Walker and Warnock had a debate last night
Expectations were low for Walker, who’s not known for nimble speech. Apparently he way exceeded expectations, at least according to observers on the right (see this and this, for example, including some clips as well).
The way CNN covered the debate it seems to me that Walker really did land some blows, although CNN doesn’t quite say that. And the Savannah Morning News published an opinion column by Adam Van Brimmer headlined this way: “Herschel Walker beat expectations in Georgia U.S. Senate debate. Will it matter in election?”
Will it matter? My question exactly, and one that’s unanswerable. But here’s an excerpt from the piece:
Yes, Georgia, your favorite football icon showed political acumen in his first-ever debate showdown. He didn’t ramble. He didn’t get flustered. He didn’t talk about “bad air,” trees, evolution or a COVID-19 killing mist.
He was charming. He was quick-witted. He came across as the more genuine of the candidates – he out-Warnocked Sen. Raphael Warnock.
For a self-professed “country boy” who claims to be “not that smart,” Walker delivered a remarkable performance. He didn’t bother to visit the post-debate media “spin room” to clarify or expound on anything. The debate’s close was a mic-drop/football-spike worthy moment.
But the writer doesn’t think it will matter:
Can one good night – one good hour – negate months of buffoonery? In a race devoid of undecided voters, did Walker convince anyone to reconsider? Did he give Trump diehards confidence that he can win and that they, with few other Trump faves on the ballot, should take the time to go to the polls and vote for him?
Not likely…
Still, Warnock best recognize the threat ahead and take appropriate political action. Like most Georgians, he must have assumed Walker would make a fool of himself on the debate stage and Friday would serve as a de facto coronation. Even with Walker working to lower expectations – remember that “I’m not that smart” quote? – Warnock couldn’t have seen his opponent debating like a pro.
The article concludes with a reminder that Georgia requires that a candidate get 50% of the vote in order to avoid a runoff. Many people probably recall that that’s the way Warnock won in 2020 – in a runoff that occurred about two months after the regular general election, a runoff in which both Democrats won their Senate seats to give the Democratic Party a bare Senate majority (counting Kamala Harris’ vote) in the Senate.
I was unfamiliar with the Savannah Morning News or the writer Adam Van Brimmer, and so I did a little research. The guy is not a Walker fan. For example, here’s what he wrote just a couple of days prior to the debate:
Which brings us back to the [Walker/Warnock] debate…and what to expect.
I anticipate a cancellation…
Nothing [Walker] says or does from this point forward will sway undecideds to his side or motivate disengaged voters to come to the polls. Prior to the abortion allegations and his son’s damning tweets, Walker might have had some room to score political points in a tête-à-tête with Warnock.
At worst, he would struggle and be able to paint Warnock the bully and angle for sympathy…
…[Y]ou have those [Republicans] who find Walker an embarrassment and won’t vote for him even in the privacy of a polling booth or absentee ballot. They might not throw in for Warnock, but they have too much self-respect to cast a ballot for Walker.
Walker’s only incentive to go through with Friday’s showdown is to make history with the most dumbfounding and humiliating debate performance ever.
The only mystery is what excuse will he use to cancel?
He could pray for a hurricane evacuation, but the National Hurricane Center’s outlook shows no activity in the Atlantic Ocean.
He could feign illness – COVID-19 is still spreading in Georgia, and Walker’s magic COVID-killing mist isn’t a real thing.
He could manufacture an issue with the venue, which is so small the host isn’t making tickets available to the public and thereby violates Walker’s pledge that “this debate is going to be about the people.
Other problems could crop up at the 11th hour. A bus breakdown. Bad directions. A mix-up on time and date.
That’s what’s meant by “defying expectations.”
In the FWIW department. I was a grad student in physics at UGA during the Walker period. I had Herschel in a lab section. Shocked that the star player actually took lib arts physics , but he did. Best student? No. But I was nonetheless impressed with him.
I wonder if Kemp’s large lead and the Dems’ lack of enthusiasm for Abrams will depress the Warnock vote.
The scandal over the low-income housing evictions for small sums, and the failure to register the charity with the state, have been noted by the AJC. Enough to make a difference? Who knows?
My own WAG – Walker’s key group of “undecided” voters are Kemp voters who are uncomfortable with him. If he runs within a few points of Kemp, he wins.
In that sense, Walker’s main task is to make Kemp voters comfortable enough to hold their noses and vote for him despite the other noise. I suspect that his debate performance went a long way towards accomplishing that task.
this brimmer fellow is an aggressive idiot, how do suburban voters feel about garland who is waging a war on the cities,, mayorkas who has swamped the country with 3 million voters, austin who criminally retreated in afghanistan,
do people focus on any issue of substance,
Walker’s biggest difficulty is to convince voters that he is savvy enough to take on the DC Establishment. I think that’s a tall order – people won’t believe that a man who struggles to express himself with words is capable of the kind of deception that is common currency in politics. Sure he’s a football hero and a good, solid person – but is he equipped for the contest he is taking on?
Is it time to start ranking past elections with the predictions for this upcoming one? Has there been a time in recent history – the timeline that Neo’s readers can identify with, from personal memory – that the electorate has been so divided, and as cleanly delineated, as different as oil and water, with their beliefs? And has there been a time when there has been this much grudge sentiment and bad feelings wrapped up in the political atmosphere? I don’t recall any such similar election, and I started paying attention around the end of LBJ and Nixon’s first term. Obama’s first midterm dealt a blow to his agenda. What will Joe’s be like (being reminded that the polls are wrong, many of them with badly-wrong track records)?
I wonder if the Democrats have seen the writing on the wall, and if their political ‘scorched earth’ moves over the past 6 months have at least partly been to create as much havoc as possible, to liquidate the Republican’s energy with post-election damage control.
Aggie,
How do you reconcile your assertion that Walker is a “man who struggles to express himself” with Brimmer’s reportage? No fan of Walker, he admitted that Walker, “showed political acumen in his first-ever debate showdown. He didn’t ramble. He didn’t get flustered. … He was charming. He was quick-witted. He came across as the more genuine of the candidates…”
@Geoffrey Brittain
It has nothing to do with Brimmer, and I would never give a journalist’s analysis that kind of benefit of the doubt. I watched some of the debate; I watched the clips where Walker was said to have scored points. The conservative press is ecstatic over his performance, but they are talking it up, as you would expect; what I saw was good preparation and coaching on the anticipated key issues. Walker was ready with the answers and clearly had drilled on them.
But he is not a naturally well-spoken individual, and he stumbles formulating sentences. Please don’t interpret that as condescension. I’m just giving you my impressions; Professional politicians specialize in the spoken word and rhetoric – he’s a retired football star, not a public speaker. Can he think on his feet, will be be as savvy a politician as he was a running back? Will he see through the miasma of lies that Washington DC lives on? Will he get the kind of advice and guidance from the GOPe that he needs to be successful as a Senator? Or will the McConnell machine leave him hanging?
I am hoping he wins, and hoping he gets the right kind of support. But the voters have a different kind of decision to make.
Warnock’s scandals should help, if only with depressing turnout.
Warnock’s scandals… Mike K
Indeed.
Granted, Walker is an athlete-celebrity turned politician, which has its understandable weaknesses, but Warnock is a flat Obama-style radical, which doesn’t get much mention.
I thought this National Review article hit Warnock’s hard-leftness hard and well with regard to packing the Supreme Court, anti-Israeli rhetoric, and Warnock’s full-throated support for Obama’s old, anti-America pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
_________________________
…Wright was at the center of the biggest controversy of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary after video of the pastor’s infamous 2003 “God Damn America” sermon surfaced. Obama said he hadn’t heard that particular sermon and condemned it; weeks later, Obama severed ties with Wright and Wright’s church. In 2009, Wright complained that “them Jews” wouldn’t let Obama speak to Wright.
But in 2014, Warnock was still defending Wright and praising Wright’s “God Damn America” sermon. “You ought to go back and see if you can find and read, as I have, the entire sermon. It was a very fine sermon,” Warnock said in a 2014 speech.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/the-radicalism-of-raphael-warnock/
_________________________
In 2020 Warnock narrowly won 51%-49% in the US Senate special election in Georgia.
I wonder how well his radical Democat shtick plays now in Georgia, after two years of the disastrous Biden presidency.
Repost…(Georgia I’m-out-of-my-mind edition):
And even (even, even, etc.) MORE from the “Uncontested Election” (AKA MOST-HONEST-TRANSPARENT-ABOVE-BOARD-ELECTION-IN-AMERICAN-HISTORY) desk….
“Bombshell Dominion ‘Error Code’ Uncovered in 97% of Georgia Counties;
“Open records requests reveal 64 of 66 Georgia counties have the same unsolved ‘Tennessee Error’ that caused seven scanners to miscount hundreds of ballots.”—https://kanekoa.substack.com/p/bombshell-dominion-error-code-uncovered
H/T Instapundit.
+ Bonus—hey, whaddayaknow! another repost:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2022/10/11/raphael-warnocks-church-evicts-its-low-income-residents-herschel-walker-steps-up-n1636277
(And so…Warlock?)
In any event, one may well hope that Walker will be able to put this pathetic pastor out to pasture…
I hope the votes are high enough to defeat the level of cheating
The amount of fraud in GA’s votes is worrisome
physicsguy,
That’s really interesting. Thanks for sharing that.
Professional politicians specialize in the spoken word and rhetoric
The last set of public remarks I’ve seen by Kevin McCarthy were not those of a man who specialized in either. What they specialize in is working a room and running fundraising and publicity campaigns.
Warnock is a dreadful heir to MLKJr’s pulpit.
Dreadful. And a nothing a US Senator should be.
But so goes voluntarily the Democratic Party, headed down the flush hole to the sewer.
Atlanta has long been the capital of black [no caps!] America. When you have dreck for voters, you end up with dreck.
Subtlety, your name is.
The last set of public remarks I’ve seen by Kevin McCarthy were not those of a man who specialized in either.
I am not at all impressed with McCarthy. The most impressive Cal Republican is Tom McClintock. He should have been governor but he was wildly outspent in the GOP primary by Bill Simon Jr, an inherited wealth lightweight who then lost to Gray Davis. What followed has been the decline of California.
Warnock is julian bond without the sense of humor
@ Miguel > “Warnock is julian bond without the sense of humor”
Now that is funny.
Otherwise I don’t think Warnock and Bond are much alike other than being black Democrat activists.
Bond is really more like a sixties Obama, who actually accomplished something; although heading the SPLC is a down-mark now, they started off on a better track, then lost their way.
Bond is really more like a sixties Obama, who actually accomplished something; although heading the SPLC is a down-mark now, they started off on a better track, then lost their way.
Bond was a leading figure in the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee, which was taken over by head cases in 1966 and ceased to exist in 1968. He was in the Georgia legislature from 1969 to 1987. Not sure what legislation he shepherded while there. He had a faculty sinecure at one of the Maryland state campuses for quite some time, though he had no post-baccalaureate degree. AFAIK, he was never associated with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was a grift from the get-go.
Warnock is a dreadful heir to MLKJr’s pulpit.
MLK Sr.
Jr. had a courtesy appointment as pastor there; his primary employment was as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The congregation where he was actually a working pastor is in Montgomery, Alabama.
@ Art Deco > “AFAIK, he was never associated with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was a grift from the get-go.”
Wikipedia was my source on that one; I was mostly familiar with his Civil Rights activism, SNCC, and legislative career.
I’ve read a lot about SPLC over the years, and their original mission was legit, and needed.
Then they succeeded, and started looking for new targets – and decided that enriching themselves and defaming conservatives was their new lease on life.
Yes, now it’s a grift.
Kind of like the trajectory of the ACLU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Bond
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Poverty_Law_Center
That last charge has been amply demonstrated to be true.
The Iron Law of Bureaucracy never fails.
But, I didn’t know this had happened:
https://americandigest.org/pournelles-iron-law-bureaucracy/
Related, and observably true as well.
https://www.isegoria.net/2008/07/robert-conquests-three-laws-of-politics/