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      Where Trump Stands in Early (Very Early) 2024 Polls

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      The former president’s support has not collapsed. But Republican voters appear strikingly open to another Florida-based politician.Donald Trump’s support in the Republican Party has not collapsed, and perhaps it never will. But a look at the major polls taken since Election Day suggests that the ice is shifting beneath his feet.The data also shows Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida gaining ground in hypothetical 2024 matchups, even though he has yet to declare his intentions.And it underscores the careful line any presidential hopeful must walk with Republican voters; whatever they might think about Trump’s third bid for the White House, there’s little evidence of a clear anti-Trump majority that wants to repudiate him altogether.One of the sharpest articulations of this point I’ve seen came from Nate Hochman, a conservative writer. “If DeSantis allows himself to be defined as the Never Trump — or even the anti-Trump — candidate, he will be permanently discredited in the eyes of many of the voters he needs to win,” Hochman wrote in an essay for Unherd. “If he can convince those voters that he is the next step in the MAGA movement, he may just have a chance.”As Hochman noted in an interview, that will be a far harder trick to pull off when DeSantis actually enters the arena against Trump and the attacks start flying. And he won’t be facing the former president alone, or at least not right away.“In some ways, Trump is in a stronger position now than he was in 2015,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio.A methodological note: Keep in mind that the margin of error goes up whenever you’re looking at smaller subsamples like this. So don’t take the numbers themselves as definitive; focus on the overall trend lines.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Will Georgia Deal Trump Another Political Blow?

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      The former president faces serious legal jeopardy. A defeat for Herschel Walker would hardly help him with Republican voters.The polls are now closed in the Georgia runoff for Senate, and it’s time to start tallying the votes. We’re about to learn whether Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee, was able to rustle up the Election Day surge he needed to overcome Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democrat, who seems to have banked a significant lead in the early balloting.While you’re waiting for the returns to come in — follow them here, and track our live updates — dig into some reading material:Here’s an election-eve dispatch from my colleagues who have been reporting in Georgia: Maya King, Reid Epstein and Jazmine Ulloa. And here’s Jonathan Weisman’s take on the five factors that will decide the race.From Washington, Carl Hulse examines the stakes of the election within the Senate. “The potential upside for Senate Democrats and the Biden administration should their candidate prevail is far more substantial than a single vote might suggest,” he writes.And here’s some analysis from Nate Cohn, who writes that if Walker wins, “I don’t know how I would explain it. I would have to shrug my shoulders.”the former guyDonald J. Trump last month declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.Saul Martinez for The New York Times‘Watch his political altimeter’As the political world awaits the outcome in Georgia, things are moving swiftly in the legal arena, where Donald Trump faces a serious threat from Justice Department investigators. A Manhattan jury convicted his business, the Trump Organization, of tax fraud on Tuesday. And if Walker — Trump’s handpicked candidate — loses the Senate race, these seemingly disparate events could soon intersect.Trump has been hammering away at Attorney General Merrick Garland and Jack Smith, the newly appointed special counsel for two cases that could lead to the indictment of a former president for the first time in American history. Trump has cast the investigations as a political “witch hunt,” with echoes of tactics he has long used to keep Republicans in his corner.Complicating matters, Trump has announced a third presidential bid. But he is a damaged commodity, burdened by the defeats his candidates suffered in the midterm elections. His Republican critics have grown increasingly bold; polls suggest that substantial numbers of rank-and-file G.O.P. voters now agree. Will Trump’s political force field fail him this time around?And another shoe may yet drop. On Tuesday, the head of the Jan. 6 committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said the panel would “probably” make criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The committee is weighing whether to include Trump in that list.A referral from the Jan. 6 panel would be only a recommendation. But any such move would be freighted with uncertain political consequences — and it’s by no means clear how Trump’s battle for Republican hearts and minds would play out.To sift through these and other aspects of Trump’s challenges, I spoke with Glenn Thrush, a longtime political and White House reporter who now covers the Justice Department for The Times and has been tracking Garland’s moves closely. Our conversation:It sounds as if, from your reporting, Garland appointed a special prosecutor only reluctantly. What made him change his mind?I wouldn’t cast it as a change of mind by Garland so much as it was a gradual, grudging acceptance that it was an inevitable, and somewhat forced, move on a crowded chessboard with few lanes of maneuver.Garland’s aides have tried to portray the decision to pick Jack Smith as compulsory, dictated by the regulations governing the appointment of special counsels.It wasn’t. It was Garland’s choice. It was predicated on external forces rather than any deep self-examination of whether or not he was capable of investigating Trump impartially, and it chafed for the attorney general.Garland did not, notably, invoke the section of the special counsel regulation triggered by an actual conflict of interest — which Republicans have accused him of having; instead, he chose the “extraordinary circumstances” clause in the regulation.This is something a lot of people miss about Garland, whose quietude can be mistaken for passivity: He might appear to be a “smaller-than-life figure,” as one recent chronicler memorably quipped, but this is a man who once saw himself in the mirror as a Supreme Court justice, and who views himself as a capable arbiter of final resort in any case.When you talk to experts outside the Justice Department, how seriously are they taking the Mar-a-Lago documents case? Has there ever been anything like this before?The Mar-a-Lago investigation is very serious.The Jan. 6 inquiry deals more directly with Trump’s attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, but it is an extraordinarily complex case — and there are indications that prosecutors have a long way to go before even considering the kinds of charges that could eventually be brought.The documents case, which Trump has tried to shrug off as a partisan spat over paperwork, would not be an easy prosecution, either, but it is a lot more straightforward, and hence more dangerous to him in the immediate future.The government has already made it clear that it is focused on two primary possible charges, the mishandling of sensitive national security documents under the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice. One of the biggest decisions Smith is likely to face, people close to the situation have told me, would be whether to charge Trump with both — or focus on obstruction alone, with the Espionage Act as background music.It’s also possible prosecutors would bring a case alone on the mishandling of documents. But that could be problematic, especially if there is no evidence that any of the material Trump possessed actually hurt the country.Moreover, it is unlikely the department would have embarked on a high-risk criminal investigation if Trump had effectively said, “My bad,” and returned everything he had taken when the government issued a subpoena in May.Trump is running for president again, but he appears pretty wounded after his candidates did poorly in the midterm elections. Does that affect whatever pressure Garland might be under from Democrats to indict Trump? That is, if he’s politically weak, maybe there’s less of a sense on the left that he’s a real threat to become president again.Two things seem certain. Democrats are going to want Garland to indict Trump whether he is the front-runner or polling below Asa Hutchinson. Politically, you could make the case that charging Trump would create a backlash that could help him. And Garland is going to say that he is paying zero heed to politics.Enter Jack Smith, who provides Garland with thin, but not negligible, cover.While Garland technically has the ultimate say over both cases, his power is one of negation. He can reject Smith’s final recommendations, but under the special counsel regulation, he must inform Congress that he is opposing the man he picked, so it seems pretty unlikely that Garland would reject Smith’s work unless something really crazy happens.Putting your old political reporter hat back on, what’s your read on how vigorously Republicans are inclined to defend Trump and attack the Justice Department? Are you seeing any signs that some in the party are now thinking, “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Merrick Garland and Jack Smith handled this problem for us”?This is a great question. We covered the 2016 campaign together, and how many times did we predict that some Trump disaster — a debate blunder, his refusal to quickly denounce David Duke, the “Access Hollywood” tape, you name it — would finally set off a mass defection inside the party?This time might be different, but let’s withhold judgment and watch his political altimeter.Anyway, that won’t have an impact on these two investigations. Evidence will. Jack Smith and Merrick Garland won’t bring a prosecution they can’t win, and public filings indicate that the Justice Department is not close to bringing charges.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Georgia Runoff: What a Walker or Warnock Victory Would Look Like

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      Surprises are always possible, but there seem to be few reasons to think Herschel Walker can improve upon his showing last month.A voting line that stretched into the distance in Atlanta on Friday.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesMaybe it’s because I’m a former high school debater, but every few weeks I try to go through the mental exercise of imagining what I would write the day after an election — if either side won.It can be an illuminating exercise. I did this every few weeks before the 2016 general election, and I was always struck by how easy it was to write a plausible post-election story explaining how and why Donald J. Trump would win the election. This year, it was also fairly easy to imagine how Democrats would fare well. In each case, it made it straightforward to explain the eventual result, even though each case seemed less likely than not.Today’s Georgia runoff is a very different case. The election seems about as close — or even closer — than those other contests. But if the Republican Herschel Walker wins, I don’t know how I would explain it. I would have to shrug my shoulders.Of course, that doesn’t mean he can’t win. Surprises happen. Sometimes, a football team with a great record loses to a team that hasn’t won a single game, even though there’s no good reason to expect it.And in some ways, a “surprise” in the runoff wouldn’t take anything especially unusual. The polls show a close race, with the incumbent Democrat, Raphael Warnock, leading by about three percentage points. Similarly, Mr. Walker trailed by less than a percentage point in the Nov. 8 election results, and historically, the runoff electorate has sometimes been more conservative. By those measures, it wouldn’t take much at all for Mr. Walker to win.Understand the Georgia Senate RunoffHow Walker Could Win: Despite the steady stream of tough headlines for Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate, he could prevail. Here’s how.Warnock’s Record: An electric car plant outside Savannah could be the central achievement for Senator Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent. But Republicans aren’t giving him credit.Mixed Emotions: The contest might have been a showcase of Black political power in the Deep South. But many Black voters say Mr. Walker’s turbulent campaign has marred the moment.Insulin Prices: The issue is nowhere near as contentious as just about everything else raised in the race. But in a state with a high diabetes rate, it has proved a resonant topic.But it’s hard to come up with good reasons that Mr. Walker would do better in the runoff than he did a month ago, even if on any given Tuesday any candidate can win.The core issue for Mr. Walker is simple: He is a flawed and unpopular candidate, while Mr. Warnock, by contrast, is fairly popular. And unlike in the November election, the two are the only candidates on the ballot in most of the state. This poses a much greater challenge to Mr. Walker in the runoff election than it did in the general election.It’s easy to imagine several kinds of voters who backed Mr. Walker in November but who won’t be showing up this time. There’s the Republican who didn’t like Mr. Walker, but who showed up to vote for another Republican — like Brian Kemp in the governor’s race. There’s the Republican who might grudgingly vote for Mr. Walker if the Senate were on the line — as it appeared to be in November — but doesn’t think the stakes are high enough to support someone who 57 percent of voters said does not have strong moral values, according to the AP VoteCast survey.Worse for Mr. Walker, there’s reason to think these challenges have gotten worse since the Nov. 8 election. Mr. Warnock has outspent him by a wide margin on television. The polls now show Mr. Warnock doing even better than in the pre-election polls in November.The final turnout data from the November election also raises the possibility that it will be challenging for Mr. Walker to enjoy a more favorable turnout than he did last month. Turnout among previous Republican primary voters outpaced Democratic turnout, in no small part because the Black share of the electorate dipped to its lowest level since 2006. Indeed, Republican candidates won the most votes for U.S. House and the other statewide offices.In other words, there’s an argument that the electorate last month represented something more like a best-case scenario for Mr. Walker in a high-turnout election. He still didn’t win. Conversely, the early voting estimates raise the possibility that there’s some considerable upside for Mr. Warnock if the electorate looks a bit more like the ones in recent cycles. According to our estimates, the electorate is arguably consistent with one that’s a few points better for Democrats than in November.Despite a curtailed early voting window, nearly two million Georgia voters cast ballots ahead of today’s election. By our estimates, Mr. Warnock won these voters in November, 59-41, probably giving him a lead of nearly 400,000 votes.Black voters represented 32 percent of the early vote, up from 29 percent in November.But it’s hard to read too much into the early voting numbers. The restricted one-week voting period makes it impossible to directly compare the results with those of prior years. And there’s not any hard, factual basis to assert that Mr. Walker can’t overcome his deficit on Election Day.In fact, early voting and Election Day results are highly correlated — in the opposite direction. The better a party does in early voting, the worse it does on Election Day. But there’s no doubt that these numbers surpass any reasonable set of expectations that Democrats might have had. To the extent it offers any signal, it’s a good one for Mr. Warnock.The race may be close, but it’s hard to think of a good signal for Mr. Walker. More

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      The Big Question the Georgia Senate Race Will Answer

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      What’s more powerful: a candidate’s skills and relevant experience, or the tug of political partisanship?As the second-most expensive Senate race in American history approaches its climax on Tuesday, we are about to learn the answer to a question the two sides in Georgia have spent more than $400 million trying to answer: Can a former football star learn just enough about politics to oust one of the most skilled communicators in Congress?Or has Senator Raphael Warnock been sufficiently nimble in navigating a difficult political climate for Democrats to stave off his ouster?In other words, who was right? The Republicans who warned this spring that Herschel Walker was too untested and too laden with personal baggage to win, or former President Donald Trump, who bet that sports celebrity and national political headwinds would be decisive?There is ample evidence for either proposition; Georgia is very much a purple state. Their first bout ended with Warnock just shy of a majority, forcing Tuesday’s runoff election. Fewer than 40,000 votes separated the two men on Election Day.Since then, Warnock has outspent Walker, his Republican opponent, by more than two to one — running 19 unique ads compared with just six for Walker.The campaign has grown sharply negative and increasingly personal in its closing weeks, with a growing focus on Walker’s rambling speeches and his treatment of women. This weekend, NBC News broadcast an interview with Cheryl Parsa, a former romantic partner of Walker’s who accused him of threatening her with physical violence.Walker denies being violent, and he has proved remarkably resilient in light of all the information Democrats have arrayed against him. Polls show no sign that his support has collapsed.To sort through these and other themes, I chatted with Maya King, an Atlanta-based politics reporter for The New York Times:It’s pretty clear that a lot of Republicans have come to regret the fact that Herschel Walker is their nominee. What are some of the ways they’ve tried to compensate for his deficiencies as a candidate?The biggest thing Republicans have done is call in national figures to serve as “validators” of sorts for Walker. It seems that Georgia Republicans’ biggest issue with their candidate is his inability to clearly explain the policies he might champion or deliver a campaign message straying from cultural red-meat issues that appeal only to his hyper-conservative base. That’s why you see him flanked by other Republican senators like Lindsey Graham or Ted Cruz in some of his television interviews.They have also campaigned alongside him quite a bit. At a rally on Sunday, Senators John Kennedy of Louisiana and Tim Scott of South Carolina gave remarks. And while neither Donald Trump nor Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has come to Georgia to campaign with Walker, they have attached their names to fund-raising emails for him.What to Know About the Georgia Senate RunoffCard 1 of 6Another runoff in Georgia. More

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      How Herschel Walker Could Win Georgia’s Senate Race

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      Despite all the tough headlines, he could prevail. Here are two theories about how the runoff could unfold.The steady stream of tough headlines for Herschel Walker has always obscured one stubborn fact about the Senate race in Georgia: He could still win.With the runoff election just days away, the conventional wisdom holds that Senator Raphael Warnock is waltzing toward re-election against an inexperienced Republican opponent who has a thin grasp on policy issues, avoids reporters, faces serious allegations about his personal conduct and has been known to ramble on the stump. But if things were that simple, Warnock would have won handily in November.And if there’s one thing American politics keeps teaching us, it’s to be humble about predicting what voters will do. With that in mind, here are two basic ways to look at the Georgia runoff on Tuesday:The case for WarnockUnder this theory, the runoff is Warnock’s to lose.Many Republicans will stay home, the thinking goes, because they no longer believe that their vote matters much. It’s hard to make the case that 51 Democrats in the Senate, as opposed to 50, would represent some huge threat to conservative priorities and values. Denying Democrats a majority vote on Senate committees is not the kind of argument that fires up the Republican base.Runoff elections are driven by who can persuade more of their supporters to vote yet another time. And Warnock has a battle-tested turnout operation that has now performed well over three elections.The Walker campaign, by contrast, is relying on Gov. Brian Kemp — who is no longer on the ballot — to drag a weak candidate across the finish line. Senate Republicans have basically rented Kemp’s field program for the runoff, but it’s not at all clear that an operation built to turn out voters for Kemp can change gears so easily. Walker drew about 200,000 fewer votes than Kemp did, suggesting that there’s a large chunk of Republican voters who find the Senate hopeful unworthy. Forced to stand on his own two feet, Walker might crumble.Democrats are also outspending Republicans heavily down the stretch. Since Nov. 9, they’ve spent more than double what Republicans have spent on the runoff on digital and television advertising — nearly $53 million versus a little over $24 million, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. The two parties were much closer to parity in the three months before Election Day, though Democrats had a slight edge in spending.The case for WalkerThe second theory rests on the fact that Georgia is still fundamentally a right-leaning state, as this year’s blowout race for governor showed. Perhaps the state’s historical tendencies will prove decisive in the runoff, whatever Walker’s deficiencies as a candidate.Warnock finished ahead of Walker in the general election by fewer than 40,000 votes. The Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, received more than 81,000 votes — and he is not on the ballot this time. Oliver earned about 50,000 votes more than the Libertarian candidate did in the race for governor, suggesting that he was a sponge for conservatives who could not stomach Walker. If only 46 percent of Oliver’s supporters vote for the Republican this time, Warnock’s margin on Nov. 8 will be completely erased.It’s possible, too, that voters who chose Kemp but not Walker in November will change their minds — if they show up, that is. Walker drew a lower share of the vote than Kemp did, not just in metro Atlanta but also in the most conservative areas of the state. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Walker ran behind Kemp by at least six percentage points in eight counties — most of them Republican strongholds, with the exception of Cobb County.Walker’s indictment of Warnock was always a simple one: He’s another vote for President Biden’s agenda. And, Biden, with an approval rating in the 30s or low 40s, is about as popular in Georgia as the Florida Gators. So Warnock was careful, during his lone debate with Walker, not to associate himself too closely with Biden.What to Know About Georgia’s Senate RunoffCard 1 of 6Another runoff in Georgia. More

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      Georgia’s Senate Runoff Sets Records for Early Voting, but With a Big Asterisk

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      A 2021 state election law cut in half the runoff calendar in Georgia, which had about twice as many days of early voting before last year’s Senate runoffs.Georgia has eclipsed its daily record for early voting twice this week in the state’s nationally watched Senate runoff election, but even if the state keeps up the pace, it appears unlikely to match early voting turnout levels from the 2021 runoffs.The number of early voting days has been cut roughly in half for the Dec. 6 runoff between Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and the Republican candidate, Herschel Walker, compared with last year’s Senate runoffs in Georgia.Democrats swept both of those races, which lasted nine weeks and helped them win control of the Senate. Since then, Republicans who control Georgia’s Legislature and governor’s office passed an election law last year that compressed the runoff schedule to four weeks.The 2021 law also sharply limited voting by mail. Election officials can no longer mail applications for absentee ballots to voters, and voters have far less time to request a ballot: During the runoff, a voter would have had to request a ballot by last week. And because of the law, far fewer drop boxes are available to return mail ballots than in the 2020 election and its runoffs.The result is a funnel effect in Georgia. Voters have a far smaller window to cast ballots, which has led to hourslong lines around metro Atlanta, a Democratic stronghold, even though fewer people are voting ahead of Tuesday’s runoff race than in the early 2021 elections. Democrats fear the restrictions will hamper a turnout machine they spent years building — which delivered victories for Mr. Warnock, Jon Ossoff and Joseph R. Biden Jr. two years ago.On Monday afternoon in Alpharetta, Ga., a northern suburb of Atlanta, the wait time to vote was 150 minutes, according to a website that tracks lines at polling places. At the same precinct, the wait was 90 minutes on Wednesday. Early voting ends on Friday.Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the secretary of state’s office, wrote on Tuesday night on Twitter that nearly 310,000 people had voted that day, surpassing the previous record that had been set on Monday.What to Know About Georgia’s Senate RunoffCard 1 of 6Another runoff in Georgia. More

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      Black Turnout in Midterms Was One of the Low Points for Democrats

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      But the effects of the decrease wound up being muted.The Democratic Wisconsin Senate candidate, Mandela Barnes, on Nov. 4. He lost by one percentage point. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThere was a lot of good news — or at least news that felt good — for Democrats this election cycle, from holding the Senate to remaining stubbornly competitive in the House.But as more data becomes final, it’s clear that Black turnout is not one of those feel-good stories for the party.We won’t get conclusive numbers on this for months, but the evidence so far raises the distinct possibility that the Black share of the electorate sank to its lowest level since 2006. It certainly did in states like Georgia and North Carolina, where authoritative data is already available.The relatively low turnout numbers aren’t necessarily a surprise. After all, this was not supposed to be a good year for Democrats. Perhaps this is one of the things that went about as expected, with no reason to think it portends catastrophe for Democrats in the years ahead.Still, relatively low Black turnout is becoming an unmistakable trend in the post-Obama era, raising important — if yet unanswered — questions about how Democrats can revitalize the enthusiasm of their strongest group of supporters.Is it simply a return to the pre-Obama norm? Is it yet another symptom of eroding Democratic strength among working-class voters of all races and ethnicities? Or is it a byproduct of something more specific to Black voters, like the rise of a more progressive, activist — and pessimistic — Black left that doubts whether the Democratic Party can combat white supremacy?Whatever the answer, it is clear that the relatively low Black turnout was not exactly disastrous electorally for Democrats in 2022. With the possible exception of the Wisconsin Senate race, it’s hard to identify a high-profile election where Democrats might have prevailed if the Black share of the electorate had stayed at 2014 or 2018 levels.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Harvard, Herschel Walker and ‘Tokenism’

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      We are at a moment in which tokenism is on trial. This is true both in terms of the Supreme Court’s consideration of affirmative action in higher education and in terms of the candidacy of the former running back and political airhead Herschel Walker, who will become a U.S. senator from Georgia if he wins his runoff against Senator Raphael Warnock next Tuesday.Remember how common the term “token Black” once was? Back in the day — the phrase really took off in the 1960s — tokenism was considered a prime example of racism. The hipper television shows would offer story lines in which Black people were put into jobs for which they were transparently unqualified just so the company could show a little color.I learned the term “token” in 1975 at the age of 9. An episode of the Black sitcom “Good Times” had the teenager Thelma recruited by an elite private school sorority solely because she was Black. A white sorority sister visited the household to chat Thelma up. But after Thelma’s father saw through the ruse, the white woman dismissively referred to Black people as “B’s.” My mother told me that Thelma was being used as a “token Black.” She liked me to know about such things.It was normal that a Black mom would teach her kid such things back then. But you don’t hear the terms “token Black” and “tokenism” as much as you used to. (Yes, “South Park” had a character named Token — now spelled Tolkien — as late as the 1990s. But part of the joke was how antique the term had already become.) The term has a whiff of the ’70s about it, and it went out of fashion because, frankly, today’s left cherishes a form of tokenism.Our theoretically enlightened idea these days is that using skin color as a major, and often decisive, factor in job hiring and school admissions is to be on the side of the angels. We euphemize this as being about the value of diverseness and people’s life experiences. This happened when we — by which I mean specifically but not exclusively Black people — shifted from demanding that we be allowed to show our best to demanding that the standards be changed for us.I witnessed signs of that transition when racial preferences in admissions were banned at the University of California in the late 1990s. I was a new professor at U.C. Berkeley at the time, and at first, I opposed the ban as well, out of a sense that to be a proper Black person is to embrace affirmative action with no real questions. I’m not as reflexively contrarian as many suppose.There was a massive attempt at pushback against the ban among faculty members and administrators, and I attended many meetings of this kind. I’ll never forget venturing during one of them that if the idea was that even middle-class Black students should be admitted despite lower grades and test scores, then we needed to explain clearly why, rather than simply making speeches about inclusiveness and openness and diversity as if the issues of grades and test scores were irrelevant.I was naïve back then. I thought that people fighting the ban actually had such explanations. I didn’t realize that I had done the equivalent of blowing on a sousaphone in the middle of a bar mitzvah. There was an awkward silence. Then a guy of a certain age with a history of political activism said that in the 1960s and ’70s he was, make no mistake, staunchly against tokenism. And then he added … nothing. He went straight back to rhetoric about resegregation, laced with the fiction that racial preferences at Berkeley were going mostly to poor kids from inner-city neighborhoods. It was one of many demonstrations I was to see of a tacit notion that for Black kids, it’s wrong to measure excellence with just grades and scores because, well … they contribute to diversity?When the Supreme Court outlaws affirmative action in higher education admissions, as it almost certainly will, it will eliminate a decades-long program of tokenism. I’ve written that I support socioeconomic preferences and that I understand why racial ones were necessary for a generation or so. But for those who have a hard time getting past the idea that it’s eternally unfair to subject nonwhite students to equal competition unless they are from Asia, I suggest a mental exercise: Whenever you think or talk about racial preferences, substitute “racial tokenism.”At the same time, Republicans, despite generally deriding affirmative action and tokenism as leftist sins, are reveling in tokenism in supporting Walker’s run for Senate and are actually pretending to take him seriously. But to revile lowering standards on the basis of race requires reviling Walker’s very candidacy; to have an instinctive revulsion against tokenism requires the same.There’s no point in my listing Walker’s copious ethical lapses. Terrible people can occasionally be good leaders. With him, the principal issue is his utter lack of qualification for the office. Walker in the Senate would be like Buddy Hackett in the United Nations. It is true that Republicans have also offered some less than admirably qualified white people for high office. But George W. Bush was one thing, with his “working hard to put food on your family.” Walker’s smilingly sheepish third-grade nonsense in response to even basic questions about the issues of the day is another.And it matters that Walker would have been much, much less likely to be encouraged to run for senator in, say, Colorado. In Georgia, it was the clear intent that he would peel Black votes from his Black rival, Warnock. Walker’s color was central to his elevation. A swivel-tongued galoot who was white would not likely have been chosen as the Republicans’ answer to Warnock.But if Bush, like Walker and others, implies a questioning of standards — here, the idea that a high-placed politician be decently informed — is that so very different from those on the left questioning why we concern ourselves overly with grades and test scores in determining college admissions?Yes, there are times when one needs to question the rules regarding traditional qualifications. But the Georgia runoff isn’t one of them. The last thing Black people — who are often assumed to be less smart — need is for anyone to insist that Walker is a legitimate candidate because, say, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t the most curious or coherent sort, either.White Republicans have elevated a Black man to a position for which he is cartoonishly unfit. They have done so in spite of, rather than because of, the content not only of his character but also of his mind. Walker is essentially being treated the way Thelma was in that “Good Times” episode almost 50 years ago.The past was better in some ways. The prevalence of the term “token Black” from the 1960s to the ’80s was one of them. And I promise — although I shouldn’t have to — that this does not mean I think Black America was better off in 1960.But when Black students submitting dossiers of a certain level are all but guaranteed admission to elite schools despite the fact that the same dossiers from white or Asian students would barely get them a sniff, they are being treated, in a way, like Walker. The left sings of life experience and diversity, while the right crows about authenticity and connection. I hear all of them, intentionally or not, thinking about “the B’s.”John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) is an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now and Forever” and, most recently, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.” More