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Only a few short months ago, the Democratic Party looked to be doomed. Joe Biden’s approval rating was scraping historic lows in the mid-30s, Republicans were building a solid lead on the Generic Congressional Ballot, and story after story detailed how once-reliable Democratic constituencies — Hispanics, Asians, millennials — were abandoning the party in droves. As in the Seventies, the Democrats had become the party of inflation, urban lawlessness, foreign-policy weakness, and elite cultural radicalism, raising Republican hopes that the GOP could sweep Congress in 2022 on the way to presidential victory. Biden looked so dead in the water that The Atlantic began soliciting reader suggestions for Democrats who could replace him in 2024.
Well, that was then. Today — after the Dobbs decision in late June, a better-than-expected inflation report in July, recent Democratic victories in Congress, and a Republican primary season that has seen Trump-backed candidates edging out their more conventional rivals — the terrain is looking a lot more favourable for the Democrats. While the GOP is still expected to take the House in November, the Senate has become a gigantic question mark. As RealClearPolitics election analyst Sean Trende put it in June, what we are looking at now is “a classic battle between an irresistible force and an immovable object”. The irresistible force is Biden’s unpopularity; the immovable object is the fact that GOP primary voters have reliably opted for weak, unproven, and at times cartoonishly bad Senate candidates to run against Democrats. Faced with one of the most favourable electoral environments in decades, Republicans are finding a way to blow it.
Take Georgia, which, on paper, should be as reliably Republican as they come. Although immigration to the metro Atlanta area is steadily shifting the partisan balance in the state, Georgia went for Donald Trump by 5 points in 2016, and, until 2020, it had not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2000. In the last election, however, college-educated suburban whites moved heavily into the Democratic column, granting a narrow victory to Biden and to two Democratic Senate candidates, Jon Ossof and Raphael Warnock. Still, most observers at the time attributed the blue wave to Trump’s personal unpopularity and predicted that Warnock would be one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate in 2022.
Georgia Republicans, however, selected as their challenger to Warnock the Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker. Walker is not a politician — he is a former college football star at the University of Georgia who played professionally for the New Jersey Generals, a Trump-owned team in a failed competitor league to the NFL. There was, to be fair, a certain logic behind the choice. College football is what white Southerners have today instead of a religious or regional identity. I come from a multigenerational Georgia family: I, my mother, my father, my brother, my grandfather, and the majority of my aunts, uncles, and cousins have all received degrees from the University of Georgia. Walker was a god in our household, and in many households across the state, for his leading role in winning the 1980 college football national championship, much in the way that Diego Maradona is still revered in Argentina for the 1986 World Cup. I can’t count on both hands the number of dogs named “Herschel” I have met in my life.
And yet, with all due respect to Walker, who has received countless blows to the head over his years as a football player and mixed-martial artist, he is likely among the dumbest men ever to run for Senate. Even to those jaded from watching Biden press conferences, his interviews are remarkable for their incoherence. When asked in March about gun violence, he answered: “Well, Cain killed Abel, you know, and that’s a problem that we have… You talked about doing a disinformation, what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media?” He has cautioned against green energy investments on the theory that “when China gets our good air, their bad air gotta move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we’ve got to clean that back up.” Amazingly, these quotes sound even worse when you listen to them.
But even if Walker did not sound like President Camacho minus the showmanship, he would still be plagued by a string of scandals. He has admitted to struggling with dissociative identity disorder and of having up to 12 different personalities, or “alters”, including one that prompted him to play Russian roulette with a loaded pistol and another that nearly led him to murder a man for failing to deliver a car on time. His ex-wife has accused him of threatening her with knives and of holding a gun to her head, meaning that whoever wins the Georgia Senate seat will have faced domestic violence allegations from their former spouse. Indeed, it’s a testament to the strength of Republican feeling in Georgia that Walker is running only two points behind Warnock. It’s also telling that he’s polling a full five points behind Brian Kemp, the GOP candidate for Georgia governor.
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Subscribe“Trump was defeated in 2020. It seems increasingly likely that his hand-picked candidates could cost Republicans a Senate majority in 2022.”
This is exactly my fear. Middle-of-the-road voters are clearly (almost desperately) signaling their dislike for progressivism, especially as it’s applied to their kids in school. They are also very worried about inflation and the economy in general, and unrestricted immigration. Focus of those issues and the Republicans are well on their way to electoral success.
I’m increasingly pessimistic about the US. It’s dominated by extremists on both ends of the political spectrum screaming at each other while the desires of most Americans are ignored. That’s how nations fall apart: not by “insurrections” or civil war as the hysterical press suggests, but by gradual disengagement of a dispirited populace.
“…dominated by extremists on both sides…”
What do you consider are the extreme policies of the right?
Protecting young children from sex education?
School choice?
Actually following the constitution?
Low taxes?
Cutting regulations?
Law and order?
A strong military?
A secure border?
Energy independence?
De-escalating the wars?
Getting back to basic principles of decency by removing woke policies?
Some actually believe that conservative “extremists” like Ron DeSantis (!) are going to prosecute women who undergo out-of-state abortions. How they figure that will work is anyone’s guess – abortion checkpoints? But everything that isn’t explicitly insane, like pregnant “men”, or deeply evil, like sexually mutilating children, is right wing extremism, so they’ve got plenty to work with.
Sounds like a pants-on-fire critique of DeSantis. In fact, he’s pretty impressive…education, military experience, executive ability…
As per the “progressives”, yes, all of these are extreme policies.
One thing you must keep in mind, blacks, college educated women and Hispanics vote en masse for Democrats. And they do so not because of policies, they don’t care. They are racists or sexists who will vote for a party biased in favour of their ethnic group (illegal immigration for Hispanics, support for “equity” and quotas for upper class coastal women and urban blacks).
They are too stupid to see that Democrat policies usually harm their group, and too bigoted to care if they harm the country overall.
Leave them out, and the people who genuinely care about policies, well the large majority vote conservative. Because conservative policies make sense, progressive one are regressive.
But it doesn’t matter, when the Democrats have large vote banks that will vote for them come what may.
Those college educated women make me very glad I went to art school.
The funny thing though is that many of those women flip conservative when they start a family. There was an excellent graph somewhere that the split in US politics by gender was in reality by marriage.
In a way, that is positive because it shows many of those women are smart enough to realise how the ideas used to brainwash them in their 20s, actually harm women
Elite white women today are a large part of what is driving wokeism – seems like you might be part of ‘The Problem”.
You’re missing the point. Some peripheral woke nonsense aside, lots of serious policies (e.g., defence, tax) by both parties, are not that extreme on either side. What’s concerning is the degree of polarisation. Americans now hate each other, to an extent that the very future of America is in question. GOP people openly are calling for civil war. Does that degree of polarisation not concern you, even slightly? To an outsider, this mutual hatred seems OTT.
No. They will have little choice if things go cockeyed in November.
You should be more worried about the crackpot Democrats. They have already got their armies in the form of BLM, Antifa, FBI, IRS and any of the health services.
If these scary people win, it’s tickets for us all.
For many people, Jan 6 was a huge deal. It looked like a protest that just got out of control to me. My red-pill moment was the Jericho March in Dec, 2020 though. It showed me just how much lunacy my own side contains. Go look at the footage of Mike Flynn or Mike Lindell or Eric Metaxi == it’s deranged.
I trust my own crazies with power more than the woke progressive crazies. But crazies interested in total domination (not liberal democratic coexistence) appear to control both sides. Our current conflicts bear more similarity to a religious war than a political disagreement.
To be fair, the clowns have captured the entire political elite, both in the US and here in the UK.
Can anyone suggest a replacement for the term “elite”, as it no longer adequately describes these people?
Mark Steyn’s ‘The Lunatic Mainstream’ seems apt.
I like that
Establishment
Correct. If Maxine Waters and AOC can occupy seats in Congress for several years, then anything is possible.
re: elite – how about spoiled? entitled? myopic?
I cannot understand how Biden won an election when he is obviously failing.
Then I understood
He didn’t
Equal incompetents are running most of Western Europe….
David Icke anyone? It would not surprise me anymore ….. the world has gone mad… or the lizards really are in charge……
It is vital to keep up with the new Wave, which is ‘Ultra MAGA’, the ‘Uni Party’ Republicans just being the other side of the coin they form with the ‘Uni Party’ Democrats. Basically the ‘Party of Davos’
So to keep up with the new world reality – and you should, put in your search bar ‘Rumble’ and click on it (the youtube which is not censored) then ‘War Room’ in that search, then on the side bar, ‘Most Recent’ and below ‘Longest’.
This takes you to Steve Bannon’s War Room daily show. He was the man who got Trump elected, and with a core of Trump’s Whitehouse people Bannon gives a 2 hour show on ULTRA MAGA politics. Every state election is dissected and discussed to the max.
https://rumble.com/v1gtgc3-episode-2095-live-from-the-moment-of-truth-summit-day-2-the-trial-of-the-ma.html
MAGA is now old school, it is ULTRA MAGA, with Trump as the leader, which will set the course of American politics – and thank god for that.
Are you OK?
Just having fun pointing this out to the Never Trumpers. And if you do watch Bannon’s War Room – which is one of the world’s most watched shows, you will find they do call themselves, and the candidates Trump is selecting ”Ultra-MAGA’, a meme given, like say, ”Deplorables” by the Left, and taken up by the real Conservatives.
”Ultra-MAGA is a term originally used by President Joe Biden in reference to a subset of “extreme” Republicans. Biden first used the term in a speech about economic growth and jobs on May 4th, 2022, and used it again in a speech on May 10th. The term “ultra-MAGA” went viral over the following days as many Republicans embraced it, making memes and merchandise using the catchphrase, similar to how they embraced Let’s Go Brandon.”
I am very much OK, watching the Democrats getting their (what Steve Bannon calls) Democracy Suppository this November, haha
“he is likely among the dumbest men ever to run for Senate” Can you imagine if this was said about a black democrat.
Not even about Maxine Waters.
Kamala?
Well, many people have said similar things about MPs Dawn Butler, David Lamy, Fiona Onasanya and the odd-shoe wearing Diane Abbott, and they’re not wrong.
Trump will not be displaced until a sounding defeat in 2024. At that point, the last four election cycles, stretching to 2018, would be objectively awful results for Republicans given the structural advantages they had.
I believe the only Republican who could lose the 2024 election is Donald Trump. The Dems have no one to showcase yet I think they would likely beat Trump. 7 of the 10 fastest growing states are run by Republican governors. The other 3 have little to no national profile (CO, Wa, NV). Florida, Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina are all Republican. Virginia and Maryland are Republican. Even Vermont is Republican.
If we are honest, every establishment Republican is wishing Trump away so that DeSantis could run the table in 2024. He would win likely on a level that Reagan won in 1980. But Rs hitched their wagon to a madman. You reap what you sow.
This is my fear. Also, when he loses in 2024 there will be riots that pale in comparison to Jan 6th and the left will then go 9-11 on what is left of our civil liberties. Even a passing reference of support to anything other than socialism and complete state authority will be considered a right wing conspiracy and most of the country will go along with it out of fear. I have seen the Trumpian future and it looks a lot like AOC.
Wait…I thought nothing can compare to the “Pearl Harboresque” Jan 6th event. What could be a more devastating threat to democracy itself than a bunch of unarmed, overweight, Lite beer drinking buffoons parading around the Capitol?
January 6th was a joke but half the country thinks otherwise. That’s a problem.
‘This is my fear. Also, when he loses in 2024’
someone is counting their chickens before they are hatched.
I will vote for him, I just think you underestimate the hatred of the man. I don’t think he’d win a general.
I think the mainstream Republicans underestimate how much the Hispanic, Black, Asians hate the Woke anti-Americanism and the perverse obsession with getting children on board with sexual obsessions. (Remember ”A Drag Queen in every School’) .
”Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel reportedly said Wednesday that “drag queens make everything better” and that there should be “a drag queen for every school” during an event in Lansing.”
This is great for the Liberals, but really grates on the conservative, Catholic, and Protestant, family oriented ‘minorities. They are looking like being a wave of Trump votes. Biden may have changed his voter base too far – the Blue Collar also are all on with Trump. The traditional Left voter is going Trump and now is only those dependent on government largess and university Liberal Arts graduates who vote Biden.
After just 18 months of Biden – it’s surprising how many folks are waiting to push the button for TRUMP again..
Socialism? You haven’t a clue about socialism. To you, it’s just a vague cuss word with no fixed meaning. Dems and Republicans both are right wing parties. An American wouldn’t recognise socialism if it hit him on the head.
North Korea is socialst. So is Venezuela. The old Soviet Union. And no, Demark is a capitalist country. I have family there. Very patriotic, low business tax, low regulation, closed border, market economy. Am I warm?
Capitalism = Private ownership of the means of production (Land labour capital) Socalism = Government control of the means of production. Communism = Government ownership pf the means of production.
My guess is you have no clue of what Socialism is.
Democrats have no one to showcase because Obama blew 1,000 Dems out of office across the country during his first midterm. The Democrats Bench has never recovered. That’s what happens when a professed ‘God’ reigns.
I certainly didn’t vote for him in the primary, and see the college football cult with disdain, but I will vote for a concussed moron over a Democrat any day. He could flip a coin to determine his votes and I would count that as a victory compared to consistently advancing the Democrat agenda.
At this moment, which in politics is just forever from Nov, the press has created happy days are here again from a slight decline in fuel prices and a major legislature win. Inflation is hardly tamed and might even get worse if world fuel demand rises. September is likely to bring more bad economic news. The public pays attention to their pocketbook and wants to assign blame. Try as they might, the Democrats will be blamed. The independents then decide, we shall see.
Maybe Trump is trying to destroy the Republican party for not supporting him? It is all about him if you remember and he loves revenge more than most things.
Yes, Trump isn’t even a conservative. Just a vulgar, and rather stupid, draft-dodging NYC TV show host, nothing more.
The Article has one overarching point which is absolutely correct: The Republican chances of overtaking the Senate have been ruined (or hobbled) by Trump’s endorsements of those 4 Senate Candidates (especially Walker and Oz). I too voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but we have got to move on – he almost single-handedly botched the Georgia Senate races in Jan. 2021, and with Walker and Oz (maybe Vance – we’ll see about Masters) has single-handedly made it extremely unlikely that Republicans will retake the Senate, in a year that the Democrats should be wiped out.
Loved most of his policies, but wince at his-wrecking-ball personal vendettas.
It’s not over til it’s over..stay tuned…
Regarding 2024: if Governor DeSantis were to be highly funded and make these points tirelessly across the country –
‘I believe passionately in Mr Trump’s agenda of 2015/16 [specifying the same].
‘He has blazed a most useful trail.
‘But he was too nepotistic (Ivanka and Jared), too easily lured by flattery, to make good appointments; so he fell back into the arms of the dreadful Establishment he was elected to defeat.
‘I intend, with the following measures to defeat it; and then specify draconian steps long overdue – e.g.
Most FBI officials, nearly all the Armed Forces top brass, ditto in the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, to be sacked forthwith and replaced over time by true patriots, not partisan Establishment enforcers.
All DC wrongdoers of the past 20 years to brought to criminal trial’ etc;
he would have the same electric effect that Mr Trump had in June 2015, descending that staircase and openly talking about how so many of the Mexicans coming to the US were/are rapists, thieves and murderers.
The electorate, as then, would realise ‘This man means it, when he says he will build the Wall’ – something which, like any other long-lasting achievements, Donald Trump after all failed to provide.
I suspect it would also have an ‘electric effect’ on the swamp-creatures facing destruction, leading to a second fiddled election or, failing that, the sort of Deep State campaign to destroy his Presidency that would look the one against Trump look like a script read-through.
“The night (election season) is young and you (the Media/democrat coalition) are so beautiful ($$$$$-ful). Can the US citizen be brainwashed by BS again?
Trump is the gift that keeps giving — for the Democrats. As a hard core libertarian Republican, I held my nose and voted for the ignorant, egomaniac buffoon in 2020, but never again. Trump cost Republicans the House in 2018 by making the election all about him and the Senate in the 2021 Georgia runoff with his whining about his stolen election that depressed Republican turnout. Now he will give the Democrats full control of the Senate because of his idiotic Senate candidate endorsements.
I did the same and feel the same, but I don’t agree with Mr. MacDougald here. The electorate has been dumbed down to such an extent that we will soon be able to elect someone’s pet Snickerdoodle as POTUS, which will take place after we are allowed to legally marry our pets.
All we had to do to win was not look crazy. Talk about common sense issues: inflation taxes poor people; illegal immigration screws workers; men can’t give birth; police aren’t the enemy; Americans are among the least racist people on the planet; fossil fuels are necessary.
Instead we’re electing candidates who think the most important thing to talk about is the “stolen 2020 election”. We are electing those candidates because, unlike everyone else in America, the only issue Donald Trump cares about is the “stolen 2020 election”. If we keep this up, we will deserve to lose.
I voted for the man twice and would do so again if he’s the 2024 nominee (although DeSantis is my preference), but Donald Trump doesn’t give a hoot about the party control of Congress. Donald Trump only cares about Donald Trump. And I’m tired of having to care about the things he does, because he’s really a petty, small-minded man.