Good points. I think Allen ran a poor campaign overall, but that in and of itself wouldn't have been enough to sink him.
Somebody upthread said it best--Republicans have to be twice as good to beat a Democrat these days. Every single mistake that Allen made was amplified a hundredfold by the Beltway media echo chamber and repeated again and again using the Goebbels "Big Lie" theory. Not to mention the "mistakes" that were manufactured. Anybody remember Allen verbally smacking down that reporterette who asked an insulting question about his mother's Jewish heritage? That got spun by the Compost into "Allen's ashamed of his mother being Jewish," and that lie got uncritically accepted by the media and rebroadcast worldwide.
"Macaca" was much ado about nothing. The racism charges at UVa thirty-five years ago were leveled by a veteran Democratic operative and anti-smoking activist in North Carolina, whose partisan past was conveniently ignored by the DBM--along with the (equally flimsy) accusations that Webb used to drive through Watts slinging the n-bomb at the locals. It's just maddening.
I think bringing up Webb's kinky pr0n in his novels was a tactical error. By that time, people were so sick of the campaign anyway that the last thing they wanted to hear was "see! Webb writes pr0n!" And to be honest, I think Allen should've pounded the issues a lot harder. Hell, maybe he did and the media never reported it.
I guess Larry Sabato now has a scalp to hang on his office wall next to his collection of bad toupees. God knows he worked his tail off to see Jim Webb elected.
}:-)4
I told someone else last night that I completely disagree. I think if that hadn't come out and if Kerry hadn't misfired, we wouldn't even be thinking recount. Webb would've won by 3-4 pts. JMHO.
Allen DID pound the issues. But the MSM ignored them. And it was hard to debate Webb on issues, because all Webb EVER had was "I'm not George Allen and I'm against Iraq."