Herschel Walker isn’t considered a good candidate. Having not followed the race much beyond the ubiquitous commentary I have to assume that there is some justification for the charge, given how universal it is.
But occasionally a candidate says or does something so memorable that it has the possibility of defining a campaign, and Herschel Walker may have achieved that rarity in this exchange with his opponent Senator Warnock. Watch:
BRUTAL.
And this is why conservatives won’t give Warnock any benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t deserve it; he is a run-of-the-mill progressive extremist on abortion. https://t.co/1ilu5V9HgW
— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) October 15, 2022
Democrats have been pounding on abortion as pretty much the only issue that the polls favor them on. Biden has destroyed them on the economic issues, the crisis at the border has reminded everybody that Democrats don’t believe that America has a right to be a sovereign country, and the state of the world is glaring proof that Democrat policies have made America much weaker abroad. Energy policies have been a gut punch. Nothing is going well, and Americans know who to blame.
Democrats have tried desperately to remind moderates how much they hate Trump, but with Trump not on the ballot that is too big a stretch to win many votes.
But abortion: that issue motivates an important slice of their electorate so much that they hope to retain power through juicing turnout and stealing a small part of the Republican coalition. So they pound the issue every chance they get.
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But the problem here is that their position is so extreme that their arguments only work in the abstract. Once things get concrete at least some of their potential voting block gets queasy. The serious extremists want abortion until birth and a bit beyond, while the moderate moms they need tend to be first-trimester-only types. Hence they have decided not to address that part of the issue at all if they can help it, focusing on women and doctors making the decision.
Walker has figured out a way to pop that particular bubble: remind people that the baby exists and perhaps should have a voice in the decision, if only by proxy.
Obviously, pro-lifers will cheer, but they aren’t the audience. It is those moderate moms who are not thrilled about abortion but who don’t like the idea of preachy politicians inserting themselves into the private lives of others. Walker has succeeded, at least in this one moment, in reminding people that the decision to abort a child isn’t an abstract medical one, but has serious real-world consequences for a real person.
Most Republicans have had a difficult time with this for the same reason that the abortion extremists have reached beyond their own cohort: we share a language and understanding with each other that doesn’t translate perfectly outside our circle. Because of this shared language, we appear to abstract our concerns away from the pain and anxiety of the pregnant mother, whose concerns matter too. We know that perception is unfair, but we rarely break through to skeptics.
I suspect that Walker may have with his target audience.
Clearly, Herschel Walker is an imperfect vessel for the Republican message. He is not slick. He has a checkered past. Yet because he is not a practiced politician who mouths anodyne non-statements he can occasionally speak to people in a language they recognize as their own. Could that be enough to win this race?
We’ll find out on November 8th.
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