Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
As of early Wednesday morning, Democrat Raphael Warnock is projected to win and Democrat Jon Ossoff holds a narrow lead in the Georgia Senate runoff elections. Politico
If the Democrats win both seats, the Senate will be split 50-50 and they will effectively gain control as the vice president (starting in 2021, Democrat Kamala Harris) will have the tie-breaking vote. Ballotpedia
In Georgia, candidates may request a recount if the margin of victory is less than or equal to .5 percentage points. Ballotpedia
The left celebrates the results.
“The two [Democratic candidates] have been joined at the hip on the campaign trail, and the results tonight are showing the effect, with Ossoff trailing closely behind Warnock in their respective races. And so far, it seems to have worked. They both needed to win for it to matter, and their campaigns reflected political reality…
“The contrast between their very practical, very tactical campaigns and the maddeningly dysfunctional Republican ones couldn’t have been starker. Democrats in Georgia have always presumed that the mechanisms of elections would be turned against them, and planned accordingly. Democrats assembled voter suppression strike teams and had a highly organized system for locating people whose absentee ballots had been rejected due to a signature mismatch, likely saving thousands of lost votes… Meanwhile, Republicans have spent much of the runoff jerking from one manufactured crisis to another.”
George Chidi, The Intercept
“Republicans were hoping that without Trump on the ballot in January, some of their under-performance in the Atlanta suburbs (which were once the key to their victory margins statewide) would be lessened. That didn't happen. Trump won suburban Georgia voters by 3 points in November; Perdue is ahead of Ossoff by just 2 points…
“Assuming those numbers hold, it suggests that Trump has done damage to the Republican brand among suburban voters that goes well beyond just races where he is on the ballot. And extrapolating further, if the suburbs are now a pure toss-up across the country, that would be, generally speaking, scary news for Republicans.”
Chris Cillizza, CNN
“Warnock’s win is a historic one; he’s the first Black senator to be elected in Georgia, which fought on the side of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Warnock is the 11th Black candidate ever elected to the Senate, and he will be one of just three Black senators in the current Congress, along with Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tim Scott (R-SC)…
“This once staunchly conservative state has seen immense demographic change in recent years, but has also seen a Democratic Party that is increasingly organized. Democrats can thank voting rights groups aimed at turning out voters of color en masse for Warnock’s win, which was powered by nonwhite voters.”
Ella Nilsen, Vox
“I see a lot of chatter about how Democrats should now nuke the filibuster and start passing Medicare for All and everything else on the progressive wish list. Well, forget it. Democrats don’t have 51 votes to get rid of the filibuster, so that’s not going to happen. In terms of passing legislation, then, the big question is what Chuck Schumer will put into the annual reconciliation bill, which only needs 50 votes (plus Kamala) to pass. Basically, you get to choose one thing, and obviously it needs to be something that every single Democrat will vote for.”
Kevin Drum, Mother Jones
The right is disappointed with the results.
The right is disappointed with the results.
“What we are seeing in Georgia right now is that the GOP voters are not showing up and the Democrat voters are. The GOP reliably got over 50% of the vote in the combined legislative races for congress, state house, and state senate in November. Those voters are not showing up. Over three-quarters of Republicans who voted said they think the November election was stolen. The President’s campaign actually went on the air in Georgia in the last few days to tell Republicans that November was stolen. The Georgia Republican Party Chairman has been all over TV and the internet telling voters the November election was stolen…
“Democrats are turning up close to their November numbers. Republicans are turning up way less than November. The Republican leaders, from the party to the president, have convinced their base there is no point in voting and the voters have believed it.”
Erick Erickson, Substack
“Blame Donald Trump: This is the third election in which Donald Trump has made himself the sole focus of a campaign, and the third election that Democrats won new voters and had fantastic turnout: 2018, 2020, and now 2021. Instead of the races being about control of the Senate, Trump made the election about himself…
“Blame the GOP candidates. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue were bad candidates, though Loeffler was much, much worse. To my eyes, it seemed as if Loeffler barely understood — let alone believed in — the content of her attack lines on Raphael Warnock. Blame Governor Brian Kemp: Why did he choose Loeffler to fill the seat? She’s a great fundraiser, but there was no evidence of talent for electoral politics.”
Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review
“Multiple Republican women, many of whom explicitly ran on being minorities who found freedom in America while their families fled communist hellholes, thrived in the 2020 election, delivering the party historic gains to the House. But Loeffler was a near-billionaire cosplaying as a hillbilly, and it felt insultingly uncomfortable to everyone watching. She tried to outflank Collins not by introducing bold new policies to curb our national debt or even to stick it to China or the World Trade Organization, but by campaigning with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the anti-Semitic QAnon supporter who trolled her way into the House…
“But the House is not the Senate, and the race that winds up determining whether the upper body of Congress is controlled by a Republican like Mitt Romney or Susan Collins versus Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is not small potatoes. This past year proved that Republicans can run on a strong law-and-order message with women and candidates of color and win in heavily diverse areas. Let Loeffler and her loss sound a message to the party about authenticity, and teach them that the culture wars, however enticing they may seem, must entail more than Twitter trolling and loyalty tests.”
Tiana Lowe, Washington Examiner
