*applause* Good job debunking the lies.

To answer the question in the title.  The correct answer is C: Both Bonkers and a Liar.

But it is true that Leslie Byrne called for a moratorium on the death penatly, brags about her F rating from the NRA, and is for changing current Virginia law to allow gay marriage. If that doesn't scream liberal I don't know what does.

I am not saying being a liberal is a bad thing but if you are a liberal like she said she was in the primary then by God stand by it in the General Election.

I am with Ben on this!  C-both A & B.

i hate northern virginia-

i'm from Norfolk, Va and support RaisingKaine.  I'm not rich. i support gays, my brother is gay, he's not a child molester, he doesn't have AIDs. I support taxes over deficits. i HAVE survived in Shenandoah on hundreds of miles of the Appalachian trail. I have been mugged and survived by talking my way out of it. Have you been mugged? I have never been raped, have you? Am i a tough guy? Yes and no. I have a black belt in Aikido. Would my Aikido beat a gun? No way. Would your gun beat a thermonuclear warhead? No way. Guns and warheads are one solution, but i don't feel they are the only solution to all problems. I think we should keep trying. I lived in Northern Virginia growing up because my parents lived there. I'm guessing they didn't move there because they got beat up. My father was a Navy SEAL for 21 years. Are you calling Navy SEALS pansies?

I don't hate anyone not liberal. In fact I'm very open minded to conservative fiscal ideas. I personally agree with the general idea of cutting expenses. But unfortunately today's Republicans aren't even following their own conservative mantra. I think conservative social ideas are disasterous to our country, but i'm still open minded to them.

If you're just trying to get a rise out of someone, good luck with that. I personally just think posts like yours are childish, but that is no reason not to answer your questions.

I see that Pastor John has returned!!  Ha ha.

Y'all liberal yuppy rich snobs in Northern Virginia are all spineless gutless cowards who dont get out much.  Having a lot of money doesn't make you superior to anyone.  You support gays (many of whom are child molesters) and illegal immigrants who should be sent back to their third world cesspools right away.  Hopefully most of you gays will die of AIDS soon.  Why do you always drive expensive flashy cars but never pick up trucks? If you support high taxes why not live in Washington DC instead of gay Alexandria and Arlington? None of you queers could surive in the Shenandoah or even in the liberal northeast.  Ever been to West Baltimore North Philly or Camden? Those are high crime areas and the criminals there dont care about your politics but would mug rape and kill you anyway as you try in vain to convince them that y'all are on the same side.  You gay Northern Virginia residents hate anyone who isnt a liberal and anyone who lives in a rural area.  I'm from a small town in the Shenandoah and wouldn't have it any other way.  Why are you pansys so anti gun? Criminals get their guns illegally off the street you morons.  You try to act all tough and be anti gun at the same time.  Tough guys are not anti guns. You live in northern virginia cause you cowards are afraid to live in area that has crime.  I bet none of y'all have ever set foot in Southeast DC.  There is more to the world then a nobody no identity no atmosphere place like yuppy northern virginia.  Did y'all pansys get beat up and robbed in the northeast and move to northern virginia cause you couldnt stick it out cowards? Some day soon you luck is gonna end.  Someone is gonna rob you and your fancy cars will get totaled.  Burn in hell you cowardly rich snobby Northern Virginia queers!!!!!!!!!

You're entitled to your views, and for the sake of the state, I hope that your approach of selling Kaine as a better Republican than the Republicans works. The problem with your "big tent" theory is that conservatives then get two parties to play with, and eventually the ideas you wanted to persuade them to accept disappear.

As far as I'm concerned, "conservative Democrat" is an oxymoron, and the way to fight for your beliefs is not to surrender or shape them to the limited intelligence of sheltered rubes who hate unions, minorities, and foreigners, and want to keep women barefoot and pregnant. Democrats, even in red states, have to leave the South behind and find a way to win without it.

Strategies have already been put forth on how to do that. We just need to act on them.

And as for purist fantasies, well... we actually elect Democrats here in NoVa. ;-)

Lowell: The entire GOP slate are liars, or at least deluded to the degree that they see "liberals" around every corner. But this is how they always behave. Nothing you say to the idiots who buy into their kind of lies will convince them otherwise.

What I'm saying is this: 30 years ago they called us communists. When that didn't work for them, they turned the word liberal into a synonym, and now Democrats actually go around telling people that they're not liberal, in order to appeal to voters who have been duped into believing that being a liberal or a progressive is akin to treason.

Consider the following words:

"I believe that the forces of free enterprise must be regulated; I am opposed to business monopolies. I believe in the right of collective bargaining without any interference, and full protection of that obvious right."

"I believe in federal pensions, in adequate old age benefits, and in unemployment allowances. I believe in the extension of cooperative buying and selling... and I believe that the federal government owes a very strong obligation to preserve our natural resources."

"But I do not base my support of liberalism solely on the support and advocacy of such reforms. American liberalism does not consist primarily in reforming things, it consists primarily in making things."

Who said these things? Wendell Willkie, the Republican Presidential candidate in 1940.

How far we've come that we feel we have to explain why our Democratic candidates are somehow not liberal.

The fact that the party in Virginia panders to the right is nauseating to me, and that's why a lot of us up here in NoVa didn't really care who won the LG nomination. We knew that even if we did get a liberal like Byrne or Baskerville, the state party in Richmond would sell them in the way that you have above.

I may be a pest, but I'm not a troll. You described yourself as a progressive/moderate, which is a bit like saying you're a liberal/conservative.

The fact that Howard Dean (hey, I supported him too), who was by no means a progressive before 2003, suddenly became one by default because

a) he gave angry speeches,
b) Kucinich is a nutjob, and
c) Sharpton is... well, Sharpton

only goes to show how skewed the ideological scale is in our party. The fact that you think that his name buys you credibility as a progressive is even more telling. The Progressive tradition in this country has very specific viewpoints that go along with it; adhering to them would make people like Bill Bolling organize a mob, not just write a letter against Leslie. That's a tradition I'm proud of.

While you have tried to make Leslie more appealing to Bolling's direct mail list, arguments like yours make some of us in Northern Virginia not even want to vote in November. We don't need anymore "Mark Warner" corporate Democrats in office. We need real leaders who don't apologize for their convictions or water them down.

More than argue for liberal positions in your piece, you explain them away. It reads pretty much like any other apologetic I've read, and rather than constantly being on the defensive for our ideas, maybe we should put stingy potential theocrats like Jerry Kilgore on the defensive for everything that comes out of his mouth.

That's what I'm talking about.

So you think that it's clever to prove that Leslie Byrne is a good candidate for us Democrats because she's more conservative than Chuck Robb? Oh, but there's nothing wrong with being a liberal, right, except that you spend the rest of your post protesting the fact that she is one.

Now I know why I never leave Northern Virginia for any other part of the state unless I can help it. Can we please, please do what W. Virginia did and officially join the blue states?

That weak, weak strategy of apologizing for our beliefs is exactly what drives our party into the ground. Bill Clinton and his right-wing "New Democrat" nonsense presided over the largest defection from the party since the Dixiecrats. Why bother to be a Democrat when your leader is telling you that Republican ideas are so much better and we have to emulate them?

God save us from right-wing Democrats who are ashamed to be Democrats.