George Allen's "Last Throes"

By: Greg
Published On: 11/6/2006 3:03:24 PM

I was out at the Vienna metrorail station this morning with a number of other Webb supporters for one of George Allen's last campaign events. What was remarkable, other than the lack of silly football analogies, was the fact that he stayed there less than five minutes. No stump speech. No nothing. Nada. Surrounded by a carefully selected bubble of supporters, he didn't move around or work the crowd.

Watch for yourself:


Also, there are a couple of other points which are really funny in the video:

1) the Allen staffer who backs away after noticing there's a camcorder rolling while he's talking on his cell phone.

2) another Allen staffer who is making a lame attempt to get people to take Allen bumper stickers, and then hurriedly takes off when he notices his lack of success is being filmed.

3) a very clever little sign printed up by Andy Hurst's supporters which says "supports Bush 90%" in reference to Rep. Tom Davis's voting record. Despite the efforts of Davis's supporters to cover it up, well, they had a very long signpost for such a tiny little sign.

Anyway, the main point of this is to illustrate with this video how isolated George Allen has become. He's out at a meet and greet style event, and he doesn't seem to be doing much meeting or greeting.

Take a look for yourself.

Comments



Captions (Greg - 11/6/2006 3:05:08 PM)
Sorry about the legibility on a couple of the captions -- seems not to have processed well when I resized the video for YouTube.

But I didn't want to spend all afternoon trying to tweak it, since I wanted to share this with you all.



loved (chiefsjen - 11/6/2006 4:32:18 PM)
the video -- i saw you lowell!  hehe

keep it up -- my husband has been talking about the webb supporters at the franconia metro all last week -- he said some allen people showed up today and he laughed at them!

let's keep it up!



Thanks (Teddy - 11/6/2006 4:00:09 PM)
Only the cold weather is missing... and I was on the Vienna side; when George Allen arrived of course his supporters (I saw only a few republican club-type women among them, by the way) chanted Al-len and we countered with a roar of Webb. When busses arrived and disgorged a load of passengers we all passed out lit. Vienna Metro has two entrances, necessitating a split coverage.

It must have been like running a gauntlet for the poor commuters, most of whom grabbed a free copy of the Express newspaper and hurried by, ears plugged with their ipods, studiously not looking at the dozens of political supporters waving signs and lit. I felt we Webb folks were more successful dispensing our literature than the Allen team was theirs--- except for the grumpy old white men, most of whom snarled at or ignored the Webb crew, in contrast to younger men and most women, who were friendlier to Webb. In any case, it reminded me of being back in high school or college, kind of juvenile.

Passing out lit when no candidate is due to show up at Metro is more fun and probably more productive in terms of voter contact if not i TV-worthy publicity. I've worked at several Metro spots in the evenings, when people are on the way home. On the whole, Webb had a good showing, we were about even in numbers at the peak. Oddly, a couple of the Vote No on Number 1 supporters wore Tom Davis stickers, and refused to say whether or not they supported Webb for Senate. One wonders at their thought processes. They stood on our side, though, not with Allen-Davis.



One of them later told me he was supporting Webb (Lowell - 11/6/2006 4:04:35 PM)


Nice Video (Eric - 11/6/2006 4:37:08 PM)
And it really shows Allen surrounded and isolated from the commuters.  He just wanted to get some of his people out and leave the dirty work to them (and Davis and Wolf).  Then he scurries away.


Andrew Hurst- Show of class (thegools - 11/6/2006 6:55:24 PM)
In the last seconds of the video one can see Andrew Hurst go out of his way to shake hands with Tom Davis.  To me, that shows a lot of class.


This video is just fun! (Kathy Gerber - 11/6/2006 8:34:23 PM)
Thanks for showing it - we're sitting here laughing our butts off ... I love those teeny weeny signs, too!  You all rock-n-roll :) ;)


At the Vienna metro (Quizzical - 11/6/2006 8:42:35 PM)
Dang, I missed this by about 45 minutes when I went to work!  I saw some of the people who are in the video, though. 

What was the display of all the empty shoes about?



Nice one! (libra - 11/7/2006 12:30:45 AM)
Allen's supporters may have been *louder*, but they sure didn't seem to be more numerous (sadly, I seem to have missed Allen himself, even though there was an announcement on the clip saying he was arriving).

But... What the heck are you trying to do? Suppress votes? What's this "Vote November 6"? thing at the end of the clip?