I don't think I could have less in common with Larry Joe Doherty, the candidate I have been volunteering for lately.

I'm twenty three. He's...old. I have been suffering through cedar fever seasons in Austin since birth while LJD's been out breathing deeply in the Lost Pines. He practices law while I practice the art of dragging myself to work every day in the hopes that someone brings breakfast tacos. He's running for public office while I merely complain publicly on my blog.

So people inevitably ask me why I am volunteering. And I have one answer: I'm pissed off.

And perhaps that is the only thing I have in common with Larry Joe. I think at a certain point in the cycle of anger -- and I'm talking deep, intense anger that forced me to stop watching the news for the entire year of 2007 -- you begin to look around at everyone and wonder what the hell kind of kool-aid they are drinking. It is the kind of anger that forces your friends to say to you "Go back into your bubble, it'll be okay" and for as much as you hate it, you swallow that pill. You follow the crowd and hope for the best and meanwhile that anger just festers and rots.

Why are we still cruising along in our lives as if everything is okay? Why have we not taken to rioting in the streets? We create policy and write letters and make requests for bipartisanship like bleating sheep on their way to slaughter.

Larry Joe Doherty is not the slick politician that his website wants you to think he is. He's not going to sell you the concept of change. He's not going to smile at you and kiss your baby and tell you about the audacity of hope. Why? Because Larry Joe Doherty is angry.

Apparently the definition of progressive means something still these days. But not to me. If progressives are the people I elected in 2006, then they haven't done a single thing progressive since then. Election night in November 2006 was like a sugar rush -- I couldn't sleep that night and wrote a sappy post recalling similarity between the feeling I got when Clinton was first elected and the night we -- the progressive, Democratic majority -- took back the House & Senate. These people were going to make things different. They were going to bring the man I loved back from Iraq. They were going to create a better environment. They were going to make health care more affordable.

And from November 2006 until now, do you want to know what happened? Nothing.

So I came crashing down from my sugar high to a very angry place. And when I landed, I saw someone who was as angry as me. I saw Larry Joe Doherty.

I'll say it: I think both of the primary candidates have the desire to change things for the better. But what is desire without something to drive it forward? I'm done picking the steady, smooth candidate. I want roaring outrage not cautious acquiescence. Fearless truth not careful rhetoric. Anger instead of submission. I want to know that no matter what, something is going to get done.

That's progressive.