GA-SEN 2022 Megathread: Werewolves and Vampires

[Horus]

What a joke.

[Horus]

(I realize no one is listening)

But in a strong R year, this race is Lean R right now depending upon how fast Georgia is trending blue

Perdue was the only one that would make this Lean R

I’ll say it one final time:

Georgia is not happening.

Period. It’s not.

Texas? Unlikely but maybe. Ohio? On a goodnight probably. Iowa? Can def see it

Georgia? NOT HAPPENING. Dems will go 0 for 3 there

[Horus]

Unpopular? opinion: Perdue is probably one of the stronger GOP candidates out there and his entrance probably precludes a total crazy like Jody Hice or Marjorie Taylor-Greene winning the nomination. On the other hand, as we saw in 2021, crazy turnout in Georgia might fall if the candidate isn't sufficiently crazy, and Democratic favored trends, as well as the inelastic nature of the state, should make a Warnock a favorite. However, while Perdue may get lower rural turnout, he will not be utterly annihilated in the suburbs (I could see Democrats breaking 61% in Cobb and like 66% in Gwinnett if MTG was the nominee ). TL;DR, Lean D is fair for this, and the GOP won't be throwing it away immediately.

Perhaps Georgia is gonna be like Wisconsin where the only the most insane and conservative republicans can win statewide by energizing the crazy nut job conservative base.

Again this creates the issue of getting utterly nuked in suburban counties, if Democrats start breaking 60% in Cobb, Republicans cannot win the state, given the rurals are nearly maxed out for them.

Yea, depends on how much the state trends. It could either end up as like Wisconsin or like Virginia

Unless the Black vote zooms right (highly unlikely but not impossible), it's gonna be like Virginia. Way too many educated white people to stay a swing state for long.

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https://twitter.com/catargetbot/status/1400804696474877956?s=21

No chance. If David Perdue's angry walk through the field wasn't enough... Just picture this guy on a debate stage with Warnock.

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Gary Black is gonna win this.

LMAO

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https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1431262407817576453

I have a strong feeling this will be the first of many stories such as this. Walker is not stable.

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The Georgia Republican Assembly endorsed Kelvin King.

King would be a tougher opponent than Walker. He's not insane and his family is not controversial.

Fortunately he's polling at like 2%.

[Horus]

Possible United States Senator demonstrating his genius brain which has not been damaged by repeated hard blows to the head:

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1529281988158541825?s=20&t=WxuYqXDbyIjLFtJ...

Dude's brain is completely cooked. Wtf was that?

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Anecdotally I am hearing a disheartening amount of Kemp-curiousness from suburbanites who are grateful that he "stood up to Trump" but should know better, but an encouraging amount of people uncomfortable with electing some unhinged football player. I think there might be a wider gulf between GOV and SEN than I initially thought. Voters have the memory of goldfish .

Got me wondering - who would be an Abrams/Walker voter?

Very, very low info Black or Latino Trump voter? I don't think there will be many.

[Horus]

https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1539433457587298305
I see we have entered into the "committing a heresy" phase of the campaign.

Did the GOP even vet this guy?

He's non white, had Trump's endorsement and played football. Of course they didn't.

Also, theological arguments are probably the last kind of tactic Walker should be using, considering who is opponent is.

[Horus]

Christian Walker is trending on Twitter again. Yesterday he harassed singer Kehlani at the Starbucks drive through. Apparently he was also accosting workers over the display of pride flags.

https://theshaderoom.com/update-kehlani-says-christian-walker-was-losing-his-mind-over-gay-trans-flags-in-the-starbucks-window/

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I-

https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1559955661689085952

Someone in the comments said this sounds like a special needs teacher introducing her star student.

[Horus]

Walker honestly seems like a worse candidate than Oz to me.  I guess Oz is just getting more negative publicity or something?

Oz is just easier to dunk on, he's a super rich quack with a very punchable face.

Herschel is a worse candidate, but the CTE is so obvious that trolling him the same way would just seem like a pile on. Warnock is wisely mostly ignoring him and focusing on kitchen table issues and bipartisanship. When he does allude to Walker it's never about his mental health, just his inexperience.

If both of these guys win they'd make a good prez/vp duo one day. Both progressives who can still appeal to the center,  very likeable but also very different personalities, and can bring the coalition together nicely.

[Horus]

Walker is so ing stupid

Herschel Walker is pretty much a joke of a candidate. It boggles the mind why Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott opted to recruit him to run. Had Geoff Duncan or Kelvin King won the nomination, then they would have likely defeated Raphael Warnock by a Saxby Chambliss 2002 or Mack Mattingly 1980 margin.

I have no idea how they missed Kelvin King. Had he received institutional support from Kemp etc. he could've easily defeated Herschel in the primary and won this seat back. Why the establishment, country club crowd chose to go with Gary Black will never make sense to me. King has everything Walker has other than the football career and brain damage. Guy has a rags to riches life story, came from a single parent home, is a vet, founded his own company and so far as I know isn't a domestic abuser.

[Horus]

https://twitter.com/HenryJGomez/status/1564940868737433602

Got this ad today, pretty well done. Will hit home with suburban women especially.

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Question for anyone on the ground or who has seen ads - is Warnock focusing on abortion? I feel like he has not been hitting Walker nearly enough on the issue, but maybe I just haven't seen ads about it.

Abrams is, Warnock isn't, in the ads I've seen.

Interesting. Feels like a total miscalculation on his part.

He tweets fairly about being a pro choice pastor but has no ads up dealing with the matter.

I think there are fewer persuadable voters on abortion here than in places out west or up north.

[Horus]

For the first time I can remember, 538 has NV rated more likely to flip than GA.

[Horus]

Are Republicans likely to come vote for Walker?

No.

[Horus]

Are Republicans likely to come vote for Walker?

No.

You're on the ground, Horus. Do you think Warnock wins?

Yes, and I'm not even sure there'll be any runoffs. Right now a lot of folks in the northern burbs are thinking about splitting their tickets, as are a non negligible number of Black men.

I think Warnock is running a reasonably good campaign, though at this point I wanna see him get a little more assertive and perhaps even go for the jugular. Everyone knows Walker has mental issues and I get that Warnock, being a man of the cloth, wants to generally take the high road. But a few soundbytes would be helpful.

Walker's last chance to change the dynamics will be the debate. Maybe his strategy is to go in with low expectations and do an average job. But that's not the strategy of someone currently leading. The presence of the Libertarian will also add an interesting dynamic. Will he attract more split ticketers, more hesitant Walker voters, or will be be a non entity?

[Horus]

Well, it is October 3rd

https://twitter.com/mattcorridoni/status/1577112951315582976?s=20&t=xigWAuCP...

Happy birthday to me 😁😁

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A bunch of Biden/Warnock/Ossoff voters are about to vote for Kemp next month. These revelations absolutely have an effect on these same swing voters.

Honestly there are some swing voters who want to look "undecided".

They truly Can by voting both for Kemp and Warnock and I think this is what they will do

There are a lot of voters like this. Upper class ladies in east Cobb, middle aged working class guys in places like Albany or Hancock county, maybe even some incumbent friendly Asian or Latino folks in Gwinnett? A lot of possibilities as to who exactly Kemp/Warnock voters will be.

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Even if Walker ends up winning, what I'll never fully understand is this: Georgia Republicans were not short on options. They've still got a wide bench. And they went with Herschel Walker. Why?

He played college football and he's Black. In the eyes of the GOP that's all you need.

[Horus]

I told everyone to vote for Gary Black, nobody listened.  Now we got a brain dead idiot

https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/1578448912104521729

If Trump stayed completely out of Georgia politics, Warnock probably wouldn't have won in 2020, and it would have been incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler running for re-election this year.

But yes, the truth is that Trump is a lousy politician.  He won his first election, at the highest level of government, which is certainly an impressive achievement, and it's made his fans think he could do no wrong.  However, Trump only won that due to an incredible series of breaks:

- A large and divided Republican field
- An unpopular Democratic opponent
- Russian-fueled social media manipulation and Wikileaks
- One-sided FBI leaks (Comey revealed that Clinton was under investigation by the FBI, but not that Trump was.)

And with all that, he still lost the popular vote and only won due to our unbalanced Electoral College system.  Then while in office, he accomplished far less than a Republican President should have been able to do with a trifecta, and managed to lose all three legs of it in four years -- something that hadn't happened since Herbert Hoover was President.  He's also left the Republican Party deeply divided and having lost, at least for now, two groups of high-propensity voters: highly educated voters, and suburban women.

I'm sure his fans here will jump on me for this, but Trump simply doesn't have good political skills.  He got lucky once, and that's it.  His meddling in this year's primaries is one of the main reasons the Republicans are currently on the short end of Senate winning probabilities.  This is not to say they definitely won't regain control, but with a better slate of candidates they'd be in a much stronger position.

Several people have said that Trump is a Democratic mole intended to destroy the Republican Party.  While I doubt this is his true motivation, he's had pretty much that effect.

Trump has good political instincts for his own campaigns which is why he won once and made things much closer than expected the second time.

However when it comes to candidate selection he's terrible.

[Horus]

His poor son…

Yeh. I take back all the things I said about him earlier in the campaign. Clearly there was A LOT going on beneath the surface and he's clearly never had a good father figure in his life. Then he finds out along with the rest of the country that he has three half-siblings. Yeesh

His cognitive dissonance makes a lot more sense now. I went from finding him extremely annoying to feeling pretty awful for him almost overnight. This is really, really sad.

[Horus]

Walker will still get votes from the Christian Right because of his policies, not his actions

This is why I think Walker will still get ~45% or so of the vote in Georgia at the end. This is not a Todd Akin situation, where he would lose by double digits - a scenario that might have happened 20 or 30 years ago, but is not possible now, due to increased polarization. But I think that this move on the part of evangelicals could be one of the reasons why religiosity in the United States is declining, as many younger people view them as hypocrites who don't actually live up to their moral standards.

Todd Akin would win if the identical situation happened today, though. That kind of comment isn't damaging to Republicans anymore.

It seemed pretty damaging to Yesli Vega.

Yes but that was in the suburbs where people care. White evangelical Republicans have time and time again showed they don't care about this.

True, but an increasingly large share of Georgia's electorate is now comparable to Spanberger's district demographics.