I have gotten an email and text from Levi Fetterman regarding this. Smart move that.
https://johnfetterman.com/meet/levi-fetterman/
I do remember reading about the oz experiments in the primary months ago.
I get that the Republican voters want a puppet who will vote as his handlers tell him. What is hard to wrap my head around is that they are willing to accept the perception that a brain-damaged moron is the person who best represents them. What does that say about them? Yeah, I realize they aren’t thinking about that. I think someone should put out ads that say “Herschel Walker, admittedly violent and ignorant - yes, he is one of you!”
I think Walker is probably the saddest example of the crazy Republican candidates. He is being used (maybe he knows that, maybe he doesn’t) in a blatant, pathetic and cynical way by a party who really doesn’t give two shits about him.
I still have the Daily Show episode on my DVR where Jon showed this and other Fox News clips from that night. Bullshit mountain! It was awesome.
You’re the only one talking about single issue voters.
We’re talking about swayable voters, and there are almost certainly voters that can be swayed by something like this.
That’s a good point. Thinking it over, let me put it differently: if someone out there was planning on voting for Walker until this week, but abortion is so big a deal to them that this latest news could potentially sway them, then wouldn’t abortion be as big a deal to them when they’re considering whether to vote against Warnock? So maybe it’s a little in both cases, or maybe it’s a lot in both cases, but — isn’t it pretty much the same in both cases?
(Sure, up to the point of being a single-issue voter; but also for any point short of that, for someone who was ready to vote for Walker a week ago?)
You’re starting in the wrong place so you can’t understand what’s happening in some cases.
Maybe it’s not about abortion. Not just not a big deal, but barely a consideration at all.
Maybe someone is planning to vote Walker because they always vote Republican because their family always votes Republican. They don’t care for politics and don’t think deeply about the issues.
This person has a balance of pros and cons in their head but Republican is such a big pro nothing else usually matters.
Then some of Herschel’s negatives start coming to this person’s attention. When he speaks it’s a word salad. He doesn’t really seem up to the task mentally. Some people try to brush this off as the result of head trauma, but that’s the opposite of convincing. Head trauma is serious business and maybe he should dealing with that somewhere other than the senate.
And then stuff about his past comes out. He held a gun to his ex-wife’s head and threatened to blow her brains out. He had a secret child, and another one. And one more? Not sure. Maybe these stories are running together. He says one of the biggest problems in America today is fatherless homes while secretly creating two, maybe more. He certainly wasn’t a good father to at least some of his kids. Definitely not a good husband either. Unfaithful and then some.
At his point the scale is tilted slightly to the vote for Walker side but just barely. This person doesn’t know much about Warnock, he’s a Democrat, but also a pastor. He tells Dad jokes and seems a little nerdy. They normally wouldn’t consider voting for him, but he doesn’t seem too bad. He’s not Stacey Abrams who they are convinced is a very bad person, but would have a lot of trouble articulating why.
Then the abortion news comes out. This voter personally says they oppose abortion when asked but doesn’t feel that strongly about it. The abortion aspect of this story isn’t a huge deal, but the hypocrisy is. He wants people to follow rules that he doesn’t follow. Also there’s the lying. He’s pretty clearly lying and acting like if he just sticks to his story he’ll get away with it. And finally Herschel’s son, who used to be on his side, is openly talking about the emotional and possibly physical damage Walker did to his family in response to this story. Walker has pretty clearly hurt a lot of people in his personal life.
That’s enough to tip the scale the other way. They’ve heard enough about Walker that they will not vote for him. Maybe they’ll cast a vote for Warnock. He likes dogs and smiles a lot. But they are definitely not voting for Walker.
If you try to analyze this starting with the assumption that all Walker voters are loyal to the Republican party and will act in a perfectly logical way with the goal of maximizing Republican power, you are dooming yourself to failure. That’s not how a lot of people are approaching this. You’re assuming a spherical cow, which might work in some idealized cases, but can lead you astray in the real world.
That’s an interesting take, and it does help me understand how such a voter could be swayed; much obliged.
It’s hard to say. We will see in November if @The_Other_Waldo_Pepper’s low opinion of Republican voters is correct.
I’m of mixed minds, personally. The single issue that I see is not about abortion, or guns, or immigration, it’s about sticking it to the libs. And I have seen Republicans willing to do massive damage to themselves and to the country every chance they get that they think it will cause their political opponents pain.
I am pretty confident that Walker is going to underperform Kemp by quite a bit. Maybe it will be enough to make a difference. It will probably never be definitively know how much of that is due to this abortion story, or philandering, or race, or whatever. But for some voters, each of those things will be the thing that tipped the scales.
I just wish Kemp were finding himself in more trouble, too. I cannot believe more Georgians are willing to vote for him than for Abrams. He’s made some spectacularly bad decisions.
Yeah, but this is one of those instances where I find it less grating on my sanity to be pessimistic with a possibility of being pleasantly surprised than to be optimistic and be unpleasantly reminded of reality.
Well said.
Unfortunately, that’s been part of my psyche since about 1980 or so.
Still a month to go, but it looks increasingly like control of the Senate is going to come down to outcomes in PA, NV and GA. For Republicans to take back the chamber, they need to either hold PA and flip one of the other two, or lose PA and flip both NV and GA. (Much as I hate to see it, Johnson’s efforts to drag Barnes through the mud seems to be paying off in WI.)
Of the three, they may be best positioned in NV. Cortez Masto has trailed Laxalt (narrowly) in every recent poll. If the bottom falls out in GA (still too soon to tell), then it’s Oz or bust. (Although they might try to make a late play in NH which could be done relatively cheaply.) And I don’t write off their chances in PA at all – after a brutal summer, Oz has significantly narrowed his polling gap with Fetterman.
So who’s gonna be the big winner at the end of the day? My money’s on Joe Manchin.
I don’t think there have been any polls since it came out that Oz is a puppy torturer. Let’s see if that moves the needle any.
Is Ron Johnson thought to be safe now? I thought Wisconsin was at least close enough to not be safe R.
Some early polls had Barnes ahead. but recent ones favor Johnson.
I can tell you that there a a LOT of negative ads on WI TV, many from “Organization for goodness” or similar. (I have my finger on the mute button when watching – reminder that I live in MN but get mostly WI TV)
Brian
Wisconsin might not be ready for a black senator to go along with their LGBTQ senator.
I can’t stand Ron Johnson. Here he is getting called out for faking being on the phone.
I hope there’s something they can charge him with for his involvement in the coup attempt. That’s a long shot though. He probably won’t be punished by the Justice Department or the voters.
"Like [other staunchly anti-abortion Republicans I have one thing to say about that: DON’T CARE!
Dana Loesch, a conservative radio host and former spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, [put it best this week when she said]“I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.” "
There’s no doubt there’s going to be plenty of voters that will not care about the abortion Walker paid for or any of the other obviously things that should be disqualifying.
I hope I never gave the impression that I didn’t think voters like that exist.
Breaking: Republican voters, in general, are unprincipled and power hungry.
Ozzie can’t help but step in dog shit. Cute pun in the title.
From your mouth to Nate’s ears: