My point is that I think it is more likely that John James is on track to becoming Alan Keyes 2.0.
Alan Keyes was a candidate in different states, also happened to run in the most Democratic states in the country, badly underperformed the partisan lean of the states he chose to run in, underperformed the top of the ticket substantially in all of his races, and was altogether a far worse campaigner than James. The only thing they have in common is that they’re black.
Even if you didn’t choose the analogy for that reason alone, it’s completely ridiculous to compare his chances of beating Peters to Keyes' chances of unseating Mikulski in 2004. James could probably win some statewide race in 2022 if he decided to go for it, although I don’t expect him to. He’s losing not because he’s a "Keyes-tier candidate" but because he had the misfortune of running in two Democratic tidal wave elections.
Keyes lost to Mikulski in 1992; it was Obama who defeated him in 2004. But otherwise, I'd agree with this. Another difference is that James is pretty much a generic Republican, who hasn't tied himself too closely to Trump and has made some effort to reach out to black voters. Keyes, on the other hand, was
very conservative, made no such effort to reach out to swing or opposing-party voters, and was so bitter about his loss to Obama that he refused to concede the race to him.
