GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler's attempt to win over Black voters is completely ridiculous

If Sen. Kelly Loeffler has learned one thing from Donald Trump, it appears to be shameless nerve. A new ad attempting to woo Black voters in Georgia's Senate runoff includes this astonishing line, spoken by Janelle King, a Black former deputy state director of the Georgia Republican Party: "We need someone who understands how to not only write paychecks and sign paychecks, but how it feels like waiting on that paycheck."

And Kelly Loeffler is supposed to be that person?

Loeffler likes to make much of the fact that she grew up on a farm, but at this point she is one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest, people in Congress—in a Senate that includes Mitt Romney, mind you. She and her husband have around $500 million and live in a 15,000 square foot home that was the most expensive real estate transaction ever in Atlanta. And even her much-touted farming roots allowed her to pay for graduate school by mortgaging land she'd inherited. Waiting on that paycheck does not appear to have been a huge feature of her life.

This kind of ridiculous ad—in which Loeffler pretends to be a woman of the people to peel Black voters away from the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Black man who grew up in public housing—shows the desperation Republicans are feeling in the runoff elections scheduled for Jan. 5, 2021. In another sign of that desperation, Donald Trump Jr. is launching a super PAC focused on the Senate, starting with Georgia. (Don Jr.'s own rumored Senate aspirations may also be relevant here, to be sure.)

The Save the U.S. Senate PAC is starting with a six-figure ad buy on conservative radio stations, then will expand to television and digital with ads featuring Junior himself in an interesting effort to push back on his father's habit of undermining Republican voters' faith in the election system.