Tara Palmeri is less a journalist than a botfly in humanoid form, but even revolting parasites have their place in the political ecosystem. From Puck, “Herschel’s Access Hollywood Scandal”:
Republican operatives are responding to Walker’s latest scandal with exactly the sort of cynical circumspection you might imagine in midterm-giddy 2022 Washington—gritting their teeth and hoping he can get over the goal line, blaming others, and praying that he’s more Trump than Greitens…
Cynically, it’s late in the game for Republicans, fighting for a highly contested Senate majority, to completely drop Walker given that their path to a majority is largely predicated on his race. “What a fucking disaster, we just ride this to the end,” said one Republican strategist consulting other Senate campaigns, but speaking for many in this town. “We’re not going to switch candidates at this point, but we can’t lose Georgia and win the majority.” …
Many Republican operatives told me this week that they’re experiencing P.T.S.D. flashbacks to the Access Hollywood tape that crashed the 2016 election for about 48 hours (at least until the leaked Hillary email covered it over). Notably, this scandal is also offering some surprising (and possibly ephemeral) hope that, like Trump, Walker isn’t a normal candidate but rather a celebrity who is largely immune to the sort of blowback that would nuke traditional politicians. Walker’s own team is actively trial-ballooning this argument. Scott Paradise, his chief of staff, reportedly alluded to Trump’s scandal when attempting to give his team a pep talk. “Trump still made it to the White House,” Paradise allegedly said. (Paradise denies this. “This comment was never made,” he told me. ”It’s completely false.”)
Of course, one differentiating factor is that Trump’s family stood by him after the Billy Bush incident. Ivanka didn’t publicly chastise him, nor did Melania. According to some of Maggie Haberman’s reporting at the time, Jared Kushner even somewhat clairvoyantly seemed to realize that the disgust directed at Trump could be manipulated as some pre-woke white-glove, nose-in-the-air liberalism that would mobilize the base. Both of Trump’s ex-wives kept mostly quiet during his campaigns, and occasionally defended him…
Poll Dance
In fact, the rumors about Walker’s indiscretions had been percolating in the Republican party long before Trump urged him to run. Politico reported that the exact details of this allegation were known to many in his camp months before it came out, but they hoped their candidate would make it through the election without it surfacing. McConnell also knew that Walker was a flawed candidate, I’m told, but made the calculation not to resist him since Trump was such an enthusiastic backer. And anyway, the consultancy class was excited by Walker’s celebrity, seeing him as a football star who could easily pull in big donors and raise cash. “I don’t know that this is terribly shocking to anybody in the know,” said the former Walker aide. “There were always massive rumors about how many baby mamas he had, how many kids he had. It was always met with, No, this is it.”Publicly, the party poobahs are all in. Steven Law, who runs Mitch McConnell’s cash-rich Senate Leadership Fund, which has spent $15 million in Georgia but pledged to spend $37 million on the race this cycle, proclaimed “full speed ahead” in a statement, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Rick Scott said “Republicans stand with him.” In the meantime, they are hungrily awaiting credible polls to indicate whether or not Walker is a lost cause. It takes about three days to conduct a poll and gather results, so they won’t see anything until next week. “It’s going to be a total game of triage or calculation,” said the first strategist. “There’s no special affection for Herschel, it’s just the most winnable state to invest in right now.”…
Blame Trump?
Walker may be a terrible candidate, but the incessant stories contributing to his fall—the leaks and the bombshells, and the slow drip of unpleasant disclosures—may also be the result of unprecedented staff turnover. Walker has switched strategic consulting teams multiple times, and each team has walked off with infrastructure and little love lost for the candidate. In retrospect, the elite Republican consultant class recognizes that this baggage-filled first-time candidate should have had the same team in place since the summer of 2021.Up until June 2022, however, Walker was taking meetings with some of the top consultants in D.C., some of whom told me that they were nervous about working for him. Meanwhile, stories trickled out about staffers not knowing whether to believe his denials. “It’s just inevitable that something like this was going to drop,” the former aide said. “Your secrets don’t stay inside the campaign; everybody knew there were serious situations with kids, with women. The volume was so high from spidey senses, and internal chatter. This doesn’t shock me a bit.”
More than McConnell, the ghostly presence hanging over Walker’s campaign is Trump. He literally called on Walker to run, attracted to his celebrity and athletic skill, even though most of the Republican establishment was aware that Walker’s past would become their future. The donor class, increasingly agitated with Trump and his imprint on the Republican party this cycle, is starting to see this as a mark on him. “It’s wildly unfortunate that this is who Trump picked out, because there were lots of people who were better. If you lose Georgia, it’s an indictment on Trump,” said a consultant who advises major G.O.P. donors. “If we lose Georgia and thus do not take the U.S. senate majority back, it’s 100 percent the fault of Donald Trump. That’s two back-to-back elections in Georgia where Trump will have cost the Senate majority. Period.”
For now, Trump’s new super PAC, MAGA Inc., has not shelled out to help Walker, despite announcing today that they were buying ads in Ohio to help J.D. Vance. The Trump philosophy has long been that he gave these candidates their wings with his endorsement and he doesn’t need to back it up with a check, even if the resulting power vacuum has allowed McConnell to step in and save the day with ad dollars….
The consensus is that it will be a tight race regardless of the revelation, maybe down to a few hundred votes. According to someone with knowledge of internal polls, G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp was leading Stacey Abrams by 7 to 8 points a couple weeks ago, meaning that he was always going to carry along Walker, who was fundamentally tied with incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock until this scandal. To Democrats, Walker has always been a riddle. “It’s the best chance we have because he’s a loose-cannon gaffe machine with a checkered past with who-knows-what skeletons inside it,” said one Democratic strategist. “It’s also our worst chance, because he’s still a hero to some people in that state, to the University of Georgia, and he does resonate with a lot of Black voters. If Stacey is going to lose and Warnock is the top of the ticket, can she bring everyone across the finish line? Is she strong enough to do that?”…
Protecting Elections in Key States
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
How the fuck does Walker resonate with black voters?
Also, Georgia peeps, do you get any sense that the those internal polls with Kemp up by 7-8% are correct?
SpaceUnit
I’m increasingly skeptical of political polling. I suspect that the people most likely to answer a survey call are MAGA boomers who can’t wait to shout something they heard on Fox News into the phone.
Warnock pulled it off two years ago and Walker is one of the worst candidates I’ve ever seen.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I thought Walker was against aborting
JPL
Stacey has a great get out the votes crew. Let’s hope the magic happens again. Most like Warnock would have to win in a runoff.
JPL
Stacey has a great get out the votes crew. Let’s hope the magic happens again. Most likely Warnock would have to win in a runoff.
JPL
BTW taking care of a very active 14-month-old boy is really hard. Good Night Moon!
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I know, right? The author of the article is doing the “tell us you’re not Black without saying you’re not Black”.
HumboldtBlue
All those fucking words when she could have typed out “the national media is bereft of integrity and willing to follow the easiest path to a story and on the way never hold a Republican to any standard they viciously hold Dems to.”
sdhays
Dump’s family standing by him didn’t mean shit. The Republican leadership calculated that they couldn’t cut Donnie off after Access Hollywood and save their Congressional majorities. So they just pretended it didn’t happen, didn’t matter.
It worked, so there is no longer any pressure to do anything else. They don’t fear a backlash from such cynicism – even if he loses, he’s not going to take down others in the party. 2016 proved, to the Republican elite, that they had no reputation to protect. And they found it liberating.
MomSense
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It’s fucking unconscionable that Walker is a candidate for the United States Senate. This isn’t just farcical or embarrassing. This is absolutely unacceptable. It’s a GD outrage. The man is deeply troubled and unwell.
trollhattan
@sdhays: Still say Ivana was starting to at last dish on Trump when she blunt-force trauma’d her way down those stairs.
Sasha
Cartoon should’ve read “He’ll protect our children from Democrats.”
JPL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Polls are showing him with less support among blacks than the current Governor. Stacey for some reason is not exciting her base. They have to get out the vote. Voting starts in ten days here.
Now if this tweet is correct, Walker will lose what little black support he has. Even conservative blacks loved Lewis. link
sab
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Aborting v child support for 18 years? Lots of men hae found that to be a dilemma.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: Yeah, you forget.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
oatler
I think there are brains controlling the money behind Walker, and that the brains knew who he was and how he would act in this election, and that he would be defeated.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That is awesome.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@JPL:
Interesting, and absolutely disgusting he stole that story from Lewis. Do you any ideas why Abrams appears to be not exciting her base?
eclare
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: So glad Joe is bringing attention to R’s asking for money that they voted against. IMHO he could be a little angrier about it.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Eli is visiting until late Sunday afternoon. My son is hoping that I’ll agree to keep him December so they can visit NYC and see the lights with my niece and her husband. It’s not looking good, but in fairness we both have colds.
If I can get five hours of sleep, I’ll survive.
wmd
I flew through Atlanta this week. Kemp’s TV advertising:
(paraphrased) Abrams is not working for Georgians, she’s working for liberal elites.
Not sure how well that works unless the viewer is driven by grievance and pwning the libs.
Roe may make for some surprises.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MomSense:
💯
JPL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I can just speculate, but Kemp defined her early as being more interested in possibly running for president, than governor. I was surprised she held back because she has a good message. Because Kemp did not expand Medicare, hospitals are closing, including a large one in Atlanta.
Scout211
Not exactly Republicans in disarray, but Republicans trying to control women’s bodies are temporarily stopped in Ohio. Link
Frank Wilhoit
@oatler: To what end?
eclare
@JPL: Coffee works wonders!
eclare
@JPL: Which hospital in Atlanta?
JPL
@eclare: Wellstar and so now the only hospital with a major trauma center is Emory. Kemp didn’t use the money Obama offered to open more clinics, so hospital emergency rooms are being used as primary care doctors.
Baud
@JPL:
Still never understood why that hasn’t been a bigger issue for voters.
oatler
@Frank Wilhoit:
I don’t know, Frank. I’ve got some half-baked notions playing hopscotch in my noggin, but i don’t know.
eclare
@JPL: I don’t remember Wellstar, but that’s awful. Memphis has maybe 15-20% of Atlanta’s population, but the same number of Level One trauma centers.
Wait, Grady doesn’t have one?
Ken
@trollhattan: Did we ever find out who released that one page of Trump’s tax returns back in 2016? There was speculation it was one of the (ex-)wives, though that’s just because they would have had access to the return.
Jackie
A question I’ve been pondering these last few days: “Dr” Oz has been hammering Fetterman as unfit to be a senator due to his stroke causing mental problems – which is total BS. How does he square Herschel Walker’s fitness to be a senator in spite of Walker’s self admitted mental illness? Or is it apples vs oranges?
raven
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes
raven
@eclare: I went there for an appointment this spring and it was weird, the place seemed deserted.
dww44
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: At yesterday’s campaign event in a small town less than 25 miles from the bit larger town Walker grew up in, there were NO black people standing around him and this is an overwhelmingly Black part of the state, albeit a rural one. The NYT interviewed black residents in his hometown. None of them are voting for him. As one noted the only Walker signs are in the white part of town. Same here about 70 miles west of there. The only Herschel signs are on white driven vehicles.
The only Blacks who will vote for him are either not politically aware or are of the same mindset. It will be sweet justice if somehow Warnock wins comfortably with an incontestable margin. The GOP deserves to be hoisted on its own petard.
raven
@eclare: She meant Grady.
Baud
@dww44:
And you know the NYT was looking hard for black Walker voters.
raven
@dww44: We drove through there last month and can confirm.
eclare
@raven: Wow. When I lived there Grady was where the bad car wrecks, gunshot victims, etc went. What a shame.
Scout211
That’s an accurate description of current Republican campaign tactics these days. Nothing matters except the narrative. Spin, spin, spin and throw sh*t and see what sticks. If anything sticks, throw it again. If any spin works, keep spinning. That’s it.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@raven:
@JPL:
I got the impression from here that Stacey Abrams was a strong candidate and that even if she didn’t win, she’d at least make it close. That’s really disappointing considering how close she was in 2018 and I hope, if these poll numbers are true, she doesn’t pull down Warnock
Hopefully her campaign can GOTV
raven
@eclare: I spent two months in there in 1975 when I broke my back. I was really lucky to have the Emory Orthopods work on me.
raven
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Our friend is hosting her next week but I’m not sure what good it’s going to do to have her working the crowd in Athens.
HumboldtBlue
John S.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Polling in the last few election cycles has been wildly inaccurate. It’s going to be a tight race regardless of what the polls say.
piratedan
I’m gonna go ahead and fully embrace my conspiracy theory personal bias on all of this polling….
I’m suspecting that they’re not polling many minorities, I fully expect that the framing of said polling is using GOP position points as their “mile-markers” for candidates… i.e. which is more important to you, the price of gas versus infrastructure spending yadda yadda yadda…
perhaps I’m too cynical, but I’m beginning to believe that the narratives are all baked in and its all designed to depress Dem turnout and messaging.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Most black people, immigrants etc., are pragmatic voters they can’t afford to vote based on whims or feels like the demographic considered the default does.
West of the Rockies
I’ve grown to despise Walker, a guy I had no opinion on a year ago.
He is so dishonest, hypocritical, vain, and stupid. I hope he loses and returns to national anonymity.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): What is your feel about Tim Ryan from your neck of our woods. Doesn’t matter much since statewide race, but I am still curious.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Blanchard is the current Mrs Walker
this seems to be the woman from a couple of days ago, not the one we found about today (right? it’s all a blur)
ETA: Alex Wagner just said there are three new Walker stories in the last two hours
sab
@schrodingers_cat: The weird thing is that Indian Americans used to be solid Republican voters and now they vote like black voters.
America is a big complicated mix of people. Why I love being one of us, but really frustrating for elections. Especially in Ohio.
JMG
It’s hard to beat any incumbent Governor, Republican or Democrat, unless the incumbent is mired in super major scandal a la Walker. Unfortunately for Abrams, this is even more so when it’s a rematch. Not impossible, just very very difficult.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JMG: also ’18 was a wave year for Dems, and if you’re an R or R-leaner looking for one of them fancy “permission structures” to vote that way, trump made Purdue his face in this race, Rs can tell themselves Kemp isn’t like that
PaulB
Regarding the polls, I think at this point that all you can do with the polls is monitor movement over time rather than assuming that the numbers from any given snapshot are accurate.
I can easily make an argument that the polls are under-counting Republican votes, that Republican voters are highly motivated to turn out (inflation, crime, border, low Biden popularity, mid-term after a new president takes office, etc.), and that you should add a few points in the red direction to most of the polls. I could just as easily make the same argument in the opposite direction for different reasons (abortion, jobs, foreign policy, Biden’s rising popularity, godawful Republican candidates, Trump, etc.), meaning that you should add a few points in the blue direction. Which is accurate we will not, and cannot, know until the actual election.
I’m *really* skeptical that the pollsters have worked out all of their issues and now have the secret sauce that allows them to return to their former reasonably accurate numbers, and that they now have a good handle on who the “likely voters” are.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: Are you sure? I know that’s the image because the conservative R voters are more vocal. But if you look at the data from Bill Clinton onwards (before that the % of South Asians was too miniscule to have good stats) Ds have been easily winning the Indian American and even the greater South Asian vote by 70-30.
Kelly
The real reason Biden is pardoning imprisoned marijuana users.
newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/biden-releases-marijuana-offenders-from-prison-to-make-room-for-…
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Only the best people
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
I don’t see many signs for Ryan for whatever that’s worth, but not very many for Vance either from what I can tell. I’ve not been very good at predicting local elections. It confused the hell out of me that Trump lost to Clinton in my county by 3% in 2016 yet won in 2020 by about 1 or 2%. I would’ve thought Biden, being a white Democrat, would’ve been a clear winner. I assumed that it was so close because it was Hillary. And misogyny of course. But no, apparently wasn’t.
There’s been a shift locally since 2018. The Mahoning Valley used to be a Democratic stronghold, and while the local Dems have tended to be corrupt conservadems, they were at the very least sane. The local paper was bought out by a media outfit from West Virginia. The editors are terrible. I remember back in 2020, the editor-in-chief wrote a column apologizing to readers about not treating the Hunter Biden laptop story as important or something to that effect. It was despicable.
At the county level, the offices remain in Dem hands, aside from the county auditor, but I wonder how long that will last. There aren’t any serious challengers to the incumbent state office Rs in the area. Many of the local businesses in the area have Republican campaign signs in front of them, mostly for Rulli and Cutrona.
Sometimes, I just want to go into these businesses to confront them and scream at them about how they’re supporting people trying to dismantle American democracy.
So, I don’t have my hopes up, tbh. I think this state has taken a hard right turn even compared to before. The population getting older and shrinking has something to do with it I think.
But l could be wrong! Like I said, I don’t have a especially good feel for my area politically and I’ve been terrible at predictions
A lot of customers today were complaining about high gas prices today and saying “It would only get worse”. My efforts to be upbeat and say nobody knows the future were rebuffed
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Perdue
trnc
Just to be clear, you’re saying that dem donors have infiltrated Walker’s fundraising team?
eclare
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That article is stunning. What a reprehensible person.
James E Powell
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The right-wingers are way more energized than Democrats or Democratic leaning neutrals. Their primary motivation is their hatred of the rest of us. This is not dependent upon any issue, candidate character flaw, the economy, or the state of the world.
The voters we need are so disconnected from reality that they will not vote or vote Republican because of the price of gas or some other thing that will not change with Republicans in power.
Stacey Abrams may have hit the infamous glass ceiling. I am sure there are plenty of complaints about her hair, voice, laugh, clothing choice, and other matters critical to effective governance.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@James E Powell:
Where’s your evidence of this? Several folks here have said that Dobbs has radicalized many women. There’s evidence of this in the form of the vote in Kansas as well as jumps in women being registered as Democrats in several states
WaterGirl
@piratedan:
I don’t think you’re being too cynical. Rs are working on every level to suppress turnout, in ways legal and illegal, and most of the mainstream media is complicit.
We need to work our asses off, and donate everything we can. Time and money. We have to be all in.
Tony G
@West of the Rockies: Until a year ago, I remembered Walker only as a guy who used to play football a long time ago. What a pathetic, repulsive man he is.
Jay
The extraordinary move by Uvalde school leaders to suspend campus police operations — one month into a new school year in the south Texas community — underscored the sustained pressure that families of some of the 19 children and two teachers killed in the May 24 attack have kept on the district.
cbc.ca/news/world/uvalde-campus-police-shooting-suspended-1.6610287
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Instead of Walker, Dump should have run one of his cronies who have integrity, some like Brett Favre or Ray Lewis
Tony G
@sdhays: It should always be remembered that the Access Hollywood scandal was derailed and sent to the Memory Hole by the deliberate, successful attempt by His Holiness Saint Julian Assange and “comedian” Randy Credico to assist Trump’s campaign by colluding with Roger Fucking Stone, of all people. There are elements of “The Left” who are happy to help people like Stone and Trump, and Assange is a prime example of that.
HumboldtBlue
As with everything else in the GOP, the Walker story has no bottom.
The lies, the deceiving, the dishonesty are off the charts.
dww44
@Baud: because they don’t believe in socialized medicine
Tony G
@Tony G:
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Late here. I might be very wrong.
Joseph Patrick Lurker
Important FYI Don Lemon’s final broadcast in the 10 pm time slot
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Joseph Patrick Lurker: huh, was that sudden? I don’t watch CNN but I hadn’t seen any news about that
oatler
@trnc:
I didn’t mean Dem donors, more like Murdoch and his kind.
Another Scott
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: The usual playbook is for the GQP to run someone with a similar skin tone, similar sex chromosomes, and a similar name, just to be sure:
Rev Raphael G Warnock vs Rev Raphael D Warnock!!1
:-/
TFG blew up that calculus by demanding that Walker run (so only 2 of the 3 this time). :-/
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Scout211
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No, it was announced earlier. They are just moving him to a morning show.
BigJimSlade
What’s Puck? Reminds me of the morning rock radio where a hockey topic was being discussed, leading to one of them saying… “Get the puck outta here!“
El Muneco
@eclare: There’s only one Level One trauma center in the state of Washington, which is right between TN and GA in population, so I guess that’s the rubric…
dave319
@Frank Wilhoit: I didn’t get that either. Some kind of booby trap that takes MAGA off the board? Not supported by evidence.
Nelson
I’m not sure where to go with this (Betty Cracker, maybe), but as it’s election related I’ll put it here.
I just got my mail-in ballot for Florida’s 6th congressional district. Two things:
So my only options for congressman are a Republican or a Libertarian. We had a Democratic primary which included Democratic candidates for the house, but the only thing I can find online is that Democratic candidate Matt Bell was “disqualified or withdrawn”. No further explanation that I can find.
I live in Volusia county and we were redistricted for the 2020 election; maybe there was some residency requirements that disqualified Bell after the redistricting.
I tried reading the FL state statute for write-in candidates but to me, not being a lawyer, it appears that anybody that qualified for the primary, Republican or Democrat, should be eligible for a write-in.
Can anybody with more insight into Florida politics tell me what’s going on here.
Nelson
@Nelson: I meant the 2022 election