So, yesterday I got a text from Senator Warnock in Georgia asking me for dough because he’s actually losing against Herschel Walker in the Senate race. Right now the gap is only a point or two, but how can Warnock be losing out to Walker who seems to be trying to outdo Trump when it comes to saying things that are stupid, or lies, or both?
One example of Walker’s brain-dead comments, okay? In the primary campaign he said that there’s no way that Biden got ’50 million’ votes. That’s because Joe got over 80 million votes.
Now you would think that a Black guy who has been connected to Trump since he played for Trump’s team in the American Football League back in the 1980’s, wouldn’t have a chance in a statewide campaign against another Black guy in 2022. But Walker isn’t as dumb as the Fake News would make him out to be, because he has made a point of not inviting Trump into Georgia to help him campaign.
What Walker’s lead in the polls tells me is that Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020 because Blacks didn’t know where Trump stood on racial issues in the 2016 campaign. But they knew exactly what he represented by the time 2020 rolled around. He was - Klan.
You don’t hear the word ‘Klan’ when Blacks talk to Whites. You hear it when Blacks talk to other Blacks. And this word happens to be the single, worst word that Blacks will use when talking about a White person whom they don’t like.
Most Blacks who live in Northern cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, or Detroit are still only two generations removed from their roots and their families in the South. And Blacks who live in cities like Atlanta aren’t removed from their Southern roots and culture at all.
For reasons having to do with my work, I know a lot of Black cops. When did I hear some of these guys use the term ‘Klan’ to describe Donald Trump? After he lashed out verbally against the demonstrations which occurred in many cities following the murder of George Floyd.
Take a look at this chart which shows the percentage of Blacks who voted in every Presidential election since 1964:
Notice what happened in 2016, particularly in the age group 45 – 64, which is the age group that really counts. Hillary lost the three states which cost her the election (MI, PA, WI) because in none of those states could she pull the numbers that Obama pulled in 2012. And these three states all have large numbers of Black residents, dig what I mean?
Walker may be nothing more than a dumb, ex-jock who doesn’t know anything about politics or anything else, but he happens to be a Georgia native, and his football career took off when he won the Heisman Trophy as a junior playing for the University of Georgia in 1982.
What political creds did Raphael Warnock have when he ran for Senate last time around? He had been pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, which was Martin Luther King’s former congregation. Otherwise, Warnock’s also a Georgia native who preaches tolerance, help for the poor and all those good, liberal things.
So, we have two Black guys up against each other, neither of them are politicians in the traditional sense, but both of them have been in or around the Black community in Georgia since they were kids.
And while I’m on the subject of Blacks and politics, let me make one thing perfectly clear. If you were a Black resident of Georgia at any time between 1865 and 1968, the last thing you would want to do is be involved with the Democratic Party. After all, it was the Democratic Party in Southern states like Georgia which robbed Blacks of their citizenship after the 13th Amendment was passed in 1865.
That was then, this is now. And for the last 50 years, the Democratic Party has become the political refuge for Southern Blacks since Nixon changed the entire national political profile by promising to ‘go slow’ on civil rights laws in the Presidential campaign of 1968.
But when a Black guy like Herschel Walker decides to run for statewide office on the GOP line, and when he makes a point of not inviting Trump into Georgia to boost his campaign, then all bets are off.
What the Warnock – Walker contest tells me is that Trump is a political dead duck whether he announces for 2024 or not. And if the blue team wants to stay competitive over the next few years, they better come up with an argument that goes beyond Trump being a semi-Fascist because nobody really cares about that.