John from Danville, VA offers this intriguing hypothesis:

The only way that Allen keeps his seat is by winning by a percentage point. Even his own people are spinning to the media about an expected loss. There are a number of reasons this inconceivable defeat could take place, "macaca" not to be ignored.

However, this campaign illustrates a strategy that should never be ignored.

In 2000, I was fascinated by a column by Jake Tapper of Salon (now with ABC News). It appeared right after the 2000 primaries when polling showed Gore pulling ahead and the "consensus" of the punditocracy was a Gore victory. Tapper wrote about "how Bush can win." His thesis: check out. He advised that Bush should take a long vacation until the convention. His rationale was that Bush was so bad with the language and the summer was a time when people were tuned out that a vacation would recharge Bush and just provide opportunities for Gore to make mistakes. There was even a cartoon of Bush on a tropical island to highlight the point.

Jim Webb has played this strategy to perfection. At the conclusion of the June primary, Webb had less than 100K in cash and trailed Allen by 16 points.

What did Webb do? He simply took a vacation. He hardly campaigned at all. He ran no media from primary day until Labor Day. His most vigorous campaigning was a one week stretch of "kitchen campaigning" in which he met with a dozen or so people in a home to discuss issues. That's it. (In fairness to Webb, he said that he spent the summer with his son who was about to go to Iraq in September)

This summer, the "insiders" of the Democratic Party and the liberal blogosphere went crazy about the inaction. People were proclaiming it "the worst campaign ever."

What happened? Allen spent 1.5 million bucks on positive T.V. advertising in Northern Virginia. This spending spree led to exactly 0% improvement for him in any poll. Allen's spokesman also alienated every political reporter in the state by attacking them and Larry Sabato on an almost daily basis. And finally Macaca happened at a summer campaign event.

While Webb literally did nothing on the campaign front (except for the occasional fundraiser or small "kitchen" event), Allen wasted 1.5 million dollars, alienated the press corps and made a gigantic verbal gaffe.

Sometimes the best strategy in a political campaign is to "do nothing." First of all, it is true that most people don't pay attention to campaigns in the summer. There's a thousand things more exciting in life than to start worrying about an election in November. Secondly, overexposure can be a bad thing. There gets to be a point where a candidate can just become annoying by being seen so many times. Doing nothing is the perfect antidote to overexposure. Finally, in the age of YouTube, if your opponent campaigns in the dog days, they may make a mistake which you can capitalize on. Meanwhile you do nothing, and there is not YouTube to sink you.