George Allen is running a
new attack ad against Jim Webb, and I'm not exaggerating when I say it's
devastating.
The test of the quality of Jim Webb's campaign hinges on his getting a good, effective response ad on the air immediately. It will be tough to do, but this ad, as explained below, is a game-changer in Allen's favor.
The ad is female U.S. Naval Academy grads from the early 1980s talking on camara about how insulting, humiliating, and demoralizing it was to hear about Jim Webb's insulting comments about women in the military during that time.
I thought it was powerful when, through my eyes of a partisan Democratic political junkie, I watched it online and again on Chris Matthews "Hardball" by myself.
But tonight the ad aired during "Grey's Anatomy," one of my wife's and my favorite shows. It's a top-rated network show, certainly popular in urban areas and with liberals due to its noted non-stereotypical racial and sexual diversity of characters.
The backstory on my wife and I: we live in D.C., but my wife moved here (before we met) in August 2003 after spending her entire previous adulthood and most of her childhood in Virginia; she grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of D.C., in Fairfax County, and she went to UVA undergrad and law school. My wife is registered to vote and voted in 2004 but is largely apolitical; she gets bored with most political conversation although she sometimes humors me since she knows I'm a political junkie. She is a registered independent but liberal-leaning, favoring Dems most of the time but willing to vote for Goopers at times depending on circumstances and issues.
Per the description of her above, she really is representative of the typical American voter, and--although she's registered to vote in D.C.--certainly fits to a tee the demographic of the typical suburban Northern Virginian woman (even though, as I said, we live in D.C. and both are registered to vote in D.C.). Most importantly, she fits the description of a MUST-HAVE swing voter for Webb; if Webb loses people like her, game over, Allen wins.
Keep in mind, too, that in our peculiar case I am Indian-American and my wife is white, and as such she is more "with me" in hostility toward Allen for his macaca insult and his racism generally.
Finally, keep in mind we generally "mute" the TV during commercials.
So the Allen ad comes on during a "Grey's Anatomy" commercial break, and I immediately recognize it. I am immediately terrified, because I realize instantly in a completely new way from when I watched the ad earlier alone how damaging this ad is to Webb with someone like my wife. My wife never cares enough about a political ad to watch it, but the visual of the first 10 seconds or so catches her eye, and she activates the volume. She asks me what it's about. I tell her meekly that it's women who were Naval Academy grads talking about how hurt they are by comments against women in the military that Webb made in the early 80s.
The ad has exactly the effect on my wife that I feared: she instantly dislikes Webb for this. I briefly try to argue that Webb did apologize for these comments (knowing privately that Webb's apology, in the "Meet the Press" debate, was a little circuitous) and that distinguishes him from Allen, but my wife doesn't buy it for a minute--she claims Allen apologized, too, and that's not good enough for her. I knew she probably remembered Allen apologized for the macaca insult, so I try to point out that Allen did not apologize for his long history of using racial slurs, and indeed he lies about it by denying it...but she still doesn't buy that there's any moral difference between Allen and Webb.
I know my wife constitutes a sample size of one, and that's an anecdote of the most limited kind, but frankly I think it's still a valid illustration and that this ad will have the same effect on a statistically significant number of Virginia women--especially in Northern Virginia where there are so many professional women who are liberal-leaning but not straight-ticket Dems.
I recently gave Webb $500 after the latest racial stuff about Allen came out, after having previously given Webb $250. This is a lot of money for me. I also have given $300 to Lamont this cycle, $50 for the primary and $250 for the general. As of tonight, I'm a little despondent about investing so heavily in these guys when neither one is where I'd hoped he'd be at this moment. I know it's a marathon and not a sprint, and these guys each still has an excellent chance to win, but my emotions go up and down like anyone's during campaign season, I'm just not feeling good right now.
I will emphasize as I did above that the true test of Webb's campaign is how he responds to this. The response must be a big ad buy that briefly acknowledges and criticizes Allen's attack, then in some way shows that Jim Webb today renounces his past sexism and respects women's ability to do all kinds of things in addition to supporting key women's political issues.
Like I said, this ad is a game-changer, and if Webb loses this could be viewed as the turning point. Allen really is flipping the table on Webb on past discriminatory attitudes.