About Last Night: Georgia Senate Runoffs Edition
Image by karendesuyo 
Five days into 2021, we can finally conclude the 2020 election cycle. Almost.
Democrats closed in on control of the U.S. Senate early Wednesday with a stunning come-from-behind victory in one of Georgia’s twin runoff elections and the lead in the second contest, races that could reshape the first two years of President-elect Joe Biden’s term by giving Democrats a clearer path to enacting their legislative priorities.
After swapping leads over the course of the night Tuesday, Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff benefited from late counts in Democratic areas of the state, which gave Warnock an increasing lead over Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler as the final precincts were counted. Edison Research called the race for Warnock early Wednesday.
Ossoff held a narrower lead over David Perdue (R), whose Senate term expired Sunday. Most of the remaining ballots were believed to be from strongly Democratic areas.
The Warnock win — and the possibility of a second Democratic victory — represented a historic upset in a longtime Republican bastion, signaling a clear shift in the political makeup of the state that Biden won nine weeks ago. Warnock will be the first African American Democratic senator from a former Confederate state, and Ossoff, 33, would be the youngest newly elected Democratic senator since Biden in 1973.
The races also represented a forceful rejection of President Trump in the final days of his term, and they raised questions about the central role the president has vowed to maintain in his party after his departure from office.
At stake in Tuesday’s contests was the governing coalition Biden will enjoy in his first years in office. If both Democrats win, they would flip control of the Senate, with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris, opening the door for potential passage of legislation Democrats campaigned on over the past two years, including an expansion of federal health-care subsidies, a tax increase on the wealthy and a comprehensive immigration overhaul.
Trump had supported both Republicans in the race, most recently on Monday, calling Loeffler and Perdue close allies who were essential to holding back Democratic priorities.
While we wait for the final tally in the Ossoff-Perdue tilt, the end for Senator Kelly Loeffler is at hand. Loeffler will have quite the greatest hits package of moments from her short stint in US Senate, from her “More conservative than Atilla the Hun” ads to here robotic debate answers that sounded like first generation talk-to-text software reading off a Hannity monologue. For his part, Raphael Warnock becomes the first black senator for the State of Georgia.
In a live-streamed speech, Warnock claimed victory and thanked his supporters in an emotional address that noted he had received a vote from his mother. “The 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator,” said Warnock, the pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. “We were told that we couldn’t win this election,” Warnock continued. “But tonight, we proved that with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible.”
There will be plenty of dissecting the particulars of Georgia in 2020/2021, but the overriding theme would have to be the utter chaos President Trump and his allies have rained down on the Peach State for the better part of two months. Since the November election, the president has been in open warfare with not only Georgia Democrats but Republican’s, including Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, which culminated in the now-infamous weekend phone call that leaked on Sunday. The result was lower-than-needed Republican turnout, strong Democratic turnout, and the apparent loss of two previous Republican Senate seats to put soon-to-be Vice President Kamala Harris as the deciding vote in a 50/50 US Senate. And the Republican Party has no one to blame but themselves.
Ossoff’s lead is currently about 16,500 votes above Pursue according to the Times. The remaining votes are from heavily blue counties and most media organizations have done everything but call it officially for Ossoff. Decision desk and Vox did call it for Ossoff.
Credit should go to Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight who did an amazing job at getting out the vote especially black turnout. The Democrats increased their lead in nearly every county and turned some counties from red to blue this time. Trump committed unenforced errors because he is a vainglorious, syphilitic, moron. An AP poll stated that 56 percent of Georgians disapproved of Trump’s post-election GA antics. Trump cost the Republicans Georgia in November and now.Report
Democrats need to use this opportunity to show themselves as the party of competent government, economic recovery, and a little responsible rebalancing. It can’t be ‘pretend 2016 never happened/all was well under Obama’ and it can’t be a time of indulging the weirdos on the fringes. Then they need to buck the historical trend and at least hold in the midterms.
Trump’s poor governance and generally embarrassing antics was probably never going to be enough for a come to Jesus talk on the right. ‘This guy was such an extraordinary fool he lost us f***ing Georgia’ on the other hand may have some traction.Report
While this is a continuum rather than a toggle, there are two ways this could play out:
1) Democrats use this as an opportunity to get an important policy through Congress/White House.
2) Democrats codify that Aunt Jemima is Persona non Grata and demand an inquiry into who the Black guy on the Stubb’s bottle is while ramping up bombing in Syria.
My money is on #2.
But we’ll see.Report
Are you talking actual money? If so, I’ll take that bet.Report
How would we measure this?
Whether we start bombing Syria before June mixed with silly culture war posturing?
Or whether something important gets pushed through (and now we can define “important”… maybe $2000 checks or M4A or Supreme Court expansion)?Report
I’m sorry. I took you literally, not seriously. You had set the terms when there wasn’t money on the table. Now you want to haggle. No thanks.Report
I just wanted to know how we’d measure this.
What terms would *YOU* like to set?
“We’ve changed the top tax rate from 37% to 37.4%! That’s an IMPORTANT POLICY!”
That’s something that I wouldn’t buy as an important policy.
Bombing Syria strikes me as something that wouldn’t really require “well, you have to understand…” hair splitting from either of us.
As for silly culture war posturing, we’d have to define that too.
I mean, if there was real money on the table.
I’d want something that we’d be able to point to as we went to the judges and said “I won the bet. Behold.”
I mean, I wouldn’t want it to be just You vs. Me on this. I’d want a judge to say “I have looked at the terms and looked at the outcomes you’ve presented and I have decided that Jay is wrong!”
Rather than just you saying “you don’t understand, 37.4% will save countless lives! And if you don’t agree, that just proves that you never intended to honor our bet in the first place!”Report
You’re the one who set the terms before someone took you up on the bet. Now you want to re-set them. You’ve done it before. You’re doing it again.
You might want to avoid betting metaphors in the future if you don’t want to be called on them.Report
No, I’m exploring something like “okay, we’ll have North be the guy who says who won the bet on August 1st, 2021. I’ll write a post explaining, in detail, what the bet is and what the terms are. On August 1st, 2021, we will go to North and lay down what we said, link to some news articles, and ask him ‘who won?’ and then he will say who won and then the loser will pay up.”
This is prelude to the bet actually happening!
We have to hammer out what “an important policy” actually would be?
Because I think that a second $600 check would not be “an important policy” but “a no-brainer” and something that Republicans would have to argue against in 2022 would qualify as “an important policy”.
Like, something that they would run on changing in two years would be “an important policy” while a $600 (or even $2000!) check would be forgotten by the World Series.
As for the line about “Democrats codify that Aunt Jemima is Persona non Grata and demand an inquiry into who the Black guy on the Stubb’s bottle is while ramping up bombing in Syria”, it was a humorous way to say what I will try to establish now:
Major distracting culture war fights while bombing really ramps up again in earnest in the Middle East including (but not limited to) Syria.
We hammer this stuff out here, I’ll write a post, and put it up.
We’ll also want to discuss amounts.
I’m more of a fan of “I’ll send $200 to the charity of your choice” than I am to “give me your home address and I’ll mail you a check”, for a handful of obvious reasons.
(Oh, and the charities will probably have to be vetted by North as well. I’d have to get this donation past Maribou, after all.)Report
I get that you won’t put up or shut up on your original offer. Now you want to make another one. I don’t negotiate with bookies. They set the line and I either play or don’t depending on whether I like the line. You set the line and then didn’t want to take the action. Fine. Alabama-Ohio State is coming up. I expect the bookies will set a line and stick to it. I know we won’t be haggling about it.Report
So, then, let’s hammer out what you want the bet to be.
1. An important policy being pushed through (we will not define “important” and we will not define “policy”)
2. Democrats codify that Aunt Jemima is Persona non Grata and demand an inquiry into who the Black guy on the Stubb’s bottle is while ramping up bombing in Syria. (If Aunt Jemima is not mentioned in congressional floor transcripts as being no longer acceptable and if the Stubb’s product is not mentioned, then this condition is not met.)
Do I have this right? That’s the bet you’re demanding?
Well, how’s this. You win.
One dollar. I’ll put it under the red rock in front of the house. If you don’t pick it up by Thursday night, I’ll assume you don’t want it.
Because I would be willing to make this bet with you with clarifications on the first and an opportunity to rephrase my joke of the type of culture war bullshit that I saw likely to happen as a non-joking phrasing of what I see likely to see.
And if North is an acceptable judge to you, I’ll ask him to be the guy to make the call as to who won the bet.
Hell, we can even discuss an amount that we’re betting!
Would you like to have that second discussion or do you want to say “I will bet money that they won’t talk about the Stubb’s bottle on the Congressional floor and you won’t take me up on it, coward!”?
Because, if it’s merely the second, I will say that I will take you up on that bet, and then cheerfully concede, right now, that I’ll have lost it, and put your winnings outside for you to pick up with no-contact.Report
I don’t and didn’t “want” the bet to be anything. You set the line, I took you up on it, you backed away. Which is what I expected. And you delivered.Report
Well, congrats. You have won the bet and I have lost it.
Your money is outside.Report
Donate it to the charity of your choice.Report
Done.
Now I’d like to return to my original point, if I may.
While this is a continuum rather than a toggle, there are two ways this could play out:
1) Democrats use this as an opportunity to get an important policy through Congress/White House.
2) Democrats codify that Aunt Jemima is Persona non Grata and demand an inquiry into who the Black guy on the Stubb’s bottle is while ramping up bombing in Syria.
My money is that we’re going to be a lot closer to #2 than to #1.Report
If you would like a good chuckle:
Report
Much of the punditry about the election will be various flavors of the Pundit Fallacy, that the path to victory leads precisely through the area of the pundit’s own preferences.
But what lead to victory or defeat isn’t ever clear. Whether the Democrats won in spite of/ because of X is very hard to determine.
For example; Did the George Floyd protests help or hurt the Democrats? Did the Proud Boys help or hurt the Republicans? Did McConnell’s refusal to give the $2000 checks help or hurt?Report
Did the George Floyd protests help or hurt the Democrats?
Hurt in the House but didn’t hurt Biden nationally, given that Biden pretty much ran on “it’s okay to split your ballot”. (We got into this over the issue of whether someone would vote for a Republican in the House because of Pelosi rather than because of the R vs. D choice before them.)
Did the Proud Boys help or hurt the Republicans? I don’t know that there was a whole lot of Proud Boy coverage prior to Georgia. (The footage that I saw was PB vs. Antifa and that was usually seen as a carny sideshow rather than This Is A Microcosm of Trump vs. Biden.) To the extent that they had an effect, it was to help Biden (and thus, hurt the Republicans) because the message was “Vote Biden and This Goes Away.” I don’t know that the effect on Georgia was more than negligible.
Did McConnell’s refusal to give the $2000 checks help or hurt? I think that McConnell’s refusal to give the checks cost at least one Senate race. Loeffler was doomed, I think. Magnificently horrible optics from the insider trading to the recent flailing. Perdue is up in the air. The checks strike me as likely to have saved him.Report
Right, but you’re giving us “Jaybird’s Perspective On What It Means”. Your interpretation of what you think other Americans and Georgians saw, and what it means to them.
Which may be correct. Or not! Which is my point, that there isn’t any clear and unassailable message being sent, and the correct strategy going forward isn’t obvious.
Here’s a funny tweet:
https://twitter.com/MaxKennerly/status/1346670893859282945
“So when do we get the nonstop newspaper columns and TV segments about how Republicans have gone too far to the radical right, losing Main Street Americans, and how they no have no choice but to embrace higher taxes on the rich, single-payer healthcare, and corporate regulation?”
Because, y’know the answer to any Republicans proposal is :This is how we got Biden/ Senate Majority Leader Schumer.Report
My argument wouldn’t be that the Republicans went to far to the Radical Right.
It would be that, once again, when given the choice between representing The People and representing Big Business, they chose to represent Big Business.
I imagine that this will result in, among other things, higher taxes on the rich and regulation of business that megacorporations will absorb easily and will be very difficult for small businesses to handle.
As for single-payer, well… you have to understand. There are a lot of people who work in the insurance industry.
But if I were a betting man, I’d bet on the high end of the highest tax bracket being nudged up at bit (it’s at 37% now. I can effortlessly see it hitting 37.5%. If someone wanted to argue that it’d hit 39%, I probably wouldn’t argue against them. 39.2% is around where I’d say ‘huh… I did not expect that.’)
I’d bet on healthcare being really, really complicated.
And corporate regulation? HELL YEAH CORPORATE REGULATION! But not, you know, for credit card companies. Or this corner of finance. Or that corner of options trading.Report
It’s the subjective versus the objective.
What is the objective criteria we can use to judge this?Report
I reject the premise, that “we” need to “judge” political strategy of what wins or not.
“We” are not paid campaign consultants, and our judgement means nothing.
What this barstool quarterbacking does, I think, is turn us from being engaged and empowered citizens of a republic, to detached cynical observers.
I think it is unhealthy for us mentally to fixate on being savvy pundits and prognosticators. I think its much better to just speak forthrightly about our opinions of what is good or bad for our nation, of what is right or wrong and let the chips fall where they may.
What’s the right thing for the Democrats to do going forward?
I have a long list!
What’s the politically advantageous thing?
I don’t know.Report
Fair point.Report
My cynical observation is that the morally, ethically, most integrity supporting things to do are generally NOT the politically savvy or expedient things to do. Prosecuting the President for election tampering would be morally right, but its NEVER going to be politically advantageous.Report
What’s the right thing for the Democrats to do going forward?
I have a long list!
So do I!
Oh, they’re not going to take on the War on Drugs or Police Unions?
Welp, back to watching what the parties in power are going to do. Keeping my eye open for bombing the Middle East.Report
Let’s bask in the fact that a Deep South state just elected a Black man and a Jew to be their Senators. Warnock held the pulpit at Martin Luther King Jr.’s congregation. This is the triumph of the old civil rights alliance as Adam Serwer wrote on twitter last night. Cobb County, one of the bedrocks of modern conservatism went overwhelmingly Democratic.Report
If the Dems had a Mount Rushmore, Stacy Abrams would deserve to have her face chiseled onto it. I earnestly hope she runs for Governor in 2022 and if she wins that then Kamela might need to watch her six when Biden finally bows out.Report
God bless Stacey Abrams.Report
On this, you and I are in absolute agreement Stillwater.Report
Put Stacey in charge of the DNC and let her org every big national campaign. That is her sweet spot.Report
This is a pretty good idea.
I’m interested in seeing whether it happens.Report
I’d be down for that as it would pull Democrats back left where they belong.Report
If she would take that job I’d give it to her in a heartbeat. Frankly the party should simply say to her “tell us what role you want to play and if it’s ours to bestow it’s yours.”Report
Why would you sideline Abrams by putting her in charge of the DNC, an organization that basically only exists in Presidential election years, and even then is mostly run at the state level?
The DSCC, I could see — absolutely put her in charge there. You know, an organization with money and infrastructure that exists to handle state-level races, and can actually benefit from national leadership and focus?Report
She should pick her job at the national level focusing on winning elections. If she wants that kind of job let her reorg the national D’s to focus on GOTV and building state parties.Report
Let her be Governor of Georgia.Report
The National Review gets it: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-trump-era-ends-in-disaster-in-georgia/
“You know what suburban voters do? They show up and vote. Year in, year out, presidential years, midterms, off-year elections, special elections, non-November local elections. They must rank among the most easily overlooked, underrated, and underappreciated voters, those allegedly wishy-washy, milquetoast, not-fond-of-Trump, minivan-driving moderate suburban soccer moms and white-collar dads. They’re not exciting. They’re rarely looking for anything revolutionary. They’re not looking to “burn it all down”; they’re the ones who built the things that would get burned down.
You know why it makes sense for a political party to target its messaging and appeal to this voter demographic? Because you don’t have to do much to get them to the polls. They do it out of habit and civic duty. As John Bragg put it last night: “They always vote, just like they always file their taxes, pay their bills, mow their lawns, send their kids to college. The question is, which party appeals to those people in 2020?”
As for those blue-collar Trump voters . . . Republican grassroots turnout was down last night. Republicans will be arguing about why it was down for a long time. You can argue that David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are less than thrilling candidates; they are not, as I like to say, whirling dervishes of raw political charisma. But recall that back in November, Perdue beat Ossoff by more than 88,000 votes; he just fell three-tenths of a percentage point short of that 50 percent threshold.
David Perdue is the same guy he was in November. His opponent is the same. The state’s demographics didn’t change. So, what changed?
What made this runoff election particularly unusual is that the president of the United States, the state party chairman, most of the state’s GOP congressional delegation, and other GOP figures spent the past two months arguing that Georgia’s recent presidential-election results were fraudulent and that mass-scale vote fraud and hacking of voting machines changed Trump votes to Biden votes. Shockingly, that consistent messaging did not increase the enthusiasm among Republican voters to cast ballots again. If only someone had warned them!”Report
Right? Its like there’s a real consequence for claiming the election system you need to keep power has been corrupted by the other side . . . .Report
It is a truly epic self-destruct.Report
“the state party chairman, most of the state’s GOP congressional delegation, and other GOP figures spent the past two months arguing that Georgia’s recent presidential-election results were fraudulent and that mass-scale vote fraud and hacking of voting machines changed Trump votes to Biden votes. Shockingly, that consistent messaging did not increase the enthusiasm among Republican voters to cast ballots again. If only someone had warned them!””
Actually you’re missing one other thing that changed.
Donald Trump was not on the ticket. Just like he wasn’t in 2018.
Now maybe Trump’s primal screams that he didn’t lose turned off voters. Or maybe Donald Trump is just really good at bringing out low-propensity voters to vote for him, but not so good at getting them to vote for anyone else. While also being really, really good at making Democrats want to go vote against Trump, his party, and possibly anyone he ever met just in case.Report