There can be no doubt that Raphael Warnock, a preacher, is highly skilled at self-presentation.  He is also a very slippery man, good at dodging awkward questions, a valuable skill for someone so radical running in a Southern state, even one with the huge metropolitan area of Atlanta that has been drawing large numbers of people from more liberal regions of the country for many decades.

Last night's debate saw Warnock evade answers on two key questions.

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab.

Sen. Loeffler cited his longstanding praise for Marxist ideas and policies and his advocacy for "income redistribution" (a euphemism of seizing money from disfavored people and giving it to people the politicians like).  Warnock artfully dodged:

A more immediate and specific policy question was simply brushed aside, as if it meant nothing, when Sen. Loeffler wanted to know if he would support packing the Supreme Court.

I am not deeply familiar with the electorate in Georgia, but my impression is that the debate did not change many minds.  Warnock challenged Loeffler, who is wealthy, on stock trading while in office, tacitly using class warfare.  Loeffler is rich, thin, and blond, and there are people who resent those with even one of those characteristics.  Blonds are group about which disparaging jokes (insulting their intelligence) can be told with no backlash.

It will be up to advertising to alarm Georgians about Warnock's radicalism and the national political consequences of Democrat control of the Senate and Congress, given their plans to admit new states, pack the Supreme Court, and change election law to guarantee future Democrat dominance.  But with hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into the state for political ads, it is unclear to me if they will have any effect.