Miller v. Webb
378 words.
In the Virginia Democratic primaries coming up on June 13, it’s Harris Miller vs. Jim Webb. One of those two will go on to challenge George Allen for VA Senate in November. (It’s sort of like American Idol, except it isn’t stupid.)
This particular primary is interesting to me because, since the ultimate goal for Democrats is to defeat George Allen, it follows that they would want to vote for a candidate that will have the best chance to beat him. So in the primaries, you’re not voting for the best man for the Senate job, you’re voting for the best man to beat Allen in the Senate race. You might actually end up knowingly voting for someone who would stink at the Senate job. It’s sort of a paradox.
So who has a better chance to beat Allen?
I kind of like Harris Miller myself; he seems much smarter than Webb (no doubt because of his IT background :). He has a clear, detailed agenda on his web site. I don’t exactly agree with all of it, but it’s better than Jim Webb’s agenda, which thus far is non-existent. I haven’t heard Miller speak, though. And in this talking-point/sound-bite era, having an intelligent, detailed agenda might just be a liability. (That was one of Kerry’s problems; he made the mistake of treating Americans like intelligent adults, and didn’t boil everything down into four-word sound-bites.)
It looks like people are lining up in support of Jim Webb though — certainly the Virginia blogosphere is. I think this is based soley on charisma and his hugely hyped “fighting war hero” underdog status. It certainly can’t be his stance on the issues, since there is nothing on his web site about what he would actually do in the Senate. There’s a lot on the 6 gritty war novels he wrote, though, and an alarming number of pictures of him in Vietnam with his shirt off.
For me, it’s hard to get excited about voting for someone who doesn’t have a platform figured out a month before the primaries, even if everyone says he would have a better chance to beat Allen.
P.S. I found this nifty www.vote-smart.org site which lets you lookup everything a senator has done in minute detail.
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