Three-way hammering proves Donald Trump is a loser

Another huge blow for the dystopian vision of the former president for his party, himself and the American nation.

Herschel Walker concedes defeat at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, Georgia, on Tuesday night. Picture: AFP

The defeat of Donald Trump’s hand-picked Republican candidate, Herschel Walker, for the Senate run-off in Georgia, and the triumph of Democrat Raphael Warnock, is another huge blow for the dystopian vision of the former president for his party, himself and the American nation.

In conventional terms, Walker was one of the worst candidates the Republicans have ever fielded for the Senate. He won the Republican primary entirely because of Trump’s enthusiastic backing.

This is a three-way hammering for Trump.

First, Walker was Trump’s candidate and he is a very Trumpian kinda guy. A non-political celebrity with a colossally disturbed personal life, a string of distressed wives, mistresses and hostile children in the background, no discernible political ideas before running for election, no real interest in policy, an instinct nonetheless to fight the left of politics, a willingness to embrace positions at odds with his own life and behaviour, and above all a sycophantic loyalty to Trump himself.

The result was that Republicans won Georgia statewide races when non-Trump candidates ran, such as Brian Kemp’s convincing win in the recent governor’s race, but lost the critical Senate election with a Trump candidate.

This is a big and consequential win for Democrats. They had already kept control of the Senate, but will now have a clear 51-49 majority on the Senate floor.

The single centrist Democrat, Joe Manchin, can no longer hold out against the Biden White House on his own because even if he opposes a measure, a 50-50 tied vote will be resolved by Vice-President Kamala Harris’s casting vote.

All of this should have motivated Georgia voters to limit Biden’s Senate power, but the Trump factor was a decisive negative for Republicans.

At a time when the US economy is struggling, inflation is killing, and the vast majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track under Biden, voters still won’t vote for Trumpian Republicans.

As happened in the 2020 elections, tens (or, in the national elections, hundreds) of thousands of voters supported mainstream Republicans but refused to support Trump or his acolytes.

Walker’s electoral loss makes it clear – Trump is an election liability for Republicans.

Secondly, Trump is hurting the Republican Party in a quite technical way.

Trump bases his absurd conspiracy theories about stolen elections on absentee, postal and advance votes being counted separately from votes cast on election day. He would prefer all votes, or nearly all, to be cast on election day. That’s a reasonable position for which I have considerable sympathy.

But there is nothing in early votes to suggest the slightest basis in Trump’s crazy conspiracy theories. However, in order to keep validating this conspiracy theory, Trump urges Republicans not to vote in advance or by mail. As a ­result, Republicans don’t organise hard for early votes. Democrats do.

This gives Democrats an enormous advantage. They know who has already voted so don’t need to campaign further among these people. They can help voters who need physical assistance getting to the polls. They just have a much longer period in which to gather votes.

This is an entirely self-inflicted disadvantage for Republicans. It’s not the only part of the Trump persona that is self-defeating and more or less just nuts.

Finally, Trump this week said the election “theft” in 2020 was so vast that constitutional rules should be set aside.

This is insane, disgraceful and carries Trump’s already wild narcissism to a whole new level.

Many accusations made against Trump are not true, or greatly exaggerated. Not in this case. Trump explicitly called for the laws and provisions of the US Constitution to be breached.

Trump has fully earned the sobriquet he most loathes. Trump is a loser.