Not Guy Incognito

When is Dougie Wilder going to endorse someone? He has to be asked a few more times before he plays his cards.

Remember, he didn't endorse Kaine until the last minute last year.

Wilder loves the suspense, he loves the drama, and he loves having everybody wait for him to unveil himself in grand fashion.

When it does come, I wouldn't be surprised if it were Allen.

Sorry for the lack of posts. Been a little busy, you know, with work and all.

There's a good reason there's been a lot of attention on the marriage amendment (Vote No!). It's pretty fair to say that the Senate race has gotten flat out boring. Allen still has his small lead, but is still polling under 50%. So, technically there's a chance for Webb, but I still think Allen pulls in 50.5 to 52.0 on election day.

We've seen the same ol' tired attack ads. Nothing positive. Nothing redeeming from either side.

There are more "scandals" that won't go anywhere, so they really aren't worth talking about.

Allen no longer feels we need to "stay the course" in Iraq, which is exactly what he had said for well over a year. Obviously he got the memo from the White House that they were rebranding the War on Terror to make it feel more warm and snuggly.

Webb still has yet to evolve into a decent politician. He still is talking like a writer (which in politics is like having a face made for radio). He let too many clear openings go by in the debate, and still has difficulty putting together some 10 second soundbites. He has yet to evolve his positions from "I'm not George Allen". This is basic campaigning he's having trouble with here.

My conclusion?

Allen will win.

But the Democrats have to be wishing they'd convinced Mark Warner to run for this seat. It would be ugly by now, and the national Republicans would have already pulled their ads to focus on Tennessee.

Did you miss it? Unless you looked for it, chances are you did. That's problem #1 with George Allen's two minute "speech" to Virginia. Basically, he made a two minute pre-prime time address on one station in five markets: DC, Richmond, Norfolk, Roanoke, and for some reason, Harrisonburg. (what? no Bluefield? no Charlottesville? no Bristol?)

Now, I'm not going to go into the Kaine-like creepy eyebrow (although it did make his delivery look forced), or Susan Allen's plastic smile. I think that's just mean-spirited, wrong, and not conducive to a critical analysis.

There is an inherent problem with this approach; he basically lost a whole day of advertising for two minutes that a majority of Virginians missed or went to the bathroom during. If he had carpeted every station in the state with the ad at the same time, AND made cable, DirecTV, and Dish ad buys at the same time, he would have reached a lot more people.

In devoting an entire day's worth of money for one 2 minute ad, he lost out on a lot of opportunities to reach the voters. Think about it, how many other Allen ads did you see Monday? I counted one, and I watch TV pretty much all day. Compare that to the 10-15 we've seen on normal days. Short, punchy, and carpet-bombed ads reinforce the message. Compare it to the Geico "we've hired an actor" ads. They started in late July, but did not become a hit until the middle of September. They built on the message, and the message finally hit nearly two months later.

There are some technical problems with the ad as well. The lighting just was not very good, especially the way too reflective light shined on the Redskins helmet in the background. (I wonder if they were watching the Redskins/Jaguars game to see if they should run the version with the helmet in it.) Also, way too much backlighting that made him look like he had a halo.

And by the way, if he looked comfortable, it's probably because this was highly staged. Taped, not live. Reading the Teleprompter.

As far as the message? Allen would have done a lot better to save his message for this debate on Monday, and save his money for more effective ads.