Train wreck Herschel Walker polling at 7% among Black Georgia voters, but he can still win | Opinion

In the pantheon of truly awful political candidates, one stands out, and may likely enter the Truly Awful Political Candidate Hall of Fame. His name is Herschel Walker.

His U.S. Senate candidacy in Georgia continues to careen along, like a wrecked car whose engine won't stop after hitting three buses and the side of a building.

What we're seeing with Walker is truly remarkable. Walker has no-showed debates, the empty podiums serving as glaring metaphors. He's portrayed himself as Doogie Howser. He knows as much about energy policy as my dog. He is an alleged violent abuser. He said he was a law enforcement officer. He wasn't. He's criticized Black men for being absent fathers, but it turns out he's starting a football team of secret kids. Just a few more and he'll have an offensive line.

When asked about evolution he asked: "Why are there still apes?" (There's only one answer to that question.) Walker's solution to school shootings? It involves "a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media."

Walker, to be kind, is an oil tanker fire.

But you know what? He could still win.

If you haven't noticed, Walker is a perfect candidate for these times. The GOP is full of kooks, election deniers, anti-vaxxers and goons. Trump was also a putrid candidate and person and, well, you know what happened with him. Georgia sent Marjorie Taylor Greene to Congress, for goodness sake.

Suppress enough of the Black vote, keep hiding Walker from debates, cross your fingers that other secrets won't come out and he can still beat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Want proof Walker can win? Look at the latest polling. One has Walker and Warnock tied at 46 percent.

Walker won't get much of the Black vote. There's a reason Walker is polling at seven percent among Black voters in the race (three percent with Black women). We know he's a phony. This isn't about Walker being a Black Republican. It's about Walker being used by the white ones.

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In that ECU poll, Walker is at 65% with white voters. They see the same levels of buffoonery that everyone does. So why do they support him? It can't be because he's a good candidate. It can't be his messaging. He can barely put two sentences together. In fact, paragraphs, sentences and punctuation run from him faster than he did from linebackers on the football field.

The dynamics of Black voters are extraordinarily different from white voters. To me, GOP white voters in Georgia support Walker because he's their political version of, "Some of my best friends are Black." They want to be able to say they aren't racist, so they support Walker. Sure, there's a level of trolling pollsters in this, and sure, some of it might be because he's a former football star. But last I checked, Black people like football, too.

If you're saying whites support Walker more because they don't like Warnock, you're proving my point. There's no comparison between the two men. Warnock is far from perfect, but his transgressions don't seem to be in the same stratosphere as Walker's.

Walker, the ECU poll says, leads Warnock 69% to 25% among white men, and 61% to 33% among white women.

Again, what exactly is there to like about Walker? Name one thing. I could see why the Dallas Cowboys organization likes Walker but no one else.

It's possible that as people learn more about Walker, he morphs into someone even huge backers can't support. But we thought that with Trump.

We've become a different nation the past four or five years, and not in a good way. We are so different that an unqualified train wreck can win a Senate seat. So different that we could have Walker and Tommy Tuberville in Congress.

Easily.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Herschel Walker is a disaster but can still win Senate race in Georgia