Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Tom Periello catches a break?

Virgil Goode--i.e. the embarrassing jackass who raised hell about Keith Ellison being sworn in on the Qur'an--is evidently pondering a third-party challenge to the progressive Democrat who unseated him, Tom Perriello.

Perriello is an interesting case. He's quite progressive on most major issues--energy and health care come to mind--but he's pro-life and presumably anti-gun control, etc. He is nevertheless a favorite among the left netroots because of his progressive convictions, and considering he's representing a district that elected a Virgil Goode to Congress, nobody figured he'd be around for very long. Except that he's proven to be a hard worker who takes hard votes and then works to get his constituents to understand his thinking. In the age of Dick Morris and Drudge, it seems like a sort of old-fashioned, nostalgic approach to politics that the cynics would scoff at. But it's working! All the polls of this race show it to be close. And even if Perriello has a ceiling of 45% or so, two conservative opponents splitting the anti-Perriello vote could help the guy squeak through a tough re-election fight.

And I really hope he does. Perriello is the sort of young, committed politician who threatens to give Democrats a good name. I suspect he'll become a big rising star in the party if he wins another term.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.