Francis Wilkinson: Democrats had bad candidates, too. But they weren’t dangerous

Herschel Walker was a bad candidate.

This statement about the Republican Party’s candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia, who lost Tuesday’s runoff election to Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, is obviously true. The catalog of Walker’s disqualifying conduct is thick, unseemly and violent. But to say that Walker was a bad candidate ultimately obscures more than it reveals.

Democrats also produce bad candidates. They nominated one, State Representative Krystle Matthews, to run against Republican Senator Tim Scott in South Carolina this year. It wasn’t a crucial race; Scott’s victory was a foregone conclusion and Democrats aren’t generally competitive in statewide races in South Carolina. But state Democrats called for the scandal-plagued Matthews to quit the field anyway.