There ain’t enough :rolleyes: in the world to cover this
Bob I am so disillusioned with this race. I honestly cannot tell the difference between Kaine and Kilgore. I watched a little of the debate Sunday night, and came out even more confused and feeling disenfranchised. I think I’m going to vote for another state’s governor this year.
Me too. This is the first time I’ve seriously considered pulling for the Libertarian, because the 2 majors are a pair of cry-babies.
We do the goobernor election thing in Jawja next year. The incumbent is a :wally. Of the two likely Democratic contenders, the one that’s a :wally is most likely to win the nomination. Jawja is destined to be goobernored by a :wally for at least four more years.
The only consolation is, from what I’ve read about the Virginia goobernor’s race, that Virginia will end up with an even bigger :wally for goobernor than Jawja.
-swampbear ( I just wanted to use :wally one more time)
I’ve never had a reason to use ;j , so here goes… ;j ;j ;j
Sorry. While I think Kaine’s remarks are being blown way out of proportion, he did make comments about Hitler and the death penalty that seemed to waffle a bit. That’s grist for the mill here, in this state that does use the death penalty a good bit.
I don’t regard this as a Godwin violation so much as a particularly heated death penalty debate.
Not that it makes this any less ugly, it’s just ugly for different reasons. But this race has been nasty for a long time now.
Kudos to you guys for paying attention, other than the fact I know their names I have not paid one wit of attention so far to this race. Unfortunately it’s one’s annointed party candidate against another, so I’m doing my best not to yawn.
Would one of the candidates be the related to Ann Kilgore, former Mayor or Hampton, VA?
Gad…I hope not!
Klaine needs to respond that Hitler certainly signed more than a few execution warrants in his day and that didn’t make him a better leader.
Has Kilgore campaigned non-negatively at all? It seems like the only ads I see of his are “Tim Kaine hates the death penalty” and “Tim Kaine wants to raise the gas tax”, and, in the most recent debate, it seemed like all he did was talk about how bad Kaine was.
I don’t see that happening, ShibbOleth, for two reasons.
First of all, it would demonstrate that Kaine has political talent. And he hasn’t really shown much of that yet, unlike people like Mark Warner, Jim Gilmore, George Allen and Doug Wilder. Those guys truly were born for this game.
Secondly, for better or worse, we have the death penalty in this state and people want it to be used a good bit. Here’s a comment in the linked article that should illustrate this:
Paul Ebert has sent more people to death row than any other commonwealth’s attorney in Virginia, and he is, indeed, an elected Democrat. I live in his county, and I honestly have no reservations about voting for the man, especially as any Republican who runs here would have similar views on crime issues.
That’s why I’m planning to vote for Kaine (and why I assume he’ll lose) - because Kilgore has based his entire campaign on building up a misrepresentation of Kaine in the voters’ minds. That, and his complete inability to answer any question asked of him in the debate a while back.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. It seems that both of these guys are on the same side of each issue, and so are reduced to lobbing mud at each other to distinguish themselves from the other. I think it’s a shame that the most quoted group in both of these campaign ads is AdWatch.
The Independent candidate, Potts, is different from these two guys, but as of the last poll I saw, is so far back as to not have a chance (he’s pretty much Ross Perot in this election, for those out of the state and need a scorecard.) And he was not allowed to take part of the debate Sunday, sued to be allowed in, and lost that suit.
Obviously, Kaine and Kilgore are different people, with different views, but for the life of me I can’t keep them straight. And I would hate to vote just along party lines in this election (which is how I treat every election, looking for a candidate I can feel good about supporting, not just use party affiliation.)
Crap. I meant to quote JerH, not Mr. Moto.
I’m biased, but I can’t see how people could confuse Kaine and Kilgore, or think that it’s a pox on all their houses situation. Kaine’s position isn’t particularly politically savvy, but it’s honest: instead of having a change of heart on the DP, he’s been honest from the start about his beliefs and the fact that he doesn’t think he’s above the law: that being elected Governor is not permission to start imposing his beliefs on Virginia via an abuse of clemency and so forth.
The Kilgore attack is pure, unabashed slime in so many ways. It tries to make a brief consult with a partner on a DP appeal into Kaine actively running out trying to free a murderer. It tries to turn measured criticism of the way the DP is administered into the idea that criminals shouldn’t pay for their crimes. And worst of all, it very knowingly does drag in Hitler, with all the explosive connotations that involves. It destroys any chance that there can be a reasonable debate on the DP. And for that, it really does need to be condemned. I hope Kilgore pays a price for going overboard.
As for differences: what could be a bigger difference than the budget agreement? Either you think that it was necessary (Kaine/Warner), or you don’t (Kilgore), but either way it’s a pretty major difference, and in terms of what state government is really all about, the budget may not be the sexy issue, but it’s the only one that actually matters. Again, biased here, but I don’t see how someone can possibly both be against the tax increases AND try to attack their opponent for not being willing to spend enough on transportation.
Having met him several times, I really like Kaine. He’s the sort of candidate that regularly leaves his staffers behind to talk to voters: he buys his own newspapers and coffee instead of having them brought to him. He, and this campaign, didn’t deserve the sort of nastiness that you get when you hire the Swift Boat/Black Hands and the “Dogs (i.e. Indians) support Daschle” crew to do your ads and mail pieces. It’s not like Kaine’s people haven’t gone negative (though he spent most of the summer running positive spots even after being attacked, and even now still runs mostly response-type ads and Warner’s endorsements), but from nasty cartoons to Hitler, Kilgore has really plumbed the depths of political advertising.
I happen to attend his people’s GOTV meetings too, and I have to say: having met his team, I really don’t want them to win just so that these despicable people don’t feel validated for what they do. Meetings like “how can we suppress the black vote this year?” and “Our polling shows that white males passionately hate Mexicans: immigration is gold as a theme for motivating them to turn out for us!” aren’t even in the same realm of the sorts of topics that I’ve ever seen from the Democrats, who instead spend their time desperately trying to convince nutty activists to actually sit down and do some normal, useful work like contacting voters.
I’m not saying Republicans in general are like that, but I think this is what happens when a party is in power: it’s best people get moved up the chain to get positions in Washington and elsewhere, and the people left to run campaigns are the less competant, more crazy types.