Above you see, highlighted in blue, the silliest question I’ve seen so far today in my email.

Who should be governor of Virginia?

What nonsense, when the answer is so obvious.

It should be Abigail Spanberger, of course. As I’ve previously mentioned.

That email led me to an NYT feature called “The Choice.” I almost turned away when I saw what this feature was about: the Times had “convened a panel of nine people with varied backgrounds and areas of expertise… to assess the candidates’ potential to handle the issues Virginians face.”

There are few things more useless than a man-on-the-street feature — something I learned painfully at the very beginning of my career as a newspaperman (I’ll tell that story later). Obviously the Times has done endeavored to improve on that here — this panel contains people with “varied backgrounds and areas of expertise,” which include “a former lieutenant governor and a laid-off federal worker; a small business owner and a postgraduate student.”

While it might be better, it still seems to share DNA with the man-on-the-street interview. Maybe a third cousin once removed, I’m thinking.

But I suppressed my initial aversion and took a look. And ya know, the Times seems to have successfully assembled a sensible group. See the graphic below.

If you can arrange to get those folks walking toward me down the street, I might even consent to go out and talk with them. Except maybe that one guy you see in the bottom right of the graphic…

But seriously, folks… I’m a big fan of Abigail, and I’ve given you serious reasons for that. She’s truly about the only person actively involved in politics at the moment whom I would support without qualms — which says a lot about the state of American politics.

Since the Times sent me a goofy question, I’ll add a goofy reason to the serious ones I have for supporting Rep. Spanberger:

She doesn’t pepper me all day with texts, giving me stupid reasons to send her money. I’ve really, truly had it with those. (You know what I hate most about them? They tell me I can opt out by replying “STOP,” and I do, and they acknowledge the reply, and then resume sending me the stupid texts.)

Now, to level with you completely, Abigail does send me emails fairly frequently. (Or rather, ActBlue does on her behalf.) But they all go to my “Promotions” subfolder, which means they tend to be deleted en masse. (You’ll note in that first image above that when I grabbed it, there were 99 of them awaiting annihilation.)

But when I see her name, I sometimes skim the message before deleting, and I can say while I’ve seen some of the usual ActBlue stuff intended to make Democrats’ knees go wobbly, it hasn’t been too bad so far.

Anyway, for all sorts of reasons, I hope Rep. Spanberger wins. And I would send her more money if I had it.

Oh, if only someone like her would run for governor here in South Carolina. It seems that at least in the political sphere, that other mountain of conceit keeps rising higher, while ours has sadly sunk into the slough of despond…