The first five seconds of a new Senate GOP attack ad against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia speak volumes.
"Raphael Warnock: His personal story—inspirational," says an upbeat female narrator. "His story as a Senator is the problem," she continues.
It’s the beginning of Senate Republicans’ effort to tell a story to voters about Warnock’s problematic record as a senator. But the ad is at once a complete anomaly for the GOP and yet totally "meh" unmemorable in substance.
The highly notable part is the fact that Senate Republicans are actually trying to run an issue ad against a powerful person of color—a Black man at that.
The ad says that Warnock votes with President Joe Biden 95% of the time, backs an energy bill that would supposedly push gas prices and utility bills "even higher," and warns his policies would "make us more dependent on foreign suppliers."
It centers on issues that are at least somewhat relevant to people's lives—which is just plain weird for the GOP—but it's also not exactly sticky, as it were, for an opening salvo in their marquee race to flip the Senate majority.
In the 2020 runoff, Republicans ran a very different campaign against Warnock, focusing on his sermons during his 25 years as a pastor and assailing his support for Barack Obama's former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
His GOP opponent, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, seized on one sermon in which Warnock said, “America, nobody can serve God and the military,” calling it a "disgraceful" attack on the "men and women who serve our country & risk their lives." In other words, un-American.
But Warnock kneecapped that "scary Black man" narrative with what may have been the most effective and memorable ads of the cycle—all of which featured his adorable pooch.
The first one came on Nov. 5, almost immediately after the general election vote—a spoof attack ad that ominously warned Warnock ate "pizza with a fork and knife," once stepped on a crack in the sidewalk, and he "even hates puppies."
"Get ready, Georgia," said Warnock, "the negative ads are coming. ... And by the way, I love puppies."
Then several days after Loeffler started focusing on his pastoral remarks, Warnock released a follow-up ad featuring him walking his dog and ultimately comparing Loeffler's attacks to dog crap.
"We told them the smear ads were coming, and that's exactly what happened," Warnock noted.
In both ads, Warnock also took care to explain what Loeffler wasn't talking about: her own record of service.
"You would think that Kelly Loeffler might have something good to say about her herself if she really wants to represent Georgia," Warnock said. "Instead, she's trying to scare people by taking things I’ve said out of context."
The ads were memorable, warm, funny, and importantly, trained voters into recognizing the GOP's trick—using racist scare tactics to distract from the actual GOP agenda and their candidates.
The critical work for Democrats of training voters into recognizing the GOP's culture-war trick is something I wrote about following the fiery speech of Michigan state Rep. Mallory McMorrow. McMorrow not only delivered an impassioned call to action, but she also clued constituents in to the fact that Republicans were using scare tactics to cover up their records.
"People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape after decades of disinvestment, or that health care costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession," McMorrow explained, touching on several of voters' key concerns.
"We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people's lives," she later added.
Senate Republican’s latest attack ad against Warnock suggests several things:
1) Warnock defanged them in the 2020 cycle. His personal biography is unassailable and likely polls through the roof;
2) Republicans have lost the art of talking about policy amid their 24/7 obsession with culture wars and manufactured outrage;
3) When their own candidate is a Black man with a self-admitted history of murderous impulses and alleged assault (i.e. Herschel Walker), it's hard to label the other guy in the race an "angry Black man."