Lowell - It may be just my personal prejudice, but I have been feeling since Mark Warner's Governorship that Virginia is awakening to the U.S. and the world as the beginning of something which would lead our country in the century. That feeling was multiplied with Jim Webb. One factor: I believe the Christian Right political influence is waning; I do not suggest in any way that the religious and spiritual nature of Virginians and the South is being watered down or federalized. But original Virginians in the South since the positive economic waves in the last 60 years have found the way to be both Virginians with their nature intact and federalists, or American citizens on a more general level. Southern historian Dan Carter wrote a great book on George Wallace called "The Politics of Rage" is which I felt he successfully claimed that the Wallace movement which morphed into the Falwell movement was largely in reaction to the Sixties and the perceived hippie decadence of the era. Furthermore, in generational politics, the Falwell movement was an old Southern identity protecting itself from rising generations (again, the Sixties) - and whatever was new they were against and built more strongly against it. The same thing existed here in Boston with the Irish Catholics - you can see the rage well displayed in the recent movie "The Departed" - the Quebecois party was also virtually a French-Catholic party fighting to save an identity diluting to English-speaking Canadians. The Quebecois movement all but discintegrated in the recent election; there are just not enough old people left. Likewise, this old condition is falling apart in the South; Richard Viguerie seems to have virtually dropped out. So you could well be right: Jim Webb, Wes Clark both represent traditional Southern people who have not lost their original identity and have not found the necessity to change political party or to leave the small Baptist church in the hills which built the South. It makes you a better citizen if you are able to engage both the old and the new. In that, Virginia is pathfinder for the entire South.

I remember when you couldn't buy birth controls pills in Massachusetts!!!!

If we take back the General Assembly this year VA will almost certainly go Democratic, electoral college, Senate, and congress. This year can set the foundation for that.

up at dailykos -  take a look here

Peace.

. . . more incentive for Obama to chose Mark Warner as his running mate in '08.

Warner & Webb types, maybe.

Clinton or others who are anti-gun or who have anti-gun baggage, no way.

NOVA can make a huge difference in the election, BUT... Unless a presidential candidate can pull 40 percent or better in the SW then they can't carry the state. Obama might come close but Hillary will FUCK the chances of Dems to carry the state. And IF J. Warner decides to forgo an another term and we have a strong Dem candidate to run (fingers crossed for M. Warner) then we need a sure thing such as John Edwards.

Obama would have a neutral effect on the race I believe. I don't think the GOP will fight hard to beat him here. He would beat himself elsewhere. But if Hillary is the nominee then they will pull out all stops and then the casualties will mount like crazy. I don't know if even Boucher could survive a HRC candidacy.

I would be interested to see what the polling was for the Dem candidates versus the GOP candidates. I suspect it will reflect the national polling that overwhelmingly puts Edwards far far ahead of any of the other Dem candidates in beating the GOP people.