I attended a VA-34 Virginia Senate race debate tonight, between incumbent Republican Jeannemarie Devolites Davis and challenging Democrat Chap Petersen. And when I say "challenging," I'm using several senses of the word. As a piece of political theater, tonight was pretty miserable. The first clue about how this was going to go was when I pulled into the parking lot at Thoreau Middle School. The Devolites Davis campaign had plastered the entrance with yard signs and supporters were waving signs at me as I drove past. In the parking lot, a couple of staffers were holding down a parking spot for her. There were no visible Petersen signs, logos, or supporters. Anywhere.

Devolites Davis is intelligent, experienced, well-advised, and so boring that you almost forget that she's, like actually, evil. Did I mention that her husband is US House of Representatives member Tom Davis? And that she has almost twice as much money in the bank as Petersen? While I'm sure everything she said tonight was technically true, she went very negative and took an astonishing liberty with facts and context that I'm sure went unnoticed by most of the civilians in the audience. Chap sure never called her on it. She spent most of her time finding ways to agree with Chap (which is a pretty good way to blunt a change campaign) or criticizing his record in various and sundry dubious ways. She also gave sound, non-ideological justifications for several of her votes on Northern Virginia issues while going out of her way to avoid mentioning her Republican affiliation or anything seriously controversial. She offered no plans and in fact made no promises, instead touting her recent accomplishments on white-bread valence issues like transportation, childcare, and education. Boring. Effective.

Chap opened with a rousing speech about his transformational vision for "Virginia 2.0." An instant later, he was apparently struck by a sudden bout of amnesia, because he completely failed to reference said vision or talk about transforming, well, anything, until his closing statement an hour later. No doubt in line with his platform of bold change, he took sleepily middle-of-the-road positions whenever possible. Anti-tax, pro-cute babies. Whoo. If he at any point openly noted a disagreement with Devolites Davis on a question of policy, I missed it, and he stumbled badly more than once. The more I listen to Chap, the more I remember why I voted for Leslie Byrne over Chap in the 2005 Lt. Gov primary -- he acts like more of the same, with the apparent sole exception that he wouldn't caucus with the far-right wingnuts. Is it a message that can win? Actually, in this district these days, it might be. Is it a message that's exciting? No. I almost wonder if his platform (which is pretty legitimately exciting) is something that he really signed on to. Or maybe he just speaks poorly.

While I'm complaining about Chap, some observations inspired by my mother's reactions:
- Seriously, the trademark bowtie thing has to go. Has anyone even heard from Tucker Carlson lately?
- Likewise, running as "Chap!"? oceanschild and I thought that was so funny during the Lt. Gov. race that she tacked a purloined yard sign up in her room after he lost the 2005 primary.
- Can we take a second to talk about "Virginia 2.0"? Who the hell thought that was a good idea? We're one of America's oldest political entities with a rich set of history and traditions and we're only on iteration 2? And what's with the corny echo of "Web 2.0," to which this is completely unrelated? And, since it's a technological motif... how come "Virginia 2.0" has nothing to do with the technology firms driving Fairfax's economic growth?
And after all this, I'm still contributing to his campaign and I'm still going to volunteer to distribute yard signs for him this weekend. Sigh. Thank you, two-party system.

But nobody noticed and tonight's not going to matter to anyone else. The audience was tiny and boy were we boring. I had the pleasure of attending with dobiehair and, judging by the masses of gray hair, I'm pretty sure that the average age in that room was appreciably higher than our combined thirty-seven years. Go team youth vote!

Anyway. I should be cleaning or something.