To summarize the video: every year this event goes on in Virginia where people get together at the Wakefield Ruritan Club and eat shad that’s been smoked on wooden planks (thus, ‘shad planking’). This is one of those big-time political social events for Virginia, and usually it’s pretty bipartisan because, you know, shad on wooden planks. Anyway: according to the video, the organizers (as per their usual custom) twice extended an invite to Tim Kaine’s campaign for him to speak; they were twice ignored; they extended a similar (and perfectly standard) invitation to George Allen; and when Allen ended up being keynote speaker by default, the same Kaine people that shrugged off the invites in the first place got huffy and started an informal boycott.
Well. I guess that means more shad for the Republicans, then. More votes, too.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: Note that I did not call this the primary reason why the Democrats will lose Virginia. But state politicians ignore – or worse, dismiss – local events like this at their peril. The Kaine campaign is claiming that they chose not to attend because it’s a small event and not a necessary stop on the campaign trail, yadda yadda: that attitude is interesting, considering that it had now-Governor McDonnell speaking in 2009, now-Senator Mark Warner speaking in 2008… and Tim Kaine in 2005, when he was running (successfully) for Governor.
Oh, well, I suppose that Kaine thinks that those grapes were probably sour anyway.
Glad we had a full explanation of “shad planking” there. I was starting to worry it was a meme along the lines of Batmanning or Tebowing or Gronking or owling or regular planking or…
Apparently Martha Coakley’s playbook is widely read and respected on the other side.
If ya wants the job, ya goes to the interview. Can we start mailing the Kaine campaign recipes for shad?
The future belongs to those who show up. Kaine didn’t necessarily have to drop everything to come, but he could’ve shown a little grace about NOT coming. The way they handled this was not good politics.
I could have swore that I heard Tim Kaine say about thousand times that he is the hands-across-the-aisle, moderate, bi-partisan politician.
It is unbelievable that a politician running for reelection would miss a local event like that, or at least have a representative show up for him. Local festivals, fairs, etc. are where you can seal the deal for votes.
Shad appear to have been problematic in Virginia at least since 1865, when George Pickett was reputed to have missed the battle of Five Forks because he was attending a shad bake…