The Washington Post is running a series of profiles on candidates in key Senate races. Today’s profile is of Virginia Republican candidate George Allen, with the headline, “An Ascent Shadowed By Questions on Race.” Yesterday’s was of Maryland Democratic candidate Ben Cardin, whose staff and supporters have thrown the “Oreo” slur against Republican opponent Michael Steele, who is black. The Post’s headline for Cardin: “A Sense of Service Sustained by Family, Faith.”

The Allen profile picked through all the basic stuff that’s been thrown at Allen recently — macaca, Jewish mother, N-word. It might seem excessive to replay it all without a news hook — remember when Post ombudsman Deborah Howell said the cumulative effect of the paper’s stories on macaca “looked like piling on”? — but it’s not enough for some Allen opponents. The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber, writing at The Plank , says it’s “hard not to be disappointed” with the story: “The only new nuggets are some additional on-the-record quotes about Allen being a racist in high school, which we knew, and about Allen being a prick in college, which we also knew.”

“It’s all very frustrating,” writes Scheiber. But there’s still hope . “On the other hand,” Scheiber continues, “maybe the mere fact of a long, skeptical front-page story in the Post about Allen’s racial insensitivity is symbolically damning enough to do its job.”

And what is its job?