Raphael Warnock’s win over Herschel Walker is bigger than politics

In the Georgia race for U.S. Senate, Raphael Warnock was a very good candidate, and Herschel Walker was a particularly awful one. We don’t need the results of Tuesday’s runoff election to reach that conclusion.

And in a state that Democrats almost never win, Warnock did, adding to Democrats' lead in the Senate in the process. Given Georgia’s history, any kind of a nail-biter should be seen as a positive for Democrats and a negative for Republicans.

Clearly, Georgia’s demographics are changing in ways that benefit Democrats. However, in 2020 and 2021, when Warnock forced Sen. Kelly Loeffler into a January 2021 runoff and then won it, his fortunes were believed to have been boosted by widespread exasperation with then-President Donald Trump. Then, they were boosted by Trump himself, who’d just lost to Joe Biden, and who may have helped drive down Republican turnout with his lie that Georgia’s elections were rigged against the GOP.