You gotta love Congressional candidate Mike Dickinson (D-VA) for having the gumption to tell Fox News and Sean Hannity that they’re liars and hate mongers. If only Dickinson had been better prepared for his appearance!

Dickinson is running against House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. So it’s an uphill battle, to say the least. I guess he figures he has nothing to lose by being plainspoken, forthright and unfettered by professional strategists. But Dickinson could have really benefitted from studying Sean Hannity’s tactics before appearing on his show.

Dickinson is clearly a guy willing to tell it like it is. His twitter feed is full of tweets like:

Although Hannity didn’t cite it on the air, he undoubtedly read this one, too:

Hannity revealed his nervousness at facing Dickinson by flapping his arms and his papers around. And Dickinson got off to a good start by saying, right off the bat:

You tell lies there, you distort the truth, you promote hate. Everything you do is designed…

Unfortunately, at that point, Hannity interrupted him, asked a series of  gotcha questions about Obama’s Affordable Care Act promises and Dickinson was way too agreeable about relinquishing control of the discussion. Sadly, Hannity kept control of it for the rest of the discussion.

But I find hope here. I think any candidate who is willing to be this outspoken is admirable. Even better, Dickinson seems to have some real ideas. In an interview on Daily Kos, he said:

While equality is important to me, so is a new form of discrimination- classism. Big business will not rest till they break every union, avoid every insurance cost, pay as little as possible, and exploit. My view is that businesses need to readjust the business model and the cut ownership takes. Yes, we are going to make you pay your employees more. Yes, we are going to make you provide insurance. You can either raise your prices and run off customers, or adjust the cut ownership gets. God forbid, the owner of Papa Johns has to forgo one Learjet or mansion. If you are used to making 100k off your business, you need to adjust your business model to make 80k. In America, no one should work 40 hours a week and be homeless or live in a car. If you work 40 hours a week you should have a roof over your families head and food on your plate. Unions are critical. They ensure fair treatment of employees.

and

Without a doubt, education is the most important thing to our country now and in the future. Not only is education important, but it is almost as important to see that it gets fairly distributed to members of all economic classes. I am so sick of seeing a disparity in education. You see wealthy areas with palaces for schools and each child with a laptop, and you see poor areas with old buildings or trailers for schools and the Internet is not even accessible. We must raise the salaries of our true American heroes; teachers. Attracting the best and brightest to teach requires a significant financial commitment and it is one we must make. We need to find ways to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to go to college with low interest student loans. I would like to find a way to create low cost or no cost higher education. In the meantime I think that we should at least give student loans from the government at the same interest rate we give loans to big businesses.

Let's hope Dickinson stays in the public arena - and continues to speak out about Fox News without flinching. But please, ready yourself for thy enemy’s tactics before facing him in the ring on his own turf!