Virginia Republican Senator George Allen has had his poll lead cut from 20 points to 3 over his resurgent Democratic challenger Jim Webb after a bizarre incident where the Senator repeatedly referred to a Webb campaign worker as Macaca at a campaign stop. The Democratic activist, S.R. Sidarth, is an American citizen of Indian descent. A Macaca is defined by wikipedia as both a monkey and a racial slur.
The Senator is now claiming that he meant to say “mohawk”, referring to Sidarth’s haircut.
This doesn’t quite explain why the Senator, who used to fly a Confederate flag and as Virginia Governor opposed the Martin Luther King Day holiday, also said “welcome to America”. Sidarth was born in America. The Senator also said “let’s give a warm welcome to Macaca here… welcome to the real world of Virginia”. His segue was into a discussion of how “my friends, we’re in the midst of a war on terror”.
I don’t know much about Allen or about Virginia politics (it’s a fair way from my old political stomping grounds), but it’s more than possible that the Senator is completely batty. But in any case, what’s interesting about this story is that the momentum behind the story was spread through the circulation of the Senator’s “remarks” on YouTube, where it was posted by the aptly named Webb campaign. Webb is now capitalising on the success of his YouTube campaign by running online ads. In 2004, the netroots campaign was all about blogs. Now it’s also about vids and the adaptation of viral marketing to political campaigns.
This is good for democracy. If you researched Allen’s fundraising compared to Webb’s, I bet you’d find Allen has a much bigger warchest. But the Democrats have the net savvy.
You can watch Allen’s Macaca incident over the fold.
This is why politicians dont apologise for anything, because it doesnt make a difference. He apologised for it and the media/internet have not let up on the issue.
The best comment I saw on it was from Rob Cordry who said, “I dont know what it means, but it sure sounds racist.”
I didnt know what it is.
We all have brain farts. Allen may have issues appealing to an electorate who thinks he has less than palatable views on race, but he isnt in the KKK or anything.
Issues like this end up being personality and celebrity based; who can name off their top of their head one of Allen’s policies? I cant. But I can tell you he said Macaca and posed in Southern Civil War costume for a photograph with other re-enactors.
That isnt politics, it is electing the Year 8 class leader based on popularity.
Hasn’t it always been, much though we bemoan it?
A lot of the flack Allen is taking is because he won’t admit that with a French mother from North Africa he knew exactly what the word meant as a racial slur. His “apology” is one of those “if he was offended I regret saying that word I didn’t mean” weasel parades.
Gee whiz. A Right Wing politician being punished in the polls for indulging in dog whistle politics while pandering to his cracker constituency.
’bout time.
Digby at Hullabaloo covers white supremecists like this very well and in great detail. The ‘ go-to’ blog for Freeping GOOPER creeps like this.
I noticed it even got coverage on the PBS Leherer report.
The neo-confederate racists also have their counterparts here – ugly goitre necked pinheads and Nazi’s( Hi Tim Blair and his drooling droogies )
It’s like a fascist International.
But one big encouraging sign is the rise of democratic and libertarian socialist blogosphere influence. This trend that rejects the Jacobean and Leninoid red fascist fringe, is fast gaining traction all around the Anglosphere and I’m confident that it will take over as the dominant paradigm in the next year from the Neo-Trotskyist, Neo-confederate, Neo-labor,Neo-moron, Neo-cons.
The left is back in a big way – the rights in dissarray but hey…we’re young…they’re old and that’s life.
Actually, Allen’s press flak came up with this one. Turns out Sidarth was wearing a baseball cap at the time, and has a conventional haircut. Oops.
Sidarth has lived in Virginia all his life and Allen hasn’t. This matter has been covered on dailykos and on the Webb-site of Allen’s Democrat opponent.
Allen’s trouble is that America has already had six years of a dumb-shit President in cowboy boots.
I couldn’t care less about Allen per se. The two things I think are interesting about this story are:
1) the use of YouTube as a campaign tool;
2) Webb’s advertising being so anti-Iraq War suggests that the spin the GOP meisters (eg Rove) are putting on Lieberman’s defeat in the primary is wrong. It wasn’t mad Democrat Lefties who defeated Lieberman and who are turning against Allen, but that middle America is deeply sick of George W. Bush’s foreign adventures. The “Red State vs. Blue State” thing is largely crud – being a wrong reading of just two close elections rather than some real ideological chasm (go look at the states Clinton won in 92 and 96). If Bush is on the nose in Virginia, and if the Senate races are being nationalised, the GOP is in trouble.
And historically, it’s very very hard to find a mid-term election in the 6th year of any 2 term presidency that doesn’t see big problems for the incumbent party.