Are rarely pretty.
This year’s Democratic primary will be no exception to the rule.
What did Tim Kaine say a few months ago about getting a referee if things started getting out of hand?
He was thinking that maybe Jim Webb, Mark Warner or a Democratic member of Congress would volunteer.
Forget about it.
Maybe the NHL playoffs will end early and they’ll get some refs accustomed to dealing with elbowing, slashing, high sticking and checking from behind. And, if it goes on much longer, we’ll also be seeing a game misconduct violation.
Don’t get me wrong.
I’m not one of those people who are always complaining that “if they would only talk about the issues.”
I like a good political fight.
I’m suspicious of political figures who can’t throw a punch now or then and I want to see how a candidate reacts to the pressure of being attacked in the campaign-. You can sometimes tell a lot about a person after their nose has been bloodied.
Maybe I’m jaded, but many of the attacks- almost all launched against Terry McAuliffe- don’t seem, at least at this point, to make for compelling political drama.
I can understand why many Democrats would embrace a candidate they know rather than one with limited ties to Virginia politics.
But should we really care that it will be difficult for McAuliffe to fulfill the letter of his pledge to create more jobs than any other governor because Virginia is much smaller than California and it will be difficult for us to outpace such a large state.
In recent days, the Moran camp is trying to turn the race into a replay of the Obama-Clinton primary by pointing to McAuliffe’s ties to Hilary and suggesting that he wanted to prevent Obama from being the president or, at the least, shouldn’t be taking credit for helping Obama get elected.
Maybe this will work, but are most Democrats really going to vote based on an understanding of party dynamics that doesn’t go beyond the Hatfields and the McCoys? Last I heard, Hilary Clinton was working for Obama.
It would be useless to call for an end to the attacks or to ask the candidates to take a pledge to be only “positive” in the last three weeks.
But maybe they can make the fight more interesting and battle over who can really defeat Bob McDonnell or who’s best prepared to stand up for ordinary Virginians in these extraordinary difficult times.
That might be a fight that would get some people cheering.
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