Macaca Helped, But Allen's Novel Attack Put Webb Over The Top

We couldn't resist one more post on the election. Many pundits have blamed George Allen's macaca moment for costing him the election and giving the Senate to the Democrats.

While the macaca insult certainly was critical--it allowed challenger Jim Webb to get into the race and raise considerable money at a crucial point in the campaign--it's not what won the election for Webb.

Instead, the race wasn't sealed until just three weeks before election day, when George Allen's campaign made the catastrophic strategic blunder of attacking Webb's novels, for containing sexually explicit scenes. We carefully monitored the polls in the two months before election day, and while Webb had closed to within four points of Allen by early September (thanks largely to macaca), he hadn't been able to close the gap any further.

Indeed, a handy chart of poll averages on www.realclearpolitics.com plainly shows that Allen enjoyed a small, but stable lead from early September until about October 21. It was then that Allen's genius campaign staff finally managed to get the Drudge Report to post a piece on the sexually explicit scenes in some of Webb's novels, pushing the Allen camp's message that this was further evidence of Webb's purported hostility to women.

The move clearly backfired. Over the next week, Webb's poll numbers went up, while Allen's trailed slightly downward, with Webb passing Allen for the first time in the poll averages on about October 29. The day after Allen's ill-advised attack, Webb's campaign website received more than 170,000 hits in 24 hours. "That," said Jim Webb, "is when I said, 'I think I am going to win.'"

The polls confirm this. Allen didn't really lose much support so much as Webb gained--the effect of team Allen's brilliant strategy evidently was to swing undecided voters to Webb. We think a lot of those were folks pretty disgusted with Allen up to that point, but as yet unwilling to embrace Webb, who they still thought of as an unknown.

Webb soon peaked and then levelled off as John Kerry's gaffe made the headlines. Fortunately, Webb was finally running two very positive ads--one with former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who remains very popular in the state, praising Webb's leadership qualities, and the other with Webb himself finally telling voters who he was. As a result, Webb was able to keep those undecideds who moved toward him after Allen's novel attack.

In the end, Webb's narrow--9000 vote--victory was pretty much what the polls predicted.

So there you have it: macaca made the race competitive, but it wasn't until Allen's campaign lost its cool and attacked Webb's fiction writing that the race was really decided. (We have heard some similar theories that Harold Ford blew it in Tennessee when he made the desperate-looking move of confronting his opponent, Bob Corker, in person at a Corker press conference.)

Ironically, Webb carried Dickenson County, the far southwestern jurisdiction on the Virginia's border with Kentucky where Allen made his infamous macaca and "welcome to the real Virginia" comment to S.R. Sidarth, a dark-skinned Webb campaign worker of Indian-American heritage who, it so happened, is a Virginia native.

In a Washington Post piece today, Sidarth wrote that Allen's actions that day stood out precisely because they were at odds with the hospitality, dignity, respect and kindness he received as he followed the Allen campaign with a video camera as a "tracker." "I cannot recall one event where food was served and I was not invited to join in the meal," he said. As one kind woman said to him "political differences are set aside at the dinner table." That is the Virginia we know, too.

We think political campaigns are a lot like football. Many of the contests are between mismatched opponents, with predictable outcomes. But, in the more competitive races, a few big plays, a dropped ball, a fumble and some bad strategic decisions can mean the difference between victory and defeat. And every now and then, an underdog comes along and, playing a good game, pulls off an upset after the heavily favored team makes some really stupid mistakes.

Allen could still have won the game after fumbling on macaca. But then his coaches called for a risky pass play--attacking Webb's novels--when good strategy called for running out the clock. Webb intercepted and ran it back for a game-winning touchdown. We don't think Allen's father, legendary coach of the Redskins, would have sent his son such a bum play.