Liberal Talk Radio

This is a questionable strategy:

“I don’t think that there’s anyone who grew up around the South that hasn’t had the word pass through their lips at one time in their life,” he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Tuesday. “If you read ‘Fields of Fire,’ that word and a lot of other words are in the book.” “Fields of Fire” is a novel Webb wrote about the Vietnam War.

Spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd said Webb, an author and former Marine, “did not want to make any blanket statements that he has never, ever uttered the word. Jim has not used the word directed at another person. He’s never used it himself as a racial slur.”

Clearly, Webb is playing this conservatively. He doesn’t want to say he never used the “n-word,” (the n-word… this is one of those times when it feels like political campaigns are run by and for 8 year olds) because he’s afraid someone will come out of his past and say, “well, Jim Webb actually did use the n-word once 34 years ago in a locker room…” and thereby neutralize the political impact of Allen’s alleged racism.

I’m not sure this is the right calculation. When Webb came into this thing, it was a long shot. Allen was popular in Virginia. When he was term-limited out of his Governorship, he beat the extremely popular Chuck Robb for the senate seat.

Now Webb is polling within four or five points of Allen for the senate seat– and he’s even leading in one September poll. What he needs to do is draw out the differences between himself and his opponent. And this is a way to distinguish himself that everyone is guaranteed to hear about– not just in Virginia, but everywhere. Because the whole damn country has tuned in for Allen’s implosion.

The Webb campaign might be holding off on that– wagering that the really important difference between Webb and Allen is Webb’s position on the Iraq war, which, by the way, is one of the more sophisticated positions in the Democratic Party. That might be the smarter move, especially if they have reason to believe someone might actually come out and say Webb is a racist– whether it’s true or not.

If I had Webb’s ear, I might tell him to take a chance on the race issue. But they might be smart to keep it close for now and hope that Jim starts to uptick in the polls over the next week or two as the conversation moves from the war on terror and detainee treatment to the Iraq war (I’d be willing to be it does– starting Monday), which is much a much better backdrop if you’re a Democrat.