Sweet Mercy: Herschel Walker and the Drought of Decency
Following a (too-close) defeat, Herschel Walker campaign is at an end. Thank god.
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Can you believe it? How could it have ever been this close?
I received this text from a political operative in Georgia. A Republican political operative who worked for Gary Black, the state’s Commissioner of Agriculture. Black’s primary campaign against Herschel Walker had been a disaster, but everyone knew that would be the case. The moment former president Donald Trump convinced Walker to run against incumbent Raphael Warnock the GOP in Georgia had little doubt what would happen.
Black was at least serious. Boring, sure, but competent and capable. He hewed closer to the “respectable” Republican side that Georgia loves to pretend to inhabit more than any other of the Southern states. They’re not above echoing the ugly conspiracies and concerns of people like Trump, but most of their speeches concern “economic opportunities” and the fates of small businesses. Any other cycle Black would have won the nomination. Instead, he was blown out of the water by Walker, who took the contest by over 50 points.
50 points. That’s a Georgia Bulldogs romp over a Division II team paid to show up.
The bet on Walker made some sense on the surface. He is, after all, a folk hero in the Peach State. A Heisman Trophy winner who pulled the Bulldogs over the championship finish line. And, with Trump’s approval, he was destined to carry the MAGA support as he brawled with Warnock over support within the African American communities the incumbent relied on.
But Walker’s problems weren’t hidden. Despite his folk hero status it was an open secret that he’d lived a strange and disturbing life filled with violence, lies, and incoherence. The gamble wasn’t just risky, it unfailingly reckless.
“Everyone knows Herschel is a madman,” a Republican told me in an interview a few months back. “I was talking with somebody else the other day about how, if he manages to make it to the Senate, and god help us if he does, he might be the first sitting senator to murder someone in the cloakroom.”
And yet, yesterday, in the Senate runoff with Warnock, Herschel nearly pulled it off. He lost by a couple of points. A field goal as time expired, if you will.
It’s a hard thing to watch. Herschel Walker on the stump trying to string together something approaching a coherent speech is painful. Not only because he isn’t capable, not only because what emerges is offputting, but because, quite simply, he shouldn’t be there.
Walker is unwell. His history of violence and admitted mental health struggles testifies to this, but having put his family through this painful gauntlet of public scrutiny and airing of his actions was simply too much for anyone. Walker’s skeletons in his closet have their own skeletons in their own closets and so on and so forth. It’s like an Escher painting, but so much more grotesque.
As expected, this morning has been filled with ready-to-file articles filled with campaign advisers and aides, all of them desperate to try and separate themselves from the kind of stink that follows you around for life. These articles are like catnip for politicos who get off on palace intrigue and behind-the-scenes intrigue, and the target is most often the candidate and possibly their spouses, who make incredible copy for all of their wrongheaded decisions tht contradict the “genius” of the consulting class.
What is telling about this batch is that seemingly everyone who worked with Walker, everyone who cashed the checks and rode on the buses up and down Georgia’s interminable highways, seems to admit freely they knew this was a terrible idea. A consistent chorus is that “Herschel should have never run.” And yet, cash those checks. Even Donald Trump himself, who handpicked Walker as his emissary to Georgia, which he had declared war on for his 2020 defeat, lost interest and literally phoned his support in.
In short, this was a story in desperate need of an ending. The entire charade was abysmal, damaging for everyone, including the public, the country, Walker, and especially the people who have suffered from his problems for decades now. It was a travesty that he was ever the nominee for the party, a symptom of a deeper systemic rot, but also just a flat-out bad time. The operative was right.
How could this be so close?
And, like so many of these things, it was a reflection of so many different things all at once. There is no single explanation for what happened, or what nearly happened, in Georgia. White supremacy is absolutely a part of it. The means by which this person was used by a party reflecting white self-interest is beyond repulsive. The patriarchal undertones - Walker’s treatment of women and history of domestic abuse - are undeniable, even for those accustomed to dismissing such things. Of course this was an expression of late-term MAGAism, as was the entire Midterm Election with its clown car of troubling and incompetent avatars. And yes, undoubtedly, it was a glimpse into the GOP and its terminal point where people like Walker and Roy Moore are accepted and championed in some of the most blatant power-grabs and principle rejections imaginabe.
It’s all of those things at once. Just like Donald Trump was and is a representation of many larger things that have festered and grown and eventually exploded into public as the disease graduated to more and more dangerous levels. We are all relieved today that Trump lost in 2020 and that the system is spitting him out like so much bad food right now. We are all relieved today that Herschel Walker will not be a senator for the next six years.
We are all relieved.
But relief is by no means an end point. It is a chance to take a breath. A moment to gather our energy, to rest in pursuit of moving forward, and then regroup.
And we must regroup. Herschel Walker will not be the last of his kind. The GOP, having abandoned even the veneer of respectability and principled leadership, will continue to turn to well-known figures and celebrities who can bring with them “brand recognition.” And Trump made it obvious that that resource meant a lot, especially when trying to sell Right Wing authoritarianism like a multilevel marketing scheme. Walker was selling power as if he were hawking blenders or supplements. The same way Right Wing grifters and fascistic ideologues pepper their conspiracy theories with appeals to buy ready-made meals in case of the apocalypse.
There will be more Herschel Walkers, though god help us, maybe they won’t be as obviously bad and trauma-causing, but that’s not very likely. This entire scenario has to be a moment of clarity, a moment where we glimpse the ugliness that is possible so that we can make better choices and begin the long hard process of healing.
It was so close.
Too close.
And the reason it was so close is because we are a society that is so unhealthy and so hurt and divided and unwell that someone like Herschel Walker can nearly become a United States Senator. That is on him and the GOP, but it is also on us. And that sense of relief we’re feeling today, if not acted upon, if not used as a catalyst for change, will soon be replaced by abject horror.
Millions of people just going through the motions. The campaign operatives cashin' those checks and spinnin' Herschel's latest scandal, but also the voters who went in and marked the name next to the (R) because it's the only thing they've ever done and the only thing they can imagine doing. Like the Soviet Union in 1988, just limping along out of pure habit, not even the party operatives believe their shit anymore.
"It was so close. Too close.
And the reason it was so close is because we are a society that is so unhealthy and so hurt and divided and unwell that someone like Herschel Walker can nearly become a United States Senator. That is on him and the GOP, but it is also on us. And that sense of relief we’re feeling today, if not acted upon, if not used as a catalyst for change, will soon be replaced by abject horror."
This is all exactly right. That we're teetering on the edge of descending into our horrific past is the clarion call of this century. Get rid of your television and get out in the streets.