Yesterday, millions of votes were cast in Georgia with just one issue (person) on the ballot. The Democratic Senator, Raphael Warnock, was pitted against the Republican candidate, Herschel Walker. Even the Republican Secretary of State Geoff Duncan called his party’s candidate, “…one of the worst candidates in our party’s history.” Duncan confessed that he left his ballot blank, not voting for Warnock either.
Many on the left are complaining that Walker got as many votes as he did. Once again, I turn to my Facebook friend, Rebecca Solnit, who wrote, “People, being blue that the Georgia senate race was close is strictly optional. Consider first that Ossoff and Warnock flipped the state from two Republican senators to two Democrats (a progressive Jewish guy, a progressive Black guy) a year ago, that voter suppression continues to be an obstacle for Black voters, and that Georgia just elected a minister who carries on MLK's vision from MLK's own Atlanta pulpit, a man who supports climate action, abortion rights, and LGBTQ rights--and voting rights. To me, it looks pretty wonderful and like it gives us all the option of rejoicing. In other words, don't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory unless that's really your favorite flavor, and if it is your favorite flavor perhaps ask why.
Georgia hadn't had two Democratic senators since 2003. Hadn't had one since 2005--and that was long before the current era of massive voter suppression and Supreme Court killing off of the Voting Rights Act had happened. Meaning that winning was much easier then for a candidate supported by Black voters, and of course part of why these victories were possible is Stacey Abrams's great work for voting rights in recent years--and all the GOTV work that happened.
It really does confound me that so many people are posting--and one even wrote to me--to focus on the fact that lots of people voted for Walker. Biden narrowly won Georgia two years ago, meaning lots of people voted for the thug. We know this. That Republicans get votes is not news. Is this response just the habit of dwelling in the safety of gloom? Because this morning it looks like seeking out something to be gloomy about when there are other options, and ones I believe serve us better in doing the work we must do.
It's glorious and gorgeous in a "when hope and history rhyme" way that this particular Black man, heir to MLK, also won the whole damn senate for the Democrats--that he is the one who's why Democrats will now be the majority on all senate committees, that there's a true majority, not 50 + the v.p. For judicial appointments and so much more, this is a great thing, and Georgia now has its first full-term Black senator, along with its first Jewish senator. Ever. So much we face is indeed hard and grim that we should celebrate whenever there's occasion, and this is definitely one.”
Let’s take a minute to focus on the losing candidate, and how he became “one of the worst candidates in Republican history.” Caroline Williams, a writer for The Atlantic, had this to say: “Every time I watch one of these smug, jowly, dangerous Republicans sitting next to Herschel Walker, wheeling him out for their own designs, I see that dinner-table conversation in the background of my mind. Walker is a big, ball-carrying Black man, and these Republicans do not have an ounce of care for him. They are using him to advance their own Constitution-compromising agenda, the way conservative white people in this country have always used Black bodies when given half a chance.
Walker stands up at podiums, and I feel shame and sorrow and resentment. He is incoherent, bumbling, oily. He smiles with a swagger that does nothing to disguise his total ignorance of how blatantly he is being taken advantage of by a party that has never intended to serve people who look like him.
Walker’s candidacy is a fundamental assault by the Republican Party on the dignity of Black Americans. How dare they so cynically use this buffoon as a shield for their obvious failings to meet the needs and expectations of Black voters? They hold him up and say, “See, our voters don’t mind his race. We’re not a racist party. We have Black people on our side too.” Parading Walker at rallies like some kind of blue-ribbon livestock does not mean you have Black people on your side. What it means is that you are promoting a charlatan—a man morally and intellectually bereft enough, blithely egomaniacal enough, to sing and dance on the world stage against his own best interest. Is he in on the joke? Does he know they picked him to save money on boot black and burnt cork, this man who made his name by bringing the master glory on the master’s field, who got comfortable eating from the master’s table?”
Trump hand-picked him. Countless critics have been looking for the proverbial “straw that breaks the camel’s back.” At long last, after a lengthy string of losses, what some in the GOP say is “the kiss of death,” the camel’s back may not recover.