Georgia gave us REM and The B-52s, delicious peaches, yummy Vidalia onions, and now may give us a historic Senate

By Hal Brown

Archives are on the right

This story is dedicated to my dear friend who lives in a town of 200 which is about 20 miles south of, and 200 years back in time, from Athens, Georgia.

Georgia has pleased the pallet of the nation with delicious peaches and Vidalia onions, and rocked out with Athens based bands REM and the B-52s

 Less known nationally is that way back in 1987 a group of Athens residents who attended a forum on AIDS at the University of Georgia in February 1987. The group initiated AIDS Athens which is still active today (website here). The year is significant. Consider this from the CDC Museum website:

 The first year of the AIDS epidemic seemed isolated to a few individuals in a few cities, so it received little media attention. When cases were reported in infants and people with hemophilia, widespread panic struck Americans. Those with AIDS were often stigmatized. In 1985, Ryan White, a teenage hemophiliac living in Indiana, contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. Parents in his community feared he would expose their children to AIDS, resulting in Ryan being barred from attending school.

In 1986, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued the Surgeon General’s Report on AIDS. In it, he called for a comprehensive program of sex and AIDS education, urged the widespread use of condoms, and dispelled myths that HIV could be spread by mosquitoes. In 1987, CDC launched an unprecedented national campaign, America Responds to AIDS (ARTA). The goal of ARTA was to increase awareness and understanding of AIDS, to prevent HIV infection, and to encourage people to seek more information and counseling. CDC also began a program to support HIV prevention efforts with national minority organizations that provided HIV prevention expertise to community-based organizations, developed HIV prevention programs targeting minorities, especially African Americans and Hispanics, and supported groups that used culturally sensitive AIDS prevention programs to address their communities’ needs.

I don't know if it was the first such organization in the nation but it certainly was among the first.

Of course Georgia also gave us Martin Luther King and Jimmy Carter.

Now we have something else that Georgia may give us thanks to the decisions by the state's Republican leadership to back Herschel Walker for Senate. They can read a pie chart:

Had they managed to find someone they thought could be a great male white to run against Senator Warnock they surely would have lost decisively 

As it happened thanks to a deviously disruptive independent running as a Libertarian by Oliver Chase there will now be a runoff election.

Now the Republicans are saddled by one of the worst Senate candidates in recent history. Not only is Walker woefully ignorant and beset with trying to deal with what one could call his women problem,  he is unstable and unpredictable. The GOP is saddled with a candidate prone to putting his hoof in his mouth, an impossible contortion for a horse but something Walker manages to do on a regular basis.

One obvious result of a Warnock win is that it will diminish the power Sen. Manchin has. It also has major ramifications for the appointment of judges, including Justices to the Supreme Court should a vacancy occur. This is from Reuters:

If Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock were to win the Dec. 6 Georgia runoff election against Republican challenger Herschel Walker, that would expand Democrats' majority to 51-49. That would give Democrats an additional edge in passing the few bills that are able to advance with a simple majority of votes, instead of the 60 needed for most legislation.

It would also dilute the influence of Democratic Senators Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, "swing" votes who have blocked or delayed some of Biden's major initiatives, including expansions of some social programs.

I will leave it to the pundits to elaborate on what else a one seat advantage in the Senate will mean for legislation. One additional thing is that the power sharing agreement of a 50/50 split would no longer apply (read more). 

Suffice say it is so significant that the Republicans have no choice but to go all in on supporting Walker and holding their collective breath that he doesn't say something totally cray-cray or have an accusation leveled against him that he can't lie his way out of.

Update: News like this can't thrill Republicans:

Excerpt:

"Now let me tell you this here: If we was ready for the green agenda, I'd raise my hand right now," he said. "But we're not ready right now! So don't let them fool you like this is a new agenda, this is not a new agenda! We're not prepared, we're not ready right now! What we need to do is keep having these gas-guzzling cars, because we got the good emissions under those cars. We're doing the best thing that we can!"

This is not the first time that Walker has spoken confusingly about energy and environmental policy.

Earlier this year, for example, Walker seemed to suggest that China was taking America's "good air" and replacing it with "bad air."

"Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move," Walker said. "So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got we to clean that back up."

See my related Walker story:

If DeSantis or another wins the GOP primary would Trump run as an independent? You bet your sweet ass he would.

By Hal Brown

As speculation that Trump is not a shoo-in for the Republican nomination grows like kudzu on steroids I wonder what would happen if Ron DeSantis or another Republican became the nominee. 

DeSantis seems poised to vanquish both Trump more so every week if not every day.  Other aspirants for the nomination may be waiting in the wings should DeSantis stumble, but my bet is that there's a 50% chance he'll beat Trump.

This is from Jamelle Boule in The NY Times (subscription)

The first assumption is: 

The idea that Republican elites could simply swap Trump for another candidate without incurring any serious damage rests on two assumptions: First, that Trump’s supporters are more committed to the Republican Party than they are to him, and second, that Trump himself will give up the fight if he isn’t able to win the party’s nomination.

This is the second:

This gets to the second assumption: the idea that Trump would go quietly if he lost the nomination to DeSantis or another rival. Donald Trump might have been a Republican president, but he isn’t really a Republican. What I mean is that he shows no particular commitment to the fortunes of the party as an institution. His relationship to the Republican Party is purely instrumental. He also cannot admit defeat, as you may have noticed.

There is a real chance that Trump, if he loses the nomination, decides to run for president as an independent. And if he pulls any fraction of his supporters away from the Republican Party, he would play the spoiler, no matter who the party tried to elevate against him. Republican elites might be done with Trump, but Trump is not done with the Republican Party.

If this should happen Trump has two choices. One is to accept defeat with grace and dignity. This doesn't sound like any version of Donald Trump I've ever observed. The other is to claim victory (be assured he'd find a way to do this) and run as an independent. 

Think of the fun he'd have, all the rallies of rabid MAGA fans waving flags depicting an even more badass Trump. I can see one with him dressed as a gladiator with one metal clad boot on Sleepy Joe Biden's neck and the other on the neck of Ron DeSantimonious as he raised a mighty sword towards Heaven. 

If he floated the idea with Republicans for their input this would be irrelevant unless they enthusiastically agreed with the decision he'd already made. The sensible Republicans know how many of his MAGA cult would vote for him would try to dissuade him from doing this. How do you spell spoiler?

Trump would listen to sycophants like Boris Epstein and Steve Bannon who desperately want to remain in his favor. Who knows what Sean Hannity would tell Trump if Murdoch told him to zip it?

Trump is driven by revenge and resentment and wouldn't give a tinker's damn whether he was a spoiler and single handedly destroyed the prospects for a Republican victory. 

The race itself would be a delight for Democrats because the Republican, let's assume it's DeSantis, would have to attack both President Biden and Donald Trump. Likewise Trump would have to attack both of them. Biden would be sitting in the catbird seat because he could just run on his accomplishments which by mid-2023 should be readily apparent.

Trump was always a Republican of convenience has because he has no central political philosophy. He knew that the only party that had a both a contingent which would welcome his racist dog whistles, fascism, and authoritarianism and another larger group that would go along with whatever he wanted to achieve their own agenda from appointing Supreme Court Justices to cutting taxes for the rich

Trump has no loyalty to the party. His only loyalty is to the party of one. There's no political science or punditry. My calculation is based on only on understand the psychology of Donald Trump.

You only have to look up malignant narcissism in Wikipedia to understand why the syndrome's exemplar or paradigm would behave this way:

Malignant narcissism is a psychological syndrome comprising an extreme mix of narcissism, antisocial behavior, aggression, and sadism Grandiose, and always ready to raise hostility levels, the malignant narcissist undermines families and organizations in which they are involved, and dehumanizes the people with whom they associate.

Malignant narcissism could include aspects of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) alongside a mix of antisocial, paranoid and sadistic personality disorder traits. The importance of malignant narcissism and of projection as a defense mechanism has been confirmed in paranoia, as well as "the patient's vulnerability to malignant narcissistic regression". A person with malignant narcissism exhibits paranoia in addition to the symptoms of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Because a malignant narcissist's personality cannot tolerate any criticism, being mocked typically causes paranoia.

On another, but very related issue, there's the questions as to whether Ron DeSantis would resign from his position as governor (as it appears he might but not necessarily have to do if he runs for president,  see "If DeSantis wins and runs for president, would he have to resign as governor? There are options.")

I think in his grandiosity and his blind ambition this is how much he cares for the people of Florida as long as he doesn't needs their votes for governor. 

If he resigns he knows they'd still vote for him for president in a primary or general election. Florida has two senators, Marco Rubio who just easily won his bid for reelection over Val Demmings, and Rick Scott whose term expires in January of 2025.

If he doesn't become president I can see DeSantis running and winning against Scott in the GOP primary. The newly minted Sen. DeSantis could command a national stage, thus keeping him as a viable Republican candidate for president down the road.

I see nothing in his personality that indicates DeSantis would have any compunction about kicking a wounded Donald Trump while he was down even if polls showed Trump held an edge over him. 

He knows that unless Trump can been using Adrenochrome, which according to QAnon, is being harvested by liberal elites from the blood of kidnapped children and can confer immortality on those who use it, he can run for president without Trump getting in his way in the following presidential election.

It is worth noting what Frank Bruni wrote in his NY Times Opinion essay published in a subscriber only newsletter:

Tweeted by his wife, Casey, with the apparent expectation that it would draw notice and go viral, it casts DeSantis not merely as a model and promoter of selected (and selective) religious principles — that’s commonplace for Republican leaders — but as a divine instrument, a holy messenger, fashioned precisely into his current form and set specifically on his present mission by God.

In little more than 90 seconds, its unseen narrator mentions “God” 10 times, beginning with the assertion that “on the eighth day” God gazed at a newly created world and decided that it needed a protector. “So God made a fighter,” the narrator says — sonorously, somberly. That’s the ad’s refrain, intoned again and again, and accompanied each time by a shining, commanding image of DeSantis.

also:

Early this week, Trump suggested to a group of reporters that he had dirt on DeSantis and was prepared to spill it. “If he did run,” Trump said, “I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife.”

That’s highly unlikely to deter DeSantis, given how celestially high on himself he is. He brings to his political ambitions not just the customary cockiness but a more sinister zeal and grandiosity. No wonder he gets under Trump’s skin. They’re megalomaniacs of a feather.