[Georgia Republicans have embraced Walker because they think any
old Black person will do when it comes to their cynical strategy for
defeating Raphael Warnock.] [[link removed]]

THE HERSCHEL WALKER SENATE CAMPAIGN IS AN INSULT TO BLACK PEOPLE  
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Elie Mystal
April 14, 2022
The Nation
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_ Georgia Republicans have embraced Walker because they think any old
Black person will do when it comes to their cynical strategy for
defeating Raphael Warnock. _

Former Heisman Trophy winner and candidate for US Senate Herschel
Walker (R-Ga.) speaks to supporters of former US president Donald
Trump during a rally at the Banks County Dragway on March 26, 2022 in
Commerce, Georgia., Megan Varner/Getty Images

 

Herschel Walker, the football star turned Georgia Senate candidate, is
an animated caricature of a Black person drawn by white conservatives.
Walker is what they think of us, and they think we’re big, ignorant,
and easily manipulated. They think we’re shady or criminal. They
think we’re tools to be used. The Walker campaign exists as a
political minstrel show: a splashy rendition of what white Republicans
think Black people look and sound like.

There is no doubt that Walker, currently leading in the Republican
primary for Senate in Georgia, has been promoted by conservative
forces because he is Black. Georgia Republicans aren’t in the habit
of nominating Black people for the US Senate. The state’s Grand Old
Party didn’t even nominate a Black person for the Senate_ during
Reconstruction_—when Republicans were progressives and Confederates
were barred from government. Not a single Black person was elected to
the Senate in Georgia from either party, ever, until Reverend Raphael
Warnock ran as a Democrat—and won—in 2020. It is in direct
response to Warnock and the emerging power of the Black vote in that
state that Republicans dredged up Walker.

Nor is Georgia in the habit of electing football players who starred
at the University of Georgia. I’ve heard many white folks argue that
Walker is not being set against Warnock because of his blackness but
because of his sportsball skills. But you’ll note that Georgia has
not elected any of their other football greats to the Senate. It’s
not like the Republicans are running Fran Tarkenton—a white
University of Georgia great who went onto a Hall of Fame football
career and (wait for it) gave a speech at the 2016 Republican National
Convention endorsing Donald Trump. The “it’s the football, not the
racism” argument fails its first contact with reality.

Georgia Republicans want Walker because he’s Black and Warnock is
Black, and they think they can defeat Warnock in November if they can
shave just a little of the Black vote from his base.

To be clear, I don’t begrudge Republicans their cynical political
calculus. I’m offended at their racist belief that any old Black
person is sufficient for their race-based strategy to work. It is easy
to contrast Walker with other Black Republican candidates for Senate.
Take, for instance, South Carolina’s Tim Scott (R–Sunken Place). I
find Scott to be a mediocrity, and a coward. He’s a grinning stuffed
suit who is more interested in pleasing his donors than serving his
constituents. But that makes Scott no different than 60 to 70 other US
senators. I, more or less, support the right of Black people to be as
banal and craven as white folks have been for centuries while enjoying
electoral success. That’s equality too, after a fashion: the right
to be useless and unimpressive yet powerful while Black.

But Walker can’t match even Tim Scott’s mediocre level of
political acumen. He’d fumble a coffee order from Black
conservatives Paris Denard and J.C. Watts. Omarosa freaking Manigault
would make him literally cry—once he went home and Googled the words
she used to insult him.

Instead, Walker’s credentials include
[[link removed]] lying
about being a class valedictorian, claiming to own businesses that do
not exist
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and having a restraining order taken out on him by his ex-wife, who
has accused him of being physically and verbally abusive.

Every time somebody sticks a microphone in front of his mouth, Walker
displays a level of ignorance that would embarrass most sixth graders.
When asked by Trump toady Maria Bartiromo about energy policy this
past Sunday, Walker said
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“[O]ne of the first thing they did—and I think people need to know
this—is they decided that they were going to give up our energy. By
him going out giving up our energy, and now we’re not
energy-independent anymore, which started the whole downfall.” He
later added that there is “no food on the shelf,” as if the Publix
is now being stocked by Marie Antoinette.

He’s also said that something called “dry mist” can kill Covid
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and asked, incredulously, “Why are there still apes?,” pointing to
their existence as proof that evolution via natural selection is not
real
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Walker is so bad that his team decided to keep him off the stage
and skip the first Republican primary debate
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April 9. Of course, Walker has been endorsed by Donald Trump. Indeed,
Trump’s endorsement of an ignorant neophyte who cannot be trusted to
debate in public and who is suspected of domestic abuse is the most
conventional thing about the Walker candidacy.

The modern Republican Party has proven that being an ignorant
know-nothing who exists as a pure grievance candidate with no policies
or platform is not a deal breaker for Republican voters. Georgia
Republicans have sent Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress, after all.
But what’s offensive about the Walker’s content-free campaign of
nonsense is that Republicans think this will work on Black voters too.
There are other Black Republicans. There are other Black Republicans
running in the Republican primary for the Senate. _Walker wasn’t
even living in Georgia when this all started_. But Republicans have
rallied around him because they think Black Georgians are just addled
enough to vote for touchdowns over basic public competence.

It won’t work, but that doesn’t mean Warnock will beat Walker.
Georgia is a red state and the only reason two Democratic senators won
there in a post-presidential 2020 runoff was because Trump stupidly
depressed his own Republican base by calling the Georgia electoral
system rigged (it wasn’t), white suburbanites were sick of
Republican shenannigans, and there was overwhelming turnout from Black
voters, including those newly registered by the heroic work of
on-the-ground organizers like Stacey Abrams and LaTosha Brown. Change
any of those factors even a little, and it’s unlikely that both
Warnock and Jon Ossoff will make it over the top in 2020.

Fast-forward two years, and white suburbanites are back on their
bullshit, Republicans have consolidated and deepened their voter
suppression efforts, and the Black voters who ran through walls to
give Democrats a majority in the Senate have been told, repeatedly,
by Democrats
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that their efforts don’t matter because of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten
Sinema. Instead of stopping Republican voter suppression, Democrats
have basically told Black voters to “vote harder.” Warnock could
lose despite being an excellent and well-liked Senator these past two
years, just as Doug Jones lost in Alabama to semiliterate coaching
whistle Tommy Tuberville in 2020. Most white people in the South vote
“R” like their entire white supremacist project depends on it, and
it takes herculean efforts and near perfect conditions for everybody
else to stop them.

If Walker is the nominee and somehow beats Warnock, it won’t be
because Black people in Georgia were bedazzled by the Dallas Cowboys.
Black people can spot the okey-doke
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But Black turnout could be depressed—because of both voter
suppression by Republicans and lack of political victories
byDemocrats—and that would mean that the Black people who show up
every election to vote Republican will be a higher proportion of the
Black electorate. It will look like Walker “made gains” with Black
voters, when all he would have done is get the same Black
conservatives who would show up to vote for Walker, or David Perdue,
or Stonewall Jackson in a midterm election.

It’s infuriating because the entire raison d’être of the Walker
Senate campaign is the belief that Black people are easily manipulable
children who will vote for other Black people like clapping seals,
eager to perform tricks for the promise of treats. Anything other than
abject and overwhelming rejection of Walker by all Black voters will
be spun to fit that racist narrative, notwithstanding all of the other
factors in play. If the Democratic Party blows Georgia, people will
blame it on Black people voting for a fool instead of Republicans
suppressing or _outright discarding_ the votes of most Black people
in Georgia.

Herschel Walker’s candidacy is a white insult to Black people. It
doesn’t bother me that Walker is a clown show—it bothers me that
white conservatives think Black voters are entertained.

_ELIE MYSTAL [[link removed]]TWITTER
[[link removed]] is The Nation’s justice
correspondent and an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center.
His first book is the New York Times best-seller Allow Me to
Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution
[[link removed]]. He can be followed
@ElieNYC._

_Copyright c 2022 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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* Georgia [[link removed]]
* Black voters [[link removed]]
* Donald Trump [[link removed]]

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