Day 301…
The Rev. Raphael Warnock has won the Georgia Senate seat from the Republican incumbent in Georgia.
Only 11 African Americans have ever been elected to the Senate and Warnock is only the second to have been elected from the south since the end of the Civil War.
The other race has not been called yet, but Jon Ossoff, the Democratic challenger is ahead. He has claimed victory but there are still some votes left to tabulate. At the moment, his lead is under a half a percentage point. If that lead does not widen then his Republican challenger will be able to request a recount. Given what’s left to count it seems possible that Ossoff may be able to increase his lead. Almost all of the remaining vote is from heavily Democratic areas. We may not get the result until later today.
With Warnock’s victory, the Senate now stands at 49 Democrats and 50 Republicans. Should Ossoff win, that will mean an evenly divided chamber which would put Vice-President-elect Harris in the position of casting the deciding vote in the case of a tie.
The Senate has only been this evenly split three times before. In 1881 for two years, in 1954 but just for a few months because a Senator died and was replaced, and in 2001 but again only for a few months.
The Constitution says that the elected Vice-President becomes President of the Senate. Unless there is a tie, they do not have a vote. During the 2001 split, Democratic Vice-President Gore was President of the Senate and then, after his inauguration, Republican Vice-President Cheney took over shifting the balance of power to the right.
In both 1881 and 2001, the two parties reached a power-sharing agreement whereby if a bill was deadlocked in committee by a vote divided along party lines that it would still be brought to the floor. In normal times, the party in control could effectively kill such a bill and keep it from ever being voted on. The current Republican Senate Majority Leader, in particular, has been ruthless in exercising that power during this past administration and during the Obama years.
Most legislation still requires at least 60 votes in the Senate, meaning that even if Democrats are completely united, at least ten Republicans need to support whatever they might try to pass as well. The only bills that can pass with a simple majority are those that effect the nation’s financial bottom line.
This is why the Republicans couldn’t kill Obamacare despite four years of trying to do so. They could not get the 60 votes to get rid of it. What they chose to do, instead, was to eat away at the parts of it that they actually could get rid of with a simple majority vote.
In 2001, the two-party power-sharing agreement lasted until the Democrats convinced a Republican Senator to switch parties and they, then, got complete control of the Senate with a clear majority.
Would that happen today? It seems that it would be less likely. The divide has become so great that bipartisanship is somewhat out the window.
Just look at what is going to happen later this afternoon. A smattering of Republican legislators is just about to lodge completely baseless objections to the election results during what should be merely a bipartisan formality. They are attempting to stage a coup.
The Democrats, should they win this last remaining Georgia Senate seat would be foolish to relinquish any of their control to this particular group of seditious members.
Republicans are all starting to blame their loss in Georgia on the President. Every crisis needs a scapegoat, and it seems like they’ve found one.
The President went to Georgia yesterday to hold a rally. Even he was not able to inspire the people who came out to support him in the Presidential election to come out again for this run-off election. Republicans lost Georgia in November. The same number of people wouldn’t have helped. They needed MORE than the people who came out for the Presidential election to come out this time.
In contrast, Stacey Abrams, among others, seems to have been able to get Democratic Georgians of color to participate in record numbers. After decades of Republican attempts to disenfranchise them, Abrams has been able to convince them that they actually do have the power to change their own destinies.
Georgia, once a solidly Republican bastion in the South has now become a swing state. Whatever the final outcome of Ossoff’s race, that is a remarkable accomplishment and one with long-lasting consequences for the Republicans.
The President has convinced crowds of his supporters to descend on Washington D.C. today to protest the election results. There have been calls for violence. As terrifying as this might be for people living there today, in the long run what this is going to do is drive even more moderates away from the President.
Whatever violence happens today is squarely on the President’s shoulders. Huge crowds of his maskless supporters have already gathered and he is due to address them soon.
In a meeting yesterday, the President attempted to convince the Vice-President to overturn the election results during the certification process today. Reportedly, the Vice-President told him that he did not have the power to do that.
The Vice-President is now thinking about his own future. He wants to run in 2024. He is seeing that more and more of the blame is starting to gravitate towards the President. The President has been able to operate because of the support that he’s gotten from the Republicans in his Administration, but they are now starting to turn on him and make him the scapegoat.
Behind his back, the President is reportedly saying that the Vice-President owes everything to him. That the President is turning against his Vice-President will only drive his overall support within the government that much farther away. His core base is still firmly behind him, but the people who maybe voted Republican out of loyalty to the party or a belief in its ideals are starting to defect.
The last thing that the President needs today is for violence to erupt. If he incites this crowd into action and people get hurt, it will only further erode his support.
Today is going to be a very interesting day.
We will see what happens at the President’s rally.
More election results will come in over the next hours and will hopefully solidify Ossoff’s lead and put him over the .5% threshold that will protect him from a recount.
In an hour or two, the Vice-President will start to read the Electoral College results from the election.
To lodge an objection to the results, one Senator and one Congressperson need to do it in writing. Once the objection has been lodged then a debate that is limited to two hours will take place. Each person in the debate can only speak once and can only talk for a maximum of five minutes. After that two-hour debate the chambers then need to vote on the objection.
All three of these events could drag on for hours. In the meantime, it looks like a beautiful day outside.
It’s cold but the sky is clear and blue.
A perfect day for a good long walk.
💕❤️”O Happy Day.....”