Well, in fairness, my observation on that thread was not quite right. I was reading the wrong set of results on the State Board of Election website when I posted that. I was thinking I was looking at the City of Richmond results but in my bleary-eyed state, when I went to check on the marriage amendment results, I clicked on Richmond County instead (for those not from Virginia, the two are about a hundred miles apart).
The marriage amendment did get more support than Allen did among the black community, but not to the levels I originally thought. I crossed my numbers up big-time.
Webb actually outflanked Allen on his right on a couple of things. Take women in the service academies. Yes, it's a fait accompli now, it has been for quite a while, and there's thousands serving honorably in the officer corps of all the services. But in a state that had to get forced at court order to admit women to the Virginia Military Insitute, Webb's old anti-women-at-the-academies stance might've resonated with a few people.
In the end, though, it was the Washington Compost and Larry Sabato carrying Webb's water for him, hammering on Macacagate again and again and again and again, dragging out those ridiculous racism accusations (remember the BS deer head in the mailbox story?) without checking the sources, and so on. Allen's campaign got caught flat-footed and looked like they sort of started to panic the last two months of the campaign--the Webb-as-perv-author and Webb-as-plagarist themes just never caught on.
Yeah, we sent Born Idiot to the Senate. But I prefer to look at it this way--Allen's people ran a weak campaign, I don't think there's much doubt of that. Even Corin, who worked his tail off for Allen, is clear-eyed about the mistakes. And yes, despite that, he STILL only lost by 9500 votes out of 2.3 million. A stronger campaign, a better and more focused response to the Macaca caca, and the Senate is 50-48-2 instead of 49-49-2. To me, that bodes less ill for the future than people think.
}:-)4
I still think your observation is true to some extent but thanks for clarifying.
And you're right, 9500 votes out of 2.3 million is NOT a mandate. And, of course, is no excuse for poor behavior.
I think Mr. Hothead needs to be reminded regularly that he did not win a majority of the votes and there is no mandate for him.
you're right - allen ran a weak campaign, and he didn't believe he could be beat. I hope it was a wake up call.
" . . . Allen's campaign got caught flat-footed and looked like they sort of started to panic the last two months of the campaign--the Webb-as-perv-author and Webb-as-plagarist themes just never caught on."
Flat-footed and utterly tone-deaf. Instead of highlighting terminal hypocrisy--like accepting $345K from a U. S. senator against whom Webb had railed for 30-odd years--the Allen campaign highlights four paragraphs of "porn." One would think that an association with John Kerry wouldn't play too well with Virginia's military population. But Allen or his advisors simply refused to make it an issue.