Even in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream — “sooner or later, on the crimson hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave house owners will be capable to sit down collectively on the desk of brotherhood” — the civil rights martyr didn’t foresee that in his youngsters’s lifetime, two descendants of enslaved folks can be the solely nominees on the desk in a U.S. Senate election. In Georgia!
However was it actually progress that put two Black males — Sen. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat who received Tuesday’s runoff, and Herschel Walker, the soccer legend and Republican candidate — on the poll? I don’t assume so, not given the self-serving cynicism that led first Donald Trump after which different pliant Republican leaders to pluck Walker from Texas to run in opposition to Warnock, the senior pastor at Dr. King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Main Black pundits known as Walker’s candidacy tokenism and “an insult to Black folks,” given his evident unfitness for the workplace.
But fortunately, Walker’s defeat does characterize progress, and even the achievement of maybe essentially the most celebrated a part of King’s dream: “My 4 little youngsters will sooner or later reside in a nation the place they won’t be judged by the colour of their pores and skin however by the content material of their character.”
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a vital eye to the nationwide political scene. She has many years of expertise protecting the White Home and Congress.
Pores and skin shade certainly had loads to do with getting Walker on the poll. Republicans transparently sought to separate the closely Democratic Black vote in Georgia and to show they weren’t “a celebration of racists,” as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham insisted at marketing campaign rallies and in a cringe-inducing Fox News bit.
But voters judged Walker on his character. Even a Heisman Trophy-holding Georgia working again couldn’t outrun Warnock with the bags that Walker was lugging: varied allegations of holding a gun to his former spouse’s head; abusing her, a son and girlfriend; philandering; paying two girlfriends to get abortions (opposite to his public antiabortion speak) and gilding his rocky enterprise document.
Let his estranged son Christian Walker sum up the lesson of his father’s defeat. He wrote in a pair of post-election tweets: “Don’t beat ladies, maintain weapons to peoples heads, fund abortions then fake your pro-life, stalk cheerleaders, depart your a number of minor youngsters alone to chase extra fame, lie, lie, lie, say silly crap, and make a idiot of your loved ones… After which possibly you may win a senate seat.”
The son additionally took on his father’s whatabout-ing defenders, who famous that Warnock additionally endured a troublesome divorce and that his former spouse alleged in 2020 that he as soon as drove over her foot in his automotive: “Don’t evaluate Warnock working over his spouse’s foot to my father holding weapons and knives to my moms throat,” Christian Walker wrote.
Past Herschel Walker’s character flaws was his manifest unsuitability for workplace. The mangled sentences and absence of any coverage initiatives. Streams of consciousness about dangerous air infiltrating from China and whether or not it’s higher to be a werewolf or a vampire. Falsehoods about graduating from school, working in legislation enforcement and personally treating hundreds of veterans.
For all Walker’s doubtful distinctions, the end result was shut. Simply 2.8 proportion factors separated him from the victorious Warnock. The truth that almost 49% of the Georgia voters would select Walker to be a U.S. senator speaks to the tribalism of right this moment’s two-party politics, the pull of an “R” or “D” subsequent to the candidate’s identify.
Nonetheless, Walker’s numbers present that even many Republicans couldn’t maintain their noses lengthy sufficient to vote for him. Geoff Duncan, Georgia’s outgoing lieutenant governor, was amongst them. Final week, he instructed CBS that Walker “will in all probability go down as one of many worst Republican candidates in our get together’s historical past.”
One of many worst, for certain. Walker has firm among the many different Trump-sponsored sycophants who additionally misplaced Senate and gubernatorial races that Republicans arguably ought to have received on this yr’s midterm elections — higher get together candidates had been obtainable — together with in battleground states Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, New Hampshire and Michigan.
And now the Republican Get together can pay a giant worth for acquiescing to Trump’s whims in crowning Walker in Georgia and the losers within the different states.
Democrats’ continued management of the Senate within the subsequent two years already was a given; they secured their fiftieth seat within the normal midterm elections final month. However with 51 seats, their management is enhanced by greater than a single further seat may counsel. Take it from a Georgia Republican, at least former Speaker Newt Gingrich.
In an election-day memo posted on his web site, Gingrich wrote, “The distinction between a 50-50 Senate and a 51-49 Senate is gigantic… With 51 seats, Democrats would management each committee. They’d be capable to report out judges and different Biden administration appointees without having any Republican votes.”
For 2 years, Democrats and Republicans have shared energy 50-50 within the committees; there’s no mechanism — like Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote on the Senate ground — to settle standoffs at that degree. The association restricted Democrats’ energy to schedule hearings and investigations, difficulty subpoenas and make sure President Biden’s government and judicial nominees.
Come January, that can not be so, so long as Democrats keep united. And on the ground, they will face up to a single agenda-blocking defector reminiscent of, say, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III or Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
Republicans’ comeuppance is what they get for under pretending to reside as much as King’s dream. Subsequent time, maybe they’ll decide their prospects by the content material of their character.