This is how it's done. Congrats Virginia.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/13/10462/6704

This is one primary though. How much can we really take from this?

Certainly bad Democrats can be picked off, at least sometimes. And I would suspect that this is a heavily Black and Democratic district. Many districts in Viriginia are not like that at all.

But we have to be careful not to emulate what the Republicans seem to have done at the same time. Some so-called "RINO's" were picked off, moderate Senators who defied the gospel according to Grover Norquist and supported Governor Mark Warner on raising some taxes to help clean up the concealed fiscal mess left by James "Integrity-Free" Gilmore. The Democrats are chomping at the bit to get those seats, portraying the Republicans as the party of extremism while they campaign as moderates. In '05 they won one Assembly seat in Northern Virginia made open by a Norquist-inspired purge of a moderate incumbent Republican.

I have no objections to using primary challenges to improve the crop of Democratic candidates, incumbents or not. As long as the "better" candidate really is better and has a good chance of winning the general. I don't want to imitate the Republicans when they do stupid purges. I prefer to let the Republicans be alone in indulging in that kind of thing.