
The Allen event that seems most similar to the recent McDonnell revelations came several months before the Macaca incident that everyone remembers. In April of 2006, TNR's Ryan Lizza came out with a big article on George Allen's love for the Confederate flag, which included the revelation that Allen had been wearing a Confederate flag pin in his high school yearbook photo. With that, and a bunch of similar things in the background suggesting that Allen wanted to support white people's struggle against people of color, the Macaca scandal had exactly the background it needed to damage his efforts for re-election. (To follow that up, the Allen campaign did an absolutely horrendous job of damage control, coming out with a new explanation for what Allen had meant seemingly each day after the scandal, and each explanation conflicted with their previous ones.)
I don't know if there's enough time left until Election Day for McDonnell to follow this up with something really disastrous. If he doesn't, he probably wins. But he's put himself in a position where a real-time campaign slipup could really damage him.
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With that, and a bunch of similar things in the background suggesting that Allen wanted to support white people's struggle against people of color, the Macaca scandal had exactly the background it needed to damage his efforts for re-election.
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