"What captured [Cory] Booker’s attention was Warnock’s straightforward invocation of faith, which can sound different than the modes of political speech that have dominated the Democratic Party since the ascent of Barack Obama. 'Obama was this gifted intellectual, like your favorite professor, who could speak to your aspirations, to your hopes for this country,' Booker said. 'But the difference I think with Warnock is—you feel his soul first. He is unapologetic in his rooting in faith.'... Warnock, a pastor for a working-class congregation, is making a case that Democrats have long wanted to make: that the Christian tradition worth upholding in politics—to find Jesus in 'the dark corners, in the alleys, in the gutter,' as Booker put it—is the one associated with King. But it is a complicated bargain to strike, one that blurs the lines of a church, a moral movement, and a power-seeking political party. 'The Democratic Party, in an effort to be inclusive, has sanitized their faithfulness, and left that purview to be claimed by the Republican Party,' Booker said. 'I’m hoping the Democratic Party can move more towards Warnock.' He added, 'We need more poets in politics.'"
From "The Political Gospel of Raphael Warnock/With his opponent, Herschel Walker, weathering a series of scandals, can the Democratic senator from Georgia find a way to retain his seat?" by Benjamin Wallace-Wells (The New Yorker).
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“Dark corners, alleys, and gutters “ evokes a slumland apartment.
You know, like the kind Warnock’s church owns and manages.
See: mote, beam.
I have never heard Warnock speak. I have no doubt he has the cadences of the black minister and I certainly consider that a gift. Herschel does not have that gift but he does have a kind of simple honesty that trumps preacherly speech for me.
Of course, I realize I'm a tribalist, rooting for this Republican, any Republican. It's not that I like Republicans because, by and large, I can't stand them. But they at least won't have our kids learning how to masturbate or change genders. And that matters a lot to me.
If Herschel wins, he'll probably disappoint me. But Warnock is a Dem and Dems do what they do which I just described. So Walker is the man for me.
The New Yorker again. Maybe they could get readers to pay overdue rent bills before Warnock evicts tenants.
Warnock is a race grifter.
'Democracy' is not the hill to die on.
Imagine three men on a desert island.
Two white guys and Warnock.
The white guys vote to make Warnock their slave.
That's democracy...
Believing that we are all made in the image of God and therefore everyone's life is infinitely valuable has implications that would seem to be at odds with the political and moral thrust of a good portion of the leadership of the Democrat party.
The democratic/dictatorial duality is the second best option next to our constitutional republic that restricts governmental intrusion for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
Gag me with a secular spoon, Revrum.
Pols who talk like this put themselves out of the running with me.
But it is a complicated bargain to strike, one that blurs the lines of a church, a moral movement, and a power-seeking political party.
It's also a political movement that has a feminist & LGBTQ wing that is actively hostile to the sexual morality contained in the history of Christianity, including left-wing Christianity. Even Social Gospel stalwarts like MLK & Dorothy Day stayed within orthodoxy when it came to sex and gender. Matter of fact, many of the Social Gospel activists were downright "puritanical". This is a real problem for modern-day believers on the left side of the Democratic Party, and the Right is not similarly afflicted.
"'Obama was this gifted intellectual," he said without evidence.
Wow. Nonsense on stilts is pretty commonplace these days, but nonsense on stilts on roller-skates is still pretty impressive.
Warnock has some scandals of his own - but shhh. We don't discuss those.
Warlock sounds Warlock.
Warnock is right about prosperity gospel. Creflo Dollar is a ravening wolf. But he is wrong about the Democrat party. It has been captured by people with zero moral sense.
We need more poets in politics
As a speechwriter, that would be a boon for me. But, no, we don't need that. We need candidates to speak with fewer words, not more.
Few people like the sound of their own voices more than Booker and Obama.
Hes a hamas supporter who welcomed fidel in 95 hes totes fine
One of Cory Booker's main spiritual ideas is that he should release to the public confidential Senate documents about Brett Kavanaugh that Booker was not supposed to release.
Booker seemed to think that Jesus told him to release those confidential Senate documents to the public.
Or maybe it was not Jesus. Maybe it was Spartacus told Booker to release those documents.
Some of Booker's spiritual thinking escapes me.
The King family supports his opponent
Booker tries to portray Warnock's brand of "compassionate Christianity" as a "light in the darkness" for the Democratic Party. However, the Democratic Party has spent the last 50 years trying to accomplish the exact opposite. There is no light remaining in the Democratic Party.
Warnock's reality does not match his reputation. His warm, slick ads over the last few years have been built on his reputation as a good shepherd, but he is little more than a wolf in the flock. A charlatan. An embarrassment to the good members at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and the legacy of Dr. King.
That may be exactly what Booker really wants.
“ “I’m a pastor,” Warnock went on, once everyone had settled in.”
With a $7k per month housing allowance and who is a slum lord.
Democrats are wonderful at polishing each others turds.
- Warnock is currently embroiled in a battle with his ex-wife who claims that the Senator is a “great actor” who has not lived up to the terms of their custody agreement and doesn’t pay his fair share of child care costs. He also ran over her foot with his car after an argument.
In fact, Warnock used $61,000 of campaign funds to pay for child care.
This is odd because since becoming a Senator his income has doubled (something he railed against as a Senator), and he receives a nearly $90,000 tax-free housing stipend from his church.
To pay for another legal fight, dating back 17 years, Warnock again turned to his war chest of campaign money to pay for legal representation – a BIG no-no. Also, the representation came from well-known Democrat lawyer, Marc Elias.
Warnock sent $75,000 of COVID money to a social justice organization he founded.
Now ask him about his position on abortion and see how he squares that circle.
Questions arise over Warnock's use of campaign funds to fight lawsuit
Now that’s a puff piece!
Was that in The New Yorker or People magazine? Or maybe Jet?
He is a God fearing slum lord.
The quote from Warnock is the sentiment of a Fascist. It's all about the State first. The individual is within the state.
Kind of off-topic, but I think if Booker had come out of the closet prior to 2016 he could have been President today.
Didn't Warnock's wife say he was a great actor. More proof. he voted for Democrat plans that further hollow out the middle class of so many blacks and hispanics, as well as whites. How is he giving them a voice when he stands by open borders so the job market for unskilled and semi-skilled labor can be given down to near poverty levels? How is he upholding his faith and Jesus' teaching to value life by supporting abortion up until birth of a baby? This guy is just another sweet talker who doesn't walk the talk.
If Warnock was the same person but a Republican, Booker would denounce him publicly.
Booker is all for a wide diversity of expressions, as long as they agree with everything he believes. He sounds like he would make an excellent academic.
Booker's subtext is that, because the White elite lean atheist and scorn faith, Black Dems have had to minimize their beliefs. It would be an even more interesting message if he would say it outright.
is making a case that Democrats have long wanted to make:
Citation required.
Is not the Ebenezer Baptist Church the same church where Martin Luther King, Jr., was once the pastor? With Warnock as Senior Pastor the church is now a slumlord. Strange that the Senior Pastor of such a historic church is unaware of Matthew 25:31-46.
@Althouse, you and Booker make the same mistake. You assume that talking the talk of Christianity is the as walking the walk of Christianity.
M Jordan at 1:46, thanks. Exactly.
“ Was that in The New Yorker or People magazine?”
Yeah, did you notice they wrote “different than”? What the hell has happened to my little world?
"Obama was this gifted intellectual..."
Gifted with unaccountable ignorance, he means.
Cory Booker is a notorious, lightweight phony. His sententious, empty rhetoric makes me sick.
The New Yorker continues its slide.
God-talk is good when we do it; God-talk is dangerous and unamerican when they do it.
"we are all children of God"... if you make it out of the womb and take a breath of life; otherwise, you are just a clump of cells to Warnock.
'Obama was this gifted intellectual, like your favorite professor, who could speak to your aspirations, to your hopes for this country,'
Obama immediately struck me as a piece of shit, starting with friendly interviews on Imus before the happy headed ho' cancellation, including cancellation by Obama.
John and Ken (KFI Los Angeles) characterized the speaking to your aspirations as an estrogen cloud, at the time.
Apparently there are diverse views, one on the estrogen cloud side. Characterize the difference as small systems (household) vs big systems (country), and the matter of importance of susceptibility to structural instability in each.
In a household you can just do what feels right at the time and it doesn't collapse.
Yeah, did you notice they wrote “different than”? What the hell has happened to my little world?
Professors started getting fired if a few of their students complained that the class was too hard?
I never would have said that the Democratic Party wanted to make the case that the Christian tradition is worth upholding in politics.
That sounds more like the Labour Party in Wales circa 1890, or the Dem Party of William Jennings Bryan.
Brother Booker, come down here and sit on the Anxious Bench.
'I have never heard Warnock speak. I have no doubt he has the cadences of the black minister and I certainly consider that a gift.'
Why is it a 'gift'?
It's an affectation.
He's only mimicking others.
"with Warnock is—you feel his soul first."
Yes, you do--the soul of the grifter.
"Warnock, a pastor for a working-class congregation"
Who gets a $7,400 "housing allowance" from that "working-class" congregation.
"to find Jesus in 'the dark corners, in the alleys, in the gutter"
And in the hundreds of billions handed out to green-energy scammers and indebted college graduates.
"blurs the lines of a church, a moral movement, and a power-seeking political party"
Indeed. As illustrated by his blurred financial arrangement. What would progs say if a righty blurred the separation of church and state in the same way. Ah, forget it.
Anyway, here's Politico, framed by the familiar pouncing trope of "opponents zeroing in":
"Warnock’s opponents are zeroing in on a unique $7,400 monthly housing allowance he receives as pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. The stipend amounts to nearly $90,000 in income that appears to far exceed his housing costs back home, money that’s exempt from income taxes, according to IRS rules.
In his first year after taking office, personal financial disclosures show he doubled his annual income to $541,965 — including his $174,000 Senate salary, payments of $120,964 from Ebenezer that include the housing allowance, $243,750 as a book advance and $3,251 more in book royalties.
While it isn’t publicly detailed in his personal financial disclosure, Warnock’s campaign told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which first reported the stipend, that nearly three-quarters of his salary from the church last year was paid in the form of a “personal parsonage allowance,” exempt from income taxes. That allows Warnock to technically adhere to Senate rules on earning outside income, which is capped at $29,895 annually."
Yeah, "technically."
Booker is right: Warnock is the very model of left-Dem authenticity.
Religion in politics is awful -- unless it helps defeat Republicans.
Sebastian said...
"Warnock’s opponents are zeroing in on a unique $7,400 monthly housing allowance he receives as pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. The stipend amounts to nearly $90,000 in income that appears to far exceed his housing costs back home, money that’s exempt from income taxes, according to IRS rules.
No income tax, no Social Security or Medicare tax
And his church filed to evict people from the housing they owned, people whose total rent arrears were less than 1 month's "housing allowance".
"The soul of a grifter"
"The soul of a slumlord"
You know why the Left hates capitalism? it's because whenever the Left does capitalism, it's vile and evil.
Like with the Reverend Warnock
why would pastor think Senate is better pulpit than church?
Warnock is a wife beater who ran his wife down with his car and he is unapologetic about it. What kind of faith is that a part of?
Housing allowance is a clergy specific issue, as housing allowances aren't, as far as I'm aware, included within taxable salary. And since there's a longstanding assumption that religious organizations will either provide housing (like a parsonage) or funding for such, it gets build into the contract. Included in "housing" is a huge amount of living cost related items, really anything that someone can ethically convince themselves is related.
Some clergy have ethical standards, so don't inflate such costs, but many (even those who are normally very ethical) do.
Mostly, it's a way to provide a lot more income in fact than what is reported to the IRS. I'm not sure why clergy can't pay for their housing out of their regular income like the rest of us (I'm ordained but not working at a church nor using it for any special tax category). But there you go, it's something that is very established in government history.
Which is all to say, having that allowance doesn't speak anything especially poorly about Warnock in relation to other clergy, but it doesn't necessarily boost the idea he's spirit and soul first in his actions.
I honestly don't know anything about him, so wouldn't guess as to his actual sincerity.
Cory should repair Newark and Camden before tryin GA.
The attacks on Hershel Walker's personal life have unexpectedly helped the former football star. In a Clintonian twist the Walker campaign turned the attacks into a fundraising opportunity. By not responding to the attacks and saying the campaign lacked the fund to effectively fight Warnock off. If the polls are true, it worked. Walker also did better than expected in the debate. Also, it appears Walker is listening to his advisors.
I saw Warnock here in Classic City today. Yesterday Stacey Abrams made an appearance.
If there's one place you really don't need to be campaigning in Georgia, it's in the most liberal town in the state, so the effort just looks last-ditch and desperate.
“We need more poets in politics.” I think Booker misspelled “charlatan.”
I still cant get past the "I am Spartacus" line.
Nor what he had for breakfast this morning.
Warnock is a wife beater who ran his wife down with his car and he is unapologetic about it. What kind of faith is that a part of?
He deemed her a "burden" and sought relief through planned spousehood. A wicked solution, perhaps. Twilight faith, ethical religion.
It is , of course, an opposite reason we should be small-d democrats
I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.
I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.
The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . .
The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
—C.S. Lewis, “Equality,” in Present Concerns (reprint: Mariner Books, 2002), p. 17.
Obama was a convenient, I suppose attractive, face for the Chicago machine, as Adlai Stevenson was many years ago. Stevenson got an undeserved reputation as an intellectual. So did Obama. Neither man was an idiot or a monster, but they weren't actual intellectuals, and weren't that skilled at governing either.
Booker is trying to play that same game with his Rhodes scholarship, but the Rhodes doesn't have the same meaning or cache it once did. That was always the intention, though -- to tie the future leaders and powerbrokers of the Anglosphere together. In the old days they let a few actual intellectuals and scholars in the program. Now it's naked politics and wokeness.
Warnock is playing the Mario Cuomo game -- poet in politics, American Cicero. When you turn over the rock, you find the same ugliness. It's better when politicians don't pretend to be prophets or moral leaders.
Regarding the housing allowance, I’ve served on several boards over the years and reviewed/approved/audited housing allowances.
Given the location of Rev. Warnock’s church, I’m curious where his church housing allowance is being spent. We have at least one pastor here in the Atlanta area who used his housing allowance to build a helicopter pad at his family compound which is a good 15-20 miles from his church.
Democrat hucksters are inspirational.
Take that to the bank.
And then he evicts someone for $28.
Warnock, as a Baptist minister, has adopted the position of no limits on abortion….making it available up to birth. This position is totally contrary to the position of his denomination, yet he’s never questioned on it. Representative John Lewis, also a Baptist minister, held a similar position based on his viewing the issue through his racial prism. He believed that abortion was the white mans way of keeping blacks in poverty, a position held by Stacey Abrams, and thus dependent on government……a totally flawed position. As a minister one would think he would have based his position on his understanding of Biblical teachings, but no, it’s about race.
These inconsistencies in teachings and political policies has caught Warnock in his own web. His negative polling in Georgia is problematic for him. You can improve your favorable ratings, but it’s hard to move the needle on negative ratings. People form opinions and either like you or not. The “if not” side is harder to overcome.
The overturning of Roe could have played to the Democrats favor if they had been reasonable, but abortion at birth is widely opposed by Ds and Rs alike. They seem to have squandered any advantage they might have had on the issue by refusing to be reasonable.
If he weren't a D, I might consider voting for him.
But he's just a standard D grifter, with a good line of promises that somehow never translate out to any fixes. And it really is amazing, isn't it, how the Ds promise for DECADES to fix this, that, and the other thing... every single damned election.
And then they don't do anything on that promise. (Or if they do, whatever they do usually ends up costing a lot more than the budgeted amount and doesn't really do anything the fix the ostensible problem...)
I have never seen a politician with as little acting talent as Cory Booker. Ever.
"'Obama was this gifted intellectual, like your favorite professor, who could speak to your aspirations, to your hopes for this country,' Booker said."
Obama an intellectual? A gifted one, at that?
In comparison to whom? By what standards?
Even leftmedi coverage suggests Warnock is a political/religious opportunist exploiting his church for financial gain. In other words a typical Democrat grifter.
Sorry, Cory, Jesus has nothing to do with the Democrats. Those of us who saw the vote at the 2012 convention to eliminate God from their platform - hastily covered up by the emcee - know that and we know who they are.
Given the opportunity Democrats will continue to attack Christians and the Constitution.
We all know the New Yorker is deeply committed to Christian ideals.
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