My crystal ball is no better than anyone elses, but there is a shift that has happened in the last 10yrs where the "race card" no longer works. People are seeing plenty blacks on college campuses, they see with their own eyes that those on the "lower rungs" drive nicer cars, newer I-Phones, get a leg up at universities and job applications, all the while their family struggles just to stay above water. And probably like a judgemental ex-smoker those that pulled themselves up don`t have a lot of sympathy for the whiners and complainers. Make of it what you will, Trump has touched many "3rd rails" and survived, so IMO the old rules of politics no longer surprise. I see no reason that Kelli Ward won`t stand as good of chance as anyone in winning the senate seat.
Here is a new book out by Laura Ingraham that I believe will explain how we got from there to here.
https://spectator.org/laura-ingraham-gets-it-billionaire-at-the-barricades/
Not last and certainly not least she touches on the Bush drive — the Establishment GOP obsession with amnesty for illegal immigration. Ingraham captures the problem exactly:
This period of time was among the most alarming and hopeful of the Bush presidency. “Alarming†because never in my life had I seen political leaders display such contempt and indifference toward the people they claimed to represent: “hopeful†because working Americans mounted a brave and tireless uprising and crushed the Establishment’s attempts to force immigration amnesty on the nation.
In fact, that “contempt and indifference†Laura mentions is if anything more evident now than then, which is saying something. It explains without question the passion that lies behind the Trumpsters of today who vividly understand the open contempt directed at them by elites — and seethe at the wild and contemptuous characterization of them as, in Hillary’s words, “deplorables.â€
The book moves on through the unifying force for Republicans that was the Obama presidency. And then… the Trump era dawns.
Laura begins with a speech she gave to CPAC in 2015 in which she lit into the GOP Establishment. And in typical Laura Ingraham straightforward style she asked the thousands of conservatives present: “How many of you in the room are skeptical of another Bush term?†She writes: “Hundreds of hands shot up, as hoots and whistles filled the air.†Right there was a vivid illustration of what was coming down the GOP’s and the nation’s political highway.