Discover more from Erick Erickson's Show Notes
The Democrats now have majority control of the Senate, including its committees.
I want to be very clear here — Herschel Walker did not need Donald Trump to win the GOP primary. He is, after all, Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker did not lose because of Trump, per se.
But Herschel Walker would never have entered the race but for Donald Trump convincing him to run.
No RNC Chair in the history of the whole party, beginning in 1856, has lasted as long as Ronna McDaniel without seeing at least one winning election season. The GOP has lost every election cycle since she took the job in 2017.
The other candidates in the GOP primary included the state’s Agriculture Commissioner; a Navy SEAL; a homebuilder who founded Black Voters for Trump; and a former state representative. None could overcome the Walker star power or the Trump endorsement in the GOP primary.
Donald Trump picks the weakest candidates, and those tied to Trump lose in places that matter.
More than being tied to Trump, the story of Walker is that the candidate's quality absolutely matters. Anyone who tells you Herschel Walker was a top-tier candidate should be ignored. His performance and baggage, all known going into this race, meant he should have been deterred from getting in.
But Donald Trump convinced him to get into the race. Then Donald Trump did virtually nothing to help him. In fact, what Trump did — speaking up about Walker during Trump’s own announcement speech at Mar-a-Lago — was used against Walker.
As much as Walker was a thoroughly likeable person, he was just a bad candidate who would have never entered except for Trump pushing him to do it.
The remarkable closeness of the runoff had everything to do with Mitch McConnell sinking $11 million into the runoff and Brian Kemp keeping his ground game going. Kemp was able to boost GOP turnout, but it was not enough.
In Georgia, Warnock spent the campaign tying Walker to Trump, including running an ad that had nothing but Trump talking up Walker with the text under Trump speaking: TO STOP TRUMP / DEFEAT WALKER. They ran that ad everywhere.
Let me put this in perspective for you:
Every Republican statewide candidate won. Every. Single. One. Except One.
The GOP got more votes statewide than the Democrats for the combined congressional vote.
The GOP got more votes statewide than the Democrats for the combined state senate vote. (see footnote)
The GOP got more votes statewide than the Democrats for the combined state house vote. (see footnote)
The GOP held and/or won a handful of suburban districts they expected to lose.
Only Herschel Walker defied that statewide trend and lost.
The only candidate explicitly endorsed by Donald Trump to win was State Senator Burt Jones. Every other Trump-endorsed candidate in Georgia lost.
Burt Jones had a massive cash advantage compared to his Democrat opponent and his Republican primary rival.
Burt Jones got a lower percentage of the statewide vote than the other statewide Republican candidates except for Herschel Walker.
To summarize, every single candidate in Georgia that Donald Trump endorsed lost the primary, except two. One of the two lost the general, and the other won but underperformed every other statewide Republican who won.
Georgia has sixteen (16) electoral college votes in 2024.
Evangelical women, many of whom sucked it up and voted for Trump in 2016 and/or 2020 for the greater good, were not going to vote for Walker, who never mounted an effective response to Warnock’s attacks related to abuse.
A door knocker in the Atlanta suburbs called my show the other day and said it was married men who he had trouble convincing in his area — Walker seemed like a bad dad to them.
Republicans, you have to move beyond celebrity candidates. So many Georgians were mad at me in the primary when I raised all of Walker’s red flags. “It’s because you hate Trump,” they yelled.
“No,” I replied. “Walker is objectively a deeply flawed candidate and Georgia’s voters hate Trump, not me.”
Walker was, because the campaign is past tense now, Walker was a bad candidate. Anyone without a burning passion for MAGA knew it. Now everyone can see the results.
You want to win? Move on from an angry old man with nothing left but a knockoff Twitter feed. And move on from candidates who are objectively not good fits.
You can’t own the left with Trump. The left now owns the Senate because of him and the candidates he pushed in critical states. The only saving grace is that Brian Kemp was able to build and model a turnout machine the GOP can use going forward.
One Aside on Walker
The man is, like all of us, a sinner. We know most of his sins because he wrote a book about them and his struggles with mental health. The ABC News Nightlight interview with his ex-wife was actually part of an interview with Walker to raise awareness about mental health issues. We know he did those terrible things because he and his ex-wife openly discussed his struggles. He did, in fact, repent.
But a man with multiple personality disorder is not someone anyone should advance to the political stage. And with Walker’s extra baggage, including a loose cannon of a son with a big social media presence who turned against him very publicly, is just asking for trouble.
Herschel Walker is, actually, a fallen man who loves Jesus and has tried, through all his struggles, to get right with the Lord. I have bristled at a lot of the attacks from friends outside Georgia who have paid attention to the social media and liberal media attacks without seeing or caring about the full picture.
But there is no question that for a lot of voters, including a ton of independent voters, and friends of mine looking in from the outside, Walker just was not an acceptable candidate to send to the United States Senate, given his baggage. It unfolded on the campaign trail exactly as I said it would on my radio program. It was obvious except for the most committed.
He’s now most likely going to go back to his home in Dallas, TX, with his reputation as Herschel Walker the football star in tatters for a lot of Americans who, until he entered the political arena, had a soft spot for him.
It actually is sad to see and doubly sad knowing how much of an afterthought he will now be in the transactional world he chose to enter. He is going to need a lot of prayers.
Clean Up on Aisle RNC
RNC, are you really going to keep Ronna McDaniel? She’s undoubtedly going to take credit for a Herculean lift in Georgia, but she and the RNC and the Georgia GOP did not do too much.
Kemp did way more, and McConnell spent way more.
Under David Shafer, the Georgia Republican Chairman, Georgia went down in 2020 and now the Senate in 2022. He has alienated himself from the entirety of the statewide GOP leadership by backing primary candidates to most of them.
It is so bad now that the Georgia Republican leaders have set up a leadership PAC to steer money from the Georgia GOP just to keep that money out of David Shafer’s hands.
At the national level, we have the 2018 loss, the 2020 loss, the 2021 runoff loss, the 2022 loss, and the 2022 runoff loss.
So you’re going to keep the losingest RNC Chair in the party's history?
Ronna McDaniel has literally never had a winning election season as chair of the RNC.
To put this in perspective, Ronna McDaniel, who has served since 2017, is the longest serving RNC Chair to never have seen a winning season. Her immediate predecessor, Reince Priebus, served longer than her and saw 2014 and 2016’s winning seasons.
No RNC Chair in the history of the whole party, beginning in 1856, has lasted as long as Ronna McDaniel without seeing at least one winning election season. The GOP has lost every election cycle since she took the job in 2017.
BONUS POINT
Every Trump candidate except one lost in Georgia, and the one who won underperformed all the others who won.
Maybe, just maybe — and I know this will be a radical idea for some — maybe in 2020, the Georgia election wasn’t stolen, and voters just wanted to move on from Trump. Or perhaps it was stolen, and only Trump and Trumpian candidates can get elections stolen from them.
Either way, Trump and Trumpian candidates do not win in Georgia.
Add up all the votes cast for every Republican in the state and every Democrat in the state and the GOP got more. Yes, districts are gerrymandered, but some are heavily gerrymandered for Democrats too. The total vote offsets the gerrymander. Statewide, the GOP received more votes in everything except the U.S. Senate race.
Can We Move Forward, Please?
fachrissakes - all this verbiage over some insecure narcissistic jerk from NY? ENOUGH: we're done with Trump. If he won't go away on his own, somebody shoot him (preferably on 5th avenue)
I understand that Walker was far from the best candidate who made it extremely difficult for many Republicans to give him their vote. What I don't understand is how any Republican could vote for Warnock who also has many of his own undesirable issues. I would stay home before I would ever vote for an obvious false prophet.