The above is the title of the editorial on Harris Miller that appears in today’s Virginian-Pilot. Miller obviously impressed the editorial board during his interview:
Miller’s eagerness for a debate is understandable. Once the topic moves beyond Iraq, Webb labors in deep waters that Miller swims in easily.
They did not give him a complete pass, however:
But Miller’s strongest point is also his weakest. As president of the ITAA, Miller was not just a champion for using the Internet to transform the nation’s economy, but was also a lobbyist, a profession not held in especially high esteem right now.
I suspect this is the first of two editorials on the June 13 primary, with Jim Webb’s coming next week or perhaps a little closer to the election.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I wrote this to the Virginian Pilot newspaper, and they posted my comments. I want to repeat it here. I hope you don’t mind, but this is how I feel.
The press keeps describing Harris Miller as a technology executive and longtime Democrat. Let me correct you: Harris Miller made his millions being a lobbyist for the high tech industry. Harris Miller has contributed to many Republicans who supported the replacement of American workers with cheap foreign indentured laborers under various worker visa programs. Have you ever heard of H-1B and L-1 visa programs? Harris Miller is an expert at these programs. Harris Miller has helped erode the middle class, while hundreds of thousands of American IT workers lost their jobs. That’s how he made his millions: on the backs of the American middle class. Harris Miller is hardly a Democrat and he should not be the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. A lobbyist for rich corporations should not be allowed to represent common people like me. Democrats must make sure that they elect the decorated war veteran, author and populist: Jim Webb. It’s time for Democrats to take back this state.
I replied as well, Arturo. The Pilot needs to do their homework. They took everything Harris told them as his “official stance.” The problem is that Harris doesn’t have an “official stance.” He’ll say whatever he has to say. He goes from saying the Bush Tax cuts are a “great idea” to a disaster. Saying National Health Care “won’t work” to “it’s necessary.” If Miller can do anything well, it’s read polls. When a person consistently changes their position on the issues, I can’t tell if they stand for anything. He ran as an “old Testament Democrat” as first, but has now changed his stance to the “classical Liberal” in an attempt to win this primary. The Harris Miller that was running in February couldn’t win a primary, and the Harris Miller that we hear now can’t win a General Election. Basically, Harris Miller is doomed. We need Jim Webb for a reason.
Well, I sure hope they get Webb’s editorial right, since they obivously didn’t do their homework on Miller!
I fully agree with the comments of Arturo and Dannyboy: Harris Miller has been mischaracterised once more as a “technology executive”. I criticised the Washington Post for having similarly described Miller in the past. ( See http://modernpatriot.blogspot.com/2006/04/harris-miller-is-not-high-tech.html )
As a software engineer and longtime opponent of Harris Miller, the ITAA, offshore outsourcing and worker replacement programs (H-1b & L-1), I’ve become accustomed to the sort of lies and distortions common to groups and individuals who support the job loss of Americans. They are artful practitioners of propaganda and excellent liars. Harris Miller has been both a superb propagandist and masterful liar. As at least one IT magazine noted, many of us who are *real IT workers* consider Harris Miller the “antichrist”.
It’s true that Miller can be congenial and personable. He’s very practiced at putting on a false demeanor. His entire career has been political. He has worked in politics as a political appointee or paid business lobbyist all his life. Prior to that, Miller education was geared toward a life in politics with both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science (and philosophy). By education and disposition, Harris Miller is the embodiment of a Washington insider lobbyist — the sort of disconnected power-broker for hire that we hope aspire to real democracy oppose.
As an information technology professional, I have worked with upper levels of management in the IT sector. They know something about the real workings of IT and more than a few moved from software engineering into business management. Harris Miller is not cut from the same cloth. He does not have the background in either business management or software engineering or any other “technology” field. In short, the claim that Miller is a “businessman” or “tech executive” is a grotesque misidentification which has its roots with the Miller campaign itself as is evident in the sort of descriptions about Miller on his campaign web site.
The overriding fact is that Harris Miller and the ITAA were “not … champion[s] for using the Internet to transform the nation’s economy”. They were a potent political lobbying voice of corporate America. They were not about ideals and the tremendously interesting field of computer science; Miller and the ITAA were about helping corporate America replace middle class American workers with low wage foreign workers. They were about creating smokescreens and fighting off attempts for justice in the workplace.
I’m sure that in the nineteenth century there were similar agents of the Robber Barons at work in D.C. Miller has more in common with the agents of the Robber Barons than anything “high tech”.