Herschel Walker- The Proxy Candidate For White Grievance Politics
Just another crappy GOP sacrificial lamb
By the time all is said and done, almost two million Georgians will have voted for Herschel Walker, which makes me wonder: Are two million people in Georgia really so stupid and undemanding? Are they so hyper-partisan that they’d ignore the differences between Sen. Raphael Warnock and Walker? It’s not just a matter of Democrat vs. Republican. It’s a matter of being capable vs. incapable. Intelligent vs. barely able to answer simple questions. Articulate vs. unable to make himself understood except to those with a similarly low IQ. And the differences don’t end there.
The problem for Republicans is that there were no good arguments to be made for Walker, and they knew it. It was a straightforward case of turd polishing. No matter how much they worked with him, protected him from the media, and tried to keep him from embarrassing himself, they were trying to polish a turd.
And yet Walker came distressingly close to emerging victorious, which should have lucid Americans everywhere pulling out their hair and screaming:
WTF????
Herschel Walker was in no shape, manner, or former qualified to be a US Senator. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. He didn’t understand the job, the issues, the way the Senate works, or anything else about “the world’s most august deliberative body.”
Walker doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, so how does he think he’d be an effective and influential Senator? And how could any Republican voter in Georgia?
The answer, of course, is that it wasn’t about being an effective or influential Senator. Walker doesn’t understand what it means to be a Senator. It was always about having a warm body and a reliable vote on the Republican side of the aisle.
A potted plant? Listening to Walker on the campaign trail, one would think a potted plant had a higher IQ.
How is that that just shy of two million Georgians were convinced that Herschel Walker was more qualified than the man who’d already spent the past two years capably representing them in the Senate- the Rev. Raphael Warnock?
Warnock is an ordained minister, a gifted orator, brilliant, and has done an excellent job of representing the Peach State’s interests. Herschel Walker has the native intelligence, charisma, and public speaking skills of a greased lamp post. Unfortunately, he was running only because Donald Trump coaxed him into it. Not only did he not particularly want the job, but he also had no clear idea of what he might’ve been getting himself into.
But the reality that he couldn’t hold a candle to Warnock when it came to qualifications for the job couldn’t have escaped those who voted for Walker. So what did they see in him? Or was their only concern that he had an “R” behind his name?
Have we indeed reached a point where Americans would vote for a two-legged house plant over a highly qualified and capable Senator who’s proven that he can handle the job because he’s been doing it for two years?
It’s been said that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. In the case of Georgia’s Republican voters, the Senate runoff has proven that to be true. Herschel Walker stands for nothing because he understands no issue well enough to truly have a core belief. Instead, he believes what his Republican handlers have told him is important to believe. Beyond that, he’s a blank slate.
To his credit, Walker recognized when he was done and quickly conceded. He wasn’t going to play election denier and drag things out pointlessly. This is yet another reason I think he wasn’t all in on the Senate race, at least not in the way Kari Lake was in the Arizona Governor’s race. When he learned he was projected to lose, he conceded and rode off into the sunset.
He was at least gracious enough to do the right thing at the right time.
(White grievance politics at its best…or just another White guy with bad aim??)
This certainly isn’t Walker’s fault; he was just another example of the GOP putting forward some astonishingly crappy candidates during this midterm cycle and then expecting people to hold their noses and vote for them. Many did just that. They had an “R’ behind their names, and most of them had one other big thing going for them- they were White.
I’ll spare you a paragraph-long treatise on how bad Walker was as a candidate…you already know about his lies, his history of domestic violence, his hypocrisy and his various scandals. They’re not what needs examining here. What does is why so many people—one-million-seven-hundred-nineteen-thousand-eight-hundred-seventy-nine of them—thought Walker was the best person to have a vote on who sits on the Supreme Court or whether the country goes to war.
The answer to that has a lot to do with race. Reading that, I’m sure, will make the guy (troll) who emailed me this morning to say, without further commentary, “AMERICA is tired of the VICTIM-RACE CARD BULLSHIT!” meltdown. But only in his America could a candidate like Walker have had a shot. Walker offered nothing by way of competence or qualifications for the job he ran for. What he did offer to conservatives was a Blackfaced pass for their regressive politics, someone willing to not only be an apologist but an advocate, even if not a very articulate one, for their attempts to drag women and nonwhite people backwards from the social, economic and political progress of the past 60 years.
If one looks at the continuing efforts in Georgia and other southern states to elevate the interests and status of White citizens over non-Whites, it’s pretty clear that Herschel Walker was “a Blackfaced pass for their regressive politics.” He represented an opportunity for Republicans like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham to be able to hold up Walker and say, “You see, we’re not racists!!”
Herschel Walker was camouflage, a willing participant in the continued subjugation of his people. Even if he didn’t believe or acknowledge this was the case, he represented every base effort of the GOP to suppress minority votes over the past few years. All he did was to provide Republicans a patina of legitimacy.
(White) America may be tired of the VICTIM-RACE CARD BULLSHIT, but that’s because it’s tired of its efforts being exposed. They’d rather they’d be allowed to go about their business undetected and undisturbed. So, when Gov. Brian Kemp continues trying to suppress minority votes, Whites are fine with him doing that. When other government officials shut down early voting, curtail mail-in voting, and reduce the number of voting sites in minority precincts, Whites have no problem with that.
They’re just trying to ensure that the “right” people hold onto power. To do that, sometimes you have to take some pretty radical action.
Remember, White makes right. And that’s why almost two million Georgians voted for Herschel Walker, as odd as that seems.
There's no question that Walker's appeal was that he was stupid and obedient. Racists love that in a person of color. It is why they despised Warnock -- and for that matter, Hillary: It is precisely *because* they are so enormously qualified (I would argue that Hillary is the most qualified individual to ever run for the office of POTUS in history, with significant experience in every branch of government.) This threatens racists, bigots, and fascists generally, and their infantile fantasies of superiority.