Neither has there ever been a race like the race he’s running right now. Cory Booker of New Jersey told me earlier this summer when he called to talk about Warnock: “There’s never been anybody like him in the United States Senate.” In a recent week of campaign events, official events and church events, it wasn’t the only time I saw him do this, and it always conjured something Democratic Sen.
I’ve watched over the years countless candidates’ set-piece speeches - never, though, one that deliberately elevated a pedestrian piece of potential political pork into a nearly holy totem of American democracy. It goes past,” he crescendoed, “people who worship at churches, and temples and mosques - all have to get on the same road! Folks who are going to work, and the folks those folks work for - all have to get on the same road! In other words, if we build out the road, everybody can get to where they need to go! There is a road that runs through our humanity …”Īnd now the people in the bleachers were congregants as much as constituents, saying yessir, saying mm-hmm, talking back to Warnock the way a Black Baptist pastor wants, giving him the political equivalents of amens and uh-huhs. “It goes through communities that are largely red and communities that are blue. Connects some of our military installations, and critical parts of this state that could use the development,” Warnock said. Guess what? The same road that runs through Texas” - he paused a beat before the reveal - “runs through Georgia. Senator Cruz wanted to build out this road in Texas - called I-14. “My folks were asking, ‘Why would you work with him?’ Very simple. I said, ‘I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.’ They couldn’t believe it - I think 30 or 40 of my colleagues probably didn’t know what was in the amendment, but they said, ‘If he’s for it, and he’s for it, we better pass this thing.’ It passed unanimously.” And to this the still rapt crowd responded with raucous applause. “Senator Cruz stood up to make his argument about why he thought we should do this, and then came my turn,” Warnock said, “and then I heard myself say words that I did not imagine hearing myself ever say. “ But,” said Warnock, getting to the moral of this message slipped into a stump speech, “we were passing the infrastructure bill” - the $1.2-trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill - “and it turns out there was something he wanted to do, and I also wanted to do …” “I will confess,” he continued, “most days I’m sitting there, and he’s talking about what he does, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Now, I know why I get up in the morning …’”
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