“Warnock is the most radical and dangerous leftist candidate to seek this position, and certainly in the state of Georgia, and he does not have his values,” Trump said at his rally in Dalton, Georgia, on Monday.
However, Trump fails to define Georgia’s values. Voters made that clear in November, when Biden won the state – a result the president continues to question without foundation. Georgia’s population, and perhaps its values with it, is changing. The state’s Latin American and Asian American populations are growing, and the suburbs are attracting younger, moderate voters with higher education as well.
Perhaps this is why the candidate Warnock sounds less like the preacher Warnock and more like Stacey Abrams, the Democrat from Georgia whose electoral participation strategy specifically emphasizes multiculturalism rather than blackness.
Abrams, in a recent interview, said he tries not to focus on one group at the expense of another when talking about how Georgia has become a Democratic bright spot.
“I want us to make it very clear that this requires investment and support from several communities,” said Ms. Abrams. “This is a multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational coalition. And as we give primacy to one group to the exclusion of the other, I get nervous. “
However, Warnock’s attempt to go from black pastor to black senator is an exercise in a different kind of faith: it is the belief that American politics can change from the inside, that the most loyal Democratic voters can see themselves represented in Congress. That there is room to boost the country within its institutions, instead of diagnosing its problems from the outside.
The latter is something that black shepherds, who traditionally say unpleasant truths, have been doing for centuries. The black senator is a singular road, occupied by few people in American history and none in Georgia.