There’s something really wrong in America right now. Last week I posted about why issue polling isn’t worth it’s weight. The basic idea is that it doesn’t matter what you think about an issue, it matters what issues you care about. Then something happened this week that cemented that idea for me.

I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us.

You’re not a “family man” when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.

— Christian Walker (@ChristianWalk1r) October 4, 2022

Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office, because we all knew (some of) his past. Every single one. He decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public, while simultaneously lying about it.

I’m done.

— Christian Walker (@ChristianWalk1r) October 4, 2022

By now, if you’re reading this, you’ve read about Hershel Walker’s son basically putting him on blast for being a shitbag. That’s not really the thing that happened though for me. The thing that happened is the GOP proved my point- nothing matters except for what motivates voters. In the mere hours after all of this came out about Walker, he broke the bank with big fundraising for his race. In other words, the grassroots of the right rallied to his defense. Then Dana Loesch said the quiet part out loud- she doesn’t care that he paid a “skank” for an abortion, she needs him to win so the GOP has power. In other words, yeah he’s awful, but he gets the job done.

There is no floor anymore. You can be an absolute piece of shit and people will vote for you. Part of it is you’ll do what they want you to do. Part of it is that for a lot of people, they assume everyone is a piece of shit anyway. At some point along the way we totally jumped the shark, and anything became okay, as long as the ends justified the means. It’s why the “Access Hollywood” story didn’t move people. It’s why people like Doug Mastriano and Herschel Walker absolutely have a chance to win this cycle. You don’t care if someone is a bad person while running for office unless you’re looking for a good person.

The personal life of someone running for office is really not all that relevant to Americans in their every day life. For much of the media and official Washington though, they can’t get that through their heads. Doug Mastriano may be a bad dude, but if your goal is a full school voucher program, or massive tax cuts, or “fixing” the “broken” election system, or keeping gun access on demand, well, who cares? It’s not like they think Josh Shapiro is good, or even any better if he’s against their priorities. If the foundational principles of the other candidate are counter to your’s, what’s morality amongst rats?