll never learn why he lost - are we supposed to patronize him by telling him he got it right?

Posted by: redsoxkangaroo at March 28, 2005 11:33 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Calling someone a "self-hating Democrat" and advising them to "grow up" is absolutely playing the "I'm more of a Democrat than you" game....

By accusing certain bloggers of playing a "game," you are presuming to know their motivations for posting what they post. But you have no evidence of what Bob's motivations might be - you are only speculating that Bob wrote what he did because he wants to try to "out-Democrat" Tim Kaine.

I don't consider such mind-reading about other people's motives to really be a legitimate or interesting part of political discourse. If you want to criticize Bob for what he said, go right ahead. Hell, that's what blogs are for. But if you want to criticize Bob for why he said it, then you'll need something beyond mere speculation.

Until such evidence is produced, I am going to give activist Democratic bloggers I respect (note: not merely bloggers I agree with, but bloggers I respect) the benefit of the doubt and assume they express the opinions they do because they believe that doing so will strengthen us as a party or enahnce our political knowledge.

That's my intention behind just about everything political I write, and again I say, until proven otherwise, I'm going to assume that that's what motivates others as well - and not base or misguided desires (such as wanting to "out-Democrat" someone else).

I am happy to debate any post or comment on its merits. Blogging is a trial by fire - I feel the flames lapping at my feet every weekend over at DKos. But I just won't get into a mind-reading meta-debate about blogger motivations. I don't think it's appropriate, and I don't think it gets us anywhere.

Posted by: DavidNYC at March 29, 2005 01:38 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

The comments have given me enough reason to pay more attention to the race, if for no other reason than to expose the flawed thinking behind triangulation.

Posted by: Bob Brigham at March 29, 2005 01:52 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I think when one Democrat tells another to "grow up", he's implying that that Democrat needs to develop further - i.e. that he's less of a Democrat than he should be. And that, in turn, implies that the person making the accusation thinks himself "mature" enough as a Democrat to make the judgement. Ergo, "I am a better/more devoloped/superior Democrat."

I respect that you disagree about Bob's intentions, but they seem pretty clear to me, especially in light of the fact that it was a totally "me too" post, with no original addition to the original MyDD post and no attempt to put the race in context. Then I see Bob's comment above, in which he says he's going to pay more attention to the race. It would have been more responsible of him to do so before attacking a Democratic candidate for Governor of a red state.

I also think there is a real problem in the Dem blogosphere right now with people wanting to out-Dem other Dems. However legitemate criticism of Joe Lieberman's votes may be, it's led to a disturbingly gleeful feeding frenzy on some blogs where people seem to want to outdo eachother in denouncing him. Chuck Schumber, Bob Casey, and others are about to get thrown into that fire.

In Virginia, we've been enjoying watching Republicans get into dogfights over who is the "real" Republican and whose values are really just Dem values in disguise, etc. It's hurting VA Republicans and I'd hate to see Dem bloggers take the party down the same road.

We need to grow the party to create a majority, not get into an ideological purity battle like VA Republicans have.

--------------------------

As an aside, I'd like to hear more about triangulation.

Posted by: redsoxkangaroo at March 29, 2005 12:43 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I respect that you disagree about Bob's intentions

My disagreement is a lot more fundamental than that. I believe it is inappropriate to even be discussing someone's intentions (in most cases, this one included). You have plenty of fodder on the merits - there is no need to engage in mind-reading about a person's intentions.

Moreover, if you are accusing someone of having base intentions (as indeed you did), such accusations cannot be made without evidence. Speculation about what a person thinks does not qualify. Just because a person's intentions "seem clear" to you does not mean you have adduced evidence of them.

Let me put it a lot more simply: Attacks on the merits of what some writes are, of course, fair game around here. But personal attacks (which include speculation about a person's motives, and evidence-less conclusions that they are base) are not.

I appreciate your participation here - you are obviously a thoughtful commenter. But I'd really like to keep the discussion around these parts confined to the merits of each post and comment.

Posted by: DavidNYC at March 29, 2005 02:43 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

If redsox's comments were inappropriate, then I don't see how the original comment that Kaine is a "self-hating Democrat" can be any more appropriate. And considering that redsox's entire point was to take issue with that attack...

Posted by: Steve M at March 29, 2005 06:09 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Well now that redsoxkangaroo has convinced me to focus on the campaign we'll have plenty of time, in plenty of posts, to discuss in-depth. Thanks redsoxkangaroo.

Posted by: Bob Brigham at March 29, 2005 06:55 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I accept David's criticism and apologize to Bob for making assumptions about his intentions.

Posted by: redsoxkangaroo at March 30, 2005 02:44 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I also apologize to you, Bob for the tone of my first comment... I get pretty upset when I hear other Dems criticizing the only thing between Virginia and four years of George Allen's death-penalty obsessed protege Jerry Kilgore. It is, however, your right to criticize and I should have focussed on the specifics with which I disagreed, rather than letting my emotions get the better of me.

Posted by: redsoxkangaroo at March 30, 2005 02:50 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment