WAIT! WAIT! GEORGIA’S OVER?
As the sun sinks over Georgia, we bid adieu to the Senate runoff election that seems to have been contested since the beginning of time.
Yes, dinosaurs once ruled the Earth and Senate candidate Herschel Walker probably has a theory about how they could be killed by a werewolf. Or maybe a vampire.
This certainly was a race to remember. But now it’s over; Georgia very rightly decided that Sen. Raphael Warnock, an estimable candidate, was better for the job than a guy who couldn’t seem to be clear about how many children he’d fathered or abortions he’d paid for.
But … Wait! Wait! Warnock got only a little more than 51% of the vote. That means more than 1.7 million Georgians thought it’d be a better plan to have a senator whose theory on global warming is: “Don’t we have enough trees?”
Let’s face it: Warnock was running against one of the worst candidates in modern American history. Who once referred to the upcoming election as an “erection.”
Warnock, a much-respected minister at Martin Luther King’s old church, had served in the Senate with dignity. (His maiden speech was a call for — what could be more daring? — making it easier for people to exercise the right to vote.) His campaign was as dignified as Walker’s was … not. You’d think he’d at least win by 4 or 5 points.
But Georgia’s election is part of the “Wait! Wait! There’s More!” theme that’s been dominating our politics lately.
You think this is all because of Donald Trump?
Well, the Walker candidacy sure was. How many times have we heard about Trump first noticing Walker’s great gifts when the young man joined the United States Football League, of which Trump was a great team owner, running it into the ground?
OK, forget the football stuff. That’s hardly core to Trump’s identity, which he’s always assured us is that of a great businessman.
Wait! Wait! (You knew that was coming, right?) This week the Trump Organization was found guilty of tax fraud and other assorted crimes, including giving free off-the-books-don’t-tell-the-IRS cars and apartments and cash to top employees.
But wait, wait … there are other potential crimes under investigation. What about the whole Mar-a-Lago classified records thing?
Those papers were all supposed to go to the National Archives, right? Yeah, but the Trumpians will assure you that we’ve moved far away from the central matter of the Donald’s identity as a wealth-building genius. Snatching up official presidential documents and stashing them in your private home has nothing to do with bad business practices whatsoever.
In this time of wait-wait, whatever we thought yesterday turns out to be way less interesting and less awful than what we learn today.
You just get used to smiling vaguely when a reporter asks whether you think it’s strange that the former president was hanging out with an antisemitic rapper and an antisemitic white supremacist. Or why he said nobody would be able to get a turkey for Thanksgiving. And you’re feeling you’ve got things pretty well in hand and then — wait, wait! He just called for terminating the Constitution.
We’ve been going down this road a long time, folks. I don’t know about you, but I just want to forget about Georgia and Senate races and get back to thinking about a future when we’ll have different stuff to talk about.
Wait, wait — stuff like the next presidential election? Trump tooting his horn a trillion times a day while folks like the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, try to help you really get to know them. You’re going to see so much of those folks, Herschel Walker will begin to seem like an old pal you should have invited on a trip to the Catskills.
OK, maybe not. But I hear Joe Biden’s pretty much got his hat in the ring. How many times a day are we going to have to hear Republicans mention the possibility of an 86-year-old in the White House?
Gee, at this very moment, that doesn’t sound terrible at all.