(no subject)

[fallingangels.livejournal.com]

Comments

[chrisfrap.livejournal.com]

McCain makes a good Yoda

My pick is Mark Warner!

[psych0squirrel.livejournal.com]

My favorite potential '08 nominees is Mark Warner: the Democratic Governor of Virginia. For some reference, to get a Northern Virginia Democrat into the Governors Mansion in Richmond, in the midst of an intensifying state cold war (with itself), had to have taken a miracle. This state hasn't voted Democrat for president in 40 years, and in '04 it was a "weak victory." The majority of the state is religiously conservative and poor (the politicians that win offices in the south are fanatical), and the northern regions around Washington DC tend towards upper middle class and upper class libertarianism (and are particularly well known for their cynical calculation). While this might look like an unholy conservative alliance, the two regions in the state loath each other. The North holds the money and the South holds the power over legislation.

To give you an idea of our politics, how schizophrenic would New York City be if there was no Cultural Identity and you forced it into a governing body with Mississippi!? Place it just outside the capital of the entire country, where only 40% of the people who work, live. The rest commute in from Virginia and Maryland and then place the border with Virginia about 3 miles from the white house in a straight line, the Virginia side is closer to the seat of government. This area holds a lot more power then people realize and it is fundamentally at war with the state of Virginia, it also takes time out of its busy schedule to snipe over the border at DC and Maryland. If this part of the region came into line with the other members of the DC metropolitian area they could very well be a force to reckon with, and North VA is reluctantly going in that direction. Although the military bases repositioning further into the exurbs (which are more neo-conservative, and at this point hold quite a few bubble gamblers) could upset this very fragile balance as it is upsetting the economy of the most liberal and stable sections of the area and rewarding the more cynical edges.

As a politician that has entered this very darwinian environment, Mark Warner is way savvy. He had 2 different things that should have killed his campaign before he started and that's before he even had a chance to bully the DC Suburbs into accepting tax increases which they hate! This place has a pretty established reputation as one of the neo-conservative strongholds (and where quite a few of their think tanks are located), yet the area still voted reluctantly for Kerry. Warner might be a moderate, but he is very progressive and intelligent. He found the middle ground, sat in it and then readjusted it's center of gravity. I think the anti-intellectual backlash is starting to produce really quite a counter backlash and it's gaining a lot of momentum. I'm kind of excited about who we could have to choose from, I hope they don't all cancel each other out. I really think that Warner could revitalize the Democratic Party if he was elected, he's gained office by a coalition of the most cynical suburban power-voters in the country, while not threatening the NRA. I really think he could shift politics in a whole new direction. While he definately has mad skills, I should look up more of his platforms. What he has done for Virginia has been all very appropriate, what he would desire for the country I still have to find out: 2008 is still a few years off.

A Clarification

[psych0squirrel.livejournal.com]

Why i said Northern Virginia is libertarian, rather then neo-conservative is that it has been changing pretty rapidly in the last 5 years. The region is accellerating in the process of becoming a city, where people move in and don't move out: they are shifting towards neo-liberalism in some of the older most developed parts. It has a very strange political climate, and it is almost entirely schizophrenic. I like it, it's the closest thing I've seen towards a 21th century version of America in the 1800's. It's a much better representation of capitalism then most parts of the country, although NY is pretty simular in a lot of ways, which is why I compared them. The area is still only about 30 years old. Its growth rate started really accellerating in the 1980's. We had very very cocky county planners.

PS Sorry's, I find the organization of chaos to be really facinating. I still think that it takes a really smart politician to mold aggressive chaos into something coherant.

[kmilligan.livejournal.com]

Interesting, but I'm not sure what the constitution has to do with this metaphor.

[kmilligan.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but the constitution doesn't really have anything to do with filibusters.