Claire Guthrie Gastanaga: Allen lost because of the Marshall/Newman amendment. I’d speculated that might be so, but didn’t dare say anything because I figured people would think I’m nuts. Claire, on the other hand, has the numbers to back it up.
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My intial thoughts, when I asked for #s, was that Web didn’t lose BECAUSE of the amendment, not that Allen lost because of it. You have to assume a WHOLE bunch of things(that the amendment was nothing but a GOTV gambit) in order to come to the conclusion that it “backfired” on Allen.
Allen lost because more people wanted Jim Webb to be their Senator.
Hmmm, I suspect the statistics cited are true, but when the margin of victory is so small, there are a lot of things that made a difference larger than the margin. All they analyses that say “this lost it for him” are basically piling up each contributing factor and putting the one of interest on top, so that it’s the one that puts Webb over the top. While it’s dramatic to say that Allen lost because of this, the important point is that the amendment hurt him rather than helped.
Agitator — you don’t have to assume that the amendment was nothing but a GOTV gambit, only that it was a deliberate GOTV gambit in addition to any other motivations. Based on reports I’ve heard from Richmond, the amendment could have been passed at least a year ealier, but was done this year to help Allen’s re-election. That doesn’t mean the people who passed it didn’t believe in it, only that the small group of people who control the flow of legislation were cynical manipulators (or if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, just believed that keeping Allen in office was worth a year wait to get this passed.)
If that’s true then Great!! It serves the religious/social conservatives right for pushing legislation supporting bigotry.
Bill and I had a short discussion about this on wednesday.
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21308573&postID=116296601176320925
Claire is very smart. A real asset.
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