As a Virginian, may I remind everyone exactly how popular George Allen once was?

I was expecting Jim Webb to eventually catch some flak here, because, well, the guy is not exactly Alan Alda.

But do people outside of Virginia realize what a miracle this win is? Allen is arguably the most popular Virginian politician of the last 25 years.

- His name recognition is through the roof because of his sainted father (at least among Redskin fans).
- The man won the governorship in 1993 with over 58 percent of the vote.
- To this day, you still here people praising him for his time in office.
- In 2000, he came back onto the scene to comfortably beat a fairly popular incumbent in Charles Robb.
- Since 2000, all he has done is raise his profile in the state and across the nation.
- At one point in this campaign, he led Webb by 19 points.

From a practical political aspect, there is no reason on earth that Allen should have lost this election. None. But he did. And Webb - who started out with no name recognition and no constituency - did it.

So maybe we should just thank Webb instead of already starting to question whether he is a "Real" Democrat.

sad. as if still in the adolescence of maleness.

Something tells me he'd get a real charge out of that. :eyes:

Most older Virginians are Redskin fans who remember his dad and loved his dad.

I still want to know why no one is investigating Dan Snyder who basically gave millions away in free advertising to Allen in the last month.

recognize they dont need a prop. if his name is known for something, he does not need a reminder. just pathetically juvenile.

As a starter, Jurgensen won a couple of games for the Skins, yet when Allen chose the team photo for the Super Bowl year, he chose one WITHOUT Jurgensen in it.

Grrrrrrr...

It lets him pretend to be something he's not - in Bush's case, a "manly man." In Allen's case, a football player.

TlalocW

And theres no way we could have won VA with Alan Alda.

I understand this cold hard reality.

BTW...what was the exact straw that pushed all of the ex-Allen supporters to the Webb camp? Was it Abramoff? Was it the "Macaca" comment? Or was it the fact that Allen had Jewish blood in him (shudder to think that's the real reason...)?

Lots of new folks with no hard ties to Allen in Northern Va turned off by the racism stuff plus a lot of white liberal and black voters in the city of Richmond.

God Bless em all.

Webb won because of their/our votes.

As a life long Virginian and a life long Redskin Fan it gives me no small amount of joy to see him gone. He is the only Governor in the History of the Commonwealth who was unable to make his State of the State address from the house chambers because in typical fashion he offended the then democratic speaker of the house and they locked him out. He dismantled the Department of Transportation and as a result he caused delays in transportation improvements that are finally be addressed. He claim to fame in Va is eliminating parole in the prison system. As for the football thing I don't get it. He did not play pro ball and his father was fired as the the Skins coach after the 1977 season. He is a shallow and vain man and Virginians finally figured it out. I just hope that he goes away and stays away.

I know I am a fellow Virginian.

Not enough people giving the man credit. He had no name recognition and was a throw-away candidate with no money coming his way through most of the campaign until the very end.

But he made the most of it.

I certainly didn't.

You could see it in the way he ran his early campaign.

No one thought even with his initial macaca comment that he was vunerable. He had the name and the recognition and was destined for big things in the party of wedge issues and masked hatred.

Webb had great timing waiting just long enough not to get in the way of a good trainwreck but jumping in at just the right time with the ads to take advantage of the embarrassment a lot of Virginians felt over the comments.

George Allen's political career is, hopefully, burned to ashes.

And I've lived in New Jersey.

For the life of me, I will never understand why Allen chose to run to the LEFT of Webb. Did he honestly think that all the good old boys in Prince William County and BlueBloods in Loudoun County were going to be offended that Webb is a bit of male chauvenist pig? He probably won votes for Webb with those "Right for 1806" ads.

Ads aimed at suppressing turnout on the other side are always a terrible idea.

Webb kept it simple, hammered Allen in his most vulnerable spots, benefitted from some terrific luck, and simply never made a rookie mistake. Most candidates like him blow it at some point, particularly in the debates. He never did.

Without looking like slams and wasting air time with more shit throwing.

Instead he mentions them off-hand and how Allen wanted to get back to the issues and then slammed him on the issues.

It was a great primer for Dems on how to take advantage of a bastard's mistakes without looking like a negative muck-slinger.

While the narrator was talking about the issues. It was really pretty clever.

In all honesty, the best ads of the campaign were Steele's ads in Maryland. After I saw the puppy ones for the first time, I was honestly confused. I turned to my girlfriend and said, "Am I crazy or isn't he a Republican?" And she (who follows politics as well) said, "I thought so, but I'm not sure now."

If you weren't a political junkie, you probably thought he was a moderate Democrat with a great sense of humor at the end of those.

Brilliant.

I liked the Dem response to the puppy ads. He likes puppies but he loves George Bush that stuck with me.

I do think the point of the origingal Steele ads was to trick voters in Baltimore and PG county into voting for a Republican.

He was running away from the GOP so fast it was kind of funny in a fucked up way.

50 State stragety. YYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!

50 State Strategy is the only way.

We nearly got a seat from Tennessee can you imagine that? If we do what we say and say what we mean we can win in those border states. We can honestly do it.

Webb kind of came out of nowhere and beat a big-time party operative in the primary. Money started pouring into him late in the campaign when Allen suddenly looked vulnerable.

politician in Virginia.

That is what makes the victory so sweet.

Frankly I know a lot of people were happy when Gov. Warner did not run but I thought he was maybe not liberal enough yes but a really good honest guy with a great record as a governor. He would have been a strong candidate.

He left office with high approval ratings, but it's still not clear how long that will last or what the future holds for him. He is definitely the most popular Democrat in the state. But I never got the feeling that he was ingrained here as Allen, who as someone else said, was one easy win away from entering the "Senator for Life" club.

and OH SO SWEET!

It was only 3 months ago-August- that Allen made the Macaca comment that got this ball rolling. Allen was *this* close to getting to the "Senator for life" status THIS CLOSE.

I heard on the local RW talk radio this morning -day 3 of mourning, accusations ("fear"), and doom- that Allen carried 18% of the black vote when he was elected governor and something like 23% of the black vote in 2000. He was very popular across the board but then the Robb campaign clearly didn't have its heart into it anymore and we aren't used to really close elections around here most everything is pretty much decided ahead of time.

Truly an amazing occurance in modern political history.

I never posted it here but I told friends and family that I thought Allen would still win by 3%. I was wrong-the negatives ads just did not go over well here and the disgust with Bush (2 years after he supposedly had a 8% win here) was palpable.

I'm not your typical Virginian. I would never have thought Webb could win. There were so few people who participated in the Democratic primaries (about 5%) you could definately see then that no one thought any Democrat could win.

However later when I volunteered and did phone canvassing I found that a lot of the military people had a huge respect for Webb. I talked to people who served with him (and under him). He received a great amount of respect from the military community throughout Northern Va and from the beginning things were favorable for him in Prince William County. The men were very much for him from the get-go. They knew all about him. That shows the kind of character the man has.

And I thought he could steal a few military votes. But I think he actually WON the military vote. I never in a million years saw that coming.

Way to go Virginia, I'm proud of ya!

the 2005 governor's election in VA, Tim Kaine showed that VA was trending back to the Democrats. Dean picked a good candidate in the mold of Kaine and Mark Warner. Thanks to Allen's Maccaca moment, people took a closer look at Webb and realized that here was a viable option. Yes it was a miracle victory from casual observance, but it took a lot of hard work. Kudos to Dean and the Democratic team on the ground in VA for making it happen.

Let VA '05-06 be a lesson to how we need to prepare for national '07-08. The foundation starts here. I'm in NJ and already can see where our strengths and weaknesses lie. Now we know that there are 3-4 more House seats, here in NJ alone that we can take, if we choose the right candidate and give them the tools they need to run a successful, honest campaign.

If that's what you mean by Dean "picking him," okay. But I never heard Dean's name here.

The Virginia's governor's race is always the strangest race in the country, because there is never an incumbant. I don't think Kaine won, because the state is trending Dem. I think Kaine won because Warner was enormously popular.

Virginia and New Jersey (I've lived in both) aren't exactly the same politically. New Jersey is about as blue now as you can get. The Dems can run pretty much any candidate - no matter how weak, scandel-ridden, or secretly gay - and start from a pretty substantial lead.

Virginia is a matter of changing demographics and where it's going to lead us. The State as a geographic whole is still pretty Republican. Webb actually made a lot of inroads in the South and especially in the Hampton Roads area. But we can't expect to run a Navy Cross winner every time. Most of the time the issue is, "Can the Democrat win enough votes in the South to allow NOVA to push him over the top."

Mark Warner did that with with NRA endorsement. Kaine did that with Warner's endorsement.

We are still a long, long way from winning a lot of the Republican house seats here. Hell, I can't even get rid of Tom Davis in Fairfax County.

The man already talked about economic and social disparity. I believe that he is a REAL DEMOCRAT.

Not really a fan, but I remember my impression of him from the 80's that he seemed to be one of the few reasonable members of the Raygun administration (and as a disclaimer, I am proud to say I have NEVER voted for a R in my nearly 30 years of voting).

Did you hear him on NPR? The guy is a progressive populist, exactly the direction the party needs to move.

Webb's economic platform "borrows from the "two Americas" theme" of former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards<12> and is a strident critic of free trade policies while using populist rhetoric about jobs and the economy in his stump speeches. Webb opposes gun control, supports abortion, and supports civil unions for gay couples.

VA voted for a horrible marriage amendment my head lowered in shame for my state. :(

But look at their Senator.