The 2020 Election

[Rad]

Democrats in Georgia's runoff elections raise more than $200m in two months

Races will decide which party controls the Senate and, in turn, the legislative power of President-elect Joe Biden

Miranda Bryant
Guardian
Sun 27 Dec 2020 09.30 GMT

Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both running for crucial US Senate seats in Georgia that will decide the fate of Joe Biden's new administration, have raised over $100m each in just two months.

The announcement of the recent record-breaking hauls - which considerably exceed that of their Republican opponents - comes with less than two weeks to go until the runoff races are decided in special elections on 5 January.

Ossoff, who runs a media production company and is running against the incumbent Republican senator David Perdue, raised over $106m from 15 October to 16 December, according to his campaign's latest finance report.

Meanwhile, Warnock, who is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and is running against incumbent Kelly Loeffler, raised just over $103m.

The Georgia races are the focus of intense national political interest as they will decide which party controls the Senate - currently held by the Republicans - and in turn the legislative power of President-elect Biden.

If the Republicans win one race, they will narrowly maintain power and be a huge break on a wide range of Biden's actions, including being able to appoint who he wants to his cabinet.

But if the Democrats win both races, the Senate will be split 50-50, meaning Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris would decide tie-breaking votes, enabling the Democrats to deliver a more ambitious agenda.

The two seats went to runoffs after Perdue and Loeffler, one of the Senate's wealthiest members, got less than 50% of the vote on election day in November.

The previous fundraising record was held by Democrat Jamie Harrison who raised $57m in a quarter in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina in November.

Warnock's campaign manager Jerid Kurtz said: "We're humbled by the grassroots support and generosity that continues to power Reverend Warnock's campaign to represent all Georgians in the US Senate."

Early voting in the state began on 14 December. As of Thursday, over 2m people - over a quarter of the state's registered voters - had already cast ballots in the election, suggesting that overall turnout will be high.

In November, when President-elect Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since 1992, about 4m Georgians voted early.

FiveThirtyEight currently has Perdue and Warnock very narrowly ahead.

For the Democrats, both President-elect Biden and Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris have campaigned in the state. While for the Republicans, President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka have both made campaign stops.

The Democrats have tried to highlight the stock trades of their Republican opponents and their support of Trump, while the Republicans have focused on Warnock, repeatedly referring to him as a "radical liberal".

A group of Black pastors wrote an open letter to Loeffler in which they said her rhetoric against Warnock was "a broader attack against the Black church and faith traditions for which we stand".

Meanwhile, Trump has attacked Republicans in the state, calling Governor Brian Kemp a "clown" and a "fool" and branding Kemp and other prominent Georgia Republicans "Republicans in name only".

Campaigning in Columbus, Georgia on Monday, Harris told supporters at a drive-in rally, "2020 ain't over til January 5". She added: "That's when 2020 will be over. That's when we'll get this thing done."

Michelle Obama is due to campaign virtually in the state in a drive-in concert put on by her organisation When We All Vote to mobilise voters. Celebrate Georgia! on 3 January will also feature performances by Rick Ross, Jack Harlow, Pastor Troy and Monica.

[Rad]

 Georgia election officials straining under 'sheer flood of disinformation' as runoffs approach: report

December 28, 2020
Raw Story
Matthew Chapman

On Monday, POLITICO profiled several Georgia election officials who warned that the combined weight of GOP conspiracy theories and the COVID-19 pandemic is stretching the system to the breaking point - with the pivotal Senate runoff elections fast approaching.

"The pandemic has forced temporary closures in some election offices, and all officials can do is hope election week doesn't bring more at exactly the wrong time. The state's early voting and vote-by-mail programs have increased turnout but stretched resources and become a bitter partisan flashpoint," reported Zach Montellaro. "All the while, stressed and fatigued election workers want to prevent reporting of the Senate vote counts from devolving into the mess that followed November's vote, when President Donald Trump and allies spread unfounded claims about machines switching votes (Georgia uses paper ballots), the state's voter signature verification process and other issues that fueled Trump's overall claim that he was cheated."

Acting Liberty County elections supervisor Ronda Walthour complained that in November, poll watchers believed they could "walk around and do whatever they wanted to do" contrary to state guidelines which lay out very specific duties, and added she worries this could happen again.

Georgia's voting system manager Gabriel Sterling, a lifelong Republican who gained national attention for condemning Trump's election conspiracy theories, shared the worry. "The sheer flood of disinformation has undermined people's faith," he told POLITICO. "At the end of the day, what that means is you don't trust your neighbor who's running the election ... And that's really weighing on a lot of them."

Trump and his supporters have raged against the results in Georgia, where President-elect Joe Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes, as the upcoming runoffs will decide control of the Senate. The president and most of his allies have endorsed incumbent Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, but some pro-Trump elements, like activist attorney Lin Wood, have called on GOP voters to boycott the election in protest of imaginary voter fraud.

[Rad]

Will Pence Do the Right Thing?

On Jan. 6, the vice president will preside as Congress counts the Electoral College's votes. Let's hope that he doesn't do the unthinkable - and unconstitutional.

By Neal K. Katyal and John Monsky

Mr. Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown, is a former acting solicitor general of the United States. Mr. Monsky is the creator of the American History Unbound Series of multimedia productions that covers watershed moments in American history and a board member of the New-York Historical Society.

Dec. 29, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
NY TIMES

President Trump recently tweeted that "the "˜Justice' Department and FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud," followed by these more ominous lines: "Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th."

The unmistakable reference is to the day Congress will count the Electoral College's votes, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding. Mr. Trump is leaning on the vice president and congressional allies to invalidate the November election by throwing out duly certified votes for Joe Biden.

Mr. Pence thus far has not said he would do anything like that, but his language is worrisome. Last week, he said: "We're going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We're going to win Georgia, we're going to save America," as a crowd screamed, "Stop the steal."

And some Republicans won't let up. On Monday, Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and other politicians filed a frivolous lawsuit, which has multiple fatal flaws in both form and substance, in an attempt to force the vice president to appoint pro-Trump electors.

Mr. Trump himself has criticized virtually everyone's view of the election, from that of the Supreme Court to the F.B.I. to Senator Mitch McConnell, but he has never attacked Mr. Pence, suggesting he has hopes for the vice president.

But as a matter of constitutional text and history, any effort on Jan. 6 is doomed to fail. It would also be profoundly anti-democratic and unconstitutional.

Both Article II of the Constitution and the 12th Amendment say that the votes of the Electoral College are to be opened by the "president of the Senate," meaning the vice president. The Electoral Count Act, passed in 1887 to avoid chaotic counts like the one that followed the 1876 election, adds important details. It provides a detailed timeline to tabulate electoral votes, culminating with the final count to take place on Jan. 6, and it delineates the powers of the vice president.

He is to be the "presiding officer" (meaning he is to preserve order and decorum), open the ballot envelopes, provide those results to a group of tellers, call for any objection by members of Congress, announce the results of any votes on objections, and ultimately announce the result of the vote.

Nothing in either the text of the Constitution or the Electoral Count Act gives the vice president any substantive powers. His powers are ministerial, and that circumscribed role makes general sense: The whole point of an election is to let the people decide who will rule them. If an incumbent could simply maneuver to keep himself in office - after all, a maneuver to protect Mr. Trump also protects Mr. Pence - the most foundational precept of our government would be gravely undermined. In America, "we the people," not "we, the vice president," control our destiny.

The drafters of the Electoral Count Act consciously insisted on this weakened role for the vice president. They guarded against any pretense he might have to throw out a particular state's votes, saying that the vice president must open "all certificates and papers purporting to be" electoral votes. They further said, in the event of a dispute, both chambers of Congress would have to disagree with a particular state's slate of electoral votes to reject them. And they made it difficult for Congress to disagree, adding measures such as a "safe harbor" provision and deference to certification by state officials.

In this election, certification is clear. There are no ongoing legal challenges in the states of any merit whatsoever. All challenges have lost, spectacularly and often, in the courts. The states and the electors have spoken their will. Neither Vice President Pence nor the loyal followers of President Trump have a valid basis to contest anything.

To be sure, this structure creates awkwardness, as it forces the vice president to announce the result even when personally unfavorable.

After the close election of 1960, Richard Nixon, as vice president, counted the votes for his opponent, John Kennedy. Al Gore, in perhaps one of the more dramatic moments of our Republic's short history, counted the votes and reported them in favor of George W. Bush.

Watching Mr. Gore count the votes, shut off all challenges and deliver the presidency to Mr. Bush was a powerful moment in our democracy. By the time he counted the votes, America and the world knew where he stood. And we were all lifted up when Mr. Gore, at the end, asked God to bless the new president and vice president and joined the chamber in applause.

Republican leaders - including Senators McConnell, Roy Blunt and John Thune - have recognized the outcome of the election, despite the president's wrath. Mr. McConnell put it in clear terms: "The Electoral College has spoken. So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden."

Notably, Mr. Pence has been silent. He has not even acknowledged the historic win by Kamala Harris, the nation's first female, first African-American and first Asian-American vice president.

He now stands on the edge of history as he begins his most consequential act of leadership. The question for Vice President Pence, as well as other members of Congress, is which side of history he wants to come down on. Can he show the integrity demonstrated by every previous presidential administration? The American people accept a graceful loser, but a sore loser never goes down well in the history books.

We urge Mr. Pence to study our first president. After the Revolutionary War, the artist Benjamin West reported that King George had asked him what General Washington would do now that America was independent. West said that Washington would give up power and go back to farming. King George responded with words to the effect that "if he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

Indeed, Washington did so, surrendering command of the army to Congress and returning to Mount Vernon for years until he was elected president. And he again relinquished power eight years later, even though many would have been happy to keep him president for life. Washington in this way fully realized the American Republic, because there is no Republic without the peaceful transfer of power.

And it's now up to Mr. Pence to recognize exactly that. Like all those that have come before him, he should count the votes as they have been certified and do everything he can to oppose those who would do otherwise. This is no time for anyone to be a bystander - our Republic is on the line.

[Rad]

Early Voting Numbers in Georgia Senate Races Put G.O.P. on Edge

While polls suggest that the state's crucial runoff elections are up for grabs, Republicans have grown worried about strong turnout in Democratic areas and mixed messages from President Trump.

By Astead W. Herndon and Richard Fausset
NY TIMES
Dec. 31, 2020

MACON, Ga. - Senator Kelly Loeffler issued a now-familiar warning during a campaign event on Wednesday in Bibb County: If Democrats win the Georgia Senate runoff elections, there will be little left to stem a rising tide of extremist socialism in America.

But Dale Washburn, a Republican state legislator who introduced Ms. Loeffler at the event, had another warning. This one was based not on ideology, but on numbers that suggest Democrats are outpacing Republicans in early voting turnout - which means that Republicans may need a tremendous election-day performance on Jan. 5 if they are to win the state's two high-stakes runoff races and maintain control of the Senate.

"We're fully aware of the energy on the other side, and think we've been reminded about that," Mr. Washburn said. "We know demographics have changed in recent years. And if our side hasn't been aware of that, they're rapidly becoming aware of that. The Biden victory had a big part."

Less than a week before election day, the last-minute challenges, messages and strategies for the two parties in Georgia's runoffs are coming into focus, even as polls indicate that the elections are too close to call. Those messages will be hammered home on the day before the elections by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who plans to campaign on Monday in Atlanta, and by President Trump, who will hold a rally on the same day in Dalton, a city in northwest Georgia.

However, some Republicans are increasingly worried that Mr. Trump, who continues to make the baseless claim that he lost Georgia because of a rigged voting system, is sending confusing signals to his followers that may serve to keep them home on election day. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump on Twitter pushed for the resignation of Gov. Brian Kemp, a staunch conservative and Trump supporter who has declined to take steps to overturn the state's election results.

The president argued that Mr. Kemp was an "obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia."

As Mr. Trump continues to foment a backward-looking drama, Ms. Loeffler and her fellow Republican candidate, Senator David Perdue, have crisscrossed the state, warning of an ominous future if their Democratic opponents, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock and Jon Ossoff, prevail. Speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, Mr. Perdue said the Republicans were a "last line of defense" against centralized government, comparing his struggle to military conflicts like World War II.

On "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday morning, he added: "We're winning this race right now. Kelly and I are all over this state. We're running against two of the most liberal candidates that the Democrats have ever put up."

Democrats, for their part, have been crafting messages that they hope will resonate with African-Americans, a constituency crucial to Mr. Biden's narrow victory in Georgia in November. One TV ad released on Wednesday for Mr. Ossoff featured former President Barack Obama, who says that Mr. Ossoff will pass a new voting rights act if elected, while the musician John Legend plays a rendition of "Georgia on My Mind."

But it is the numbers from early in-person and absentee voting that are particularly troubling for many Republican operatives in the state. Since the start of early voting on Dec. 14, more than 2.5 million Georgians have cast their votes, and the breakdown appears to be mostly good news for Democrats. (The early voting period runs through the end of Jan. 1, but Georgia counties may choose to close polling sites in observance of holidays on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.)

The breakdown of votes so far shows that vote-rich Democratic strongholds, including Fulton and DeKalb Counties in metropolitan Atlanta, are posting high numbers, while African-Americans statewide are "voting their weight and then some," said Charles S. Bullock III, a political scientist at the University of Georgia.

At the same time, Dr. Bullock noted, turnout has been weak in the northwestern part of the state, which is home to many working-class white Trump supporters. In Walker County, which Mr. Trump won with 79 percent of the vote, the turnout, as of Wednesday, was only 47 percent of the general election total, according to the website georgiavotes.com.

That may explain Mr. Trump's decision to hold his rally on Monday in Dalton, a city known for its flooring and carpet manufacturing. It is also in the heart of the congressional district recently won by Representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican best known for espousing elements of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Mr. Trump announced the rally on Dec. 19. Democrats countered on Wednesday with their announcement that Mr. Biden would campaign on the same day in Atlanta. On Sunday, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris also plans to hold an event in Savannah.

Ms. Harris's visit will most likely serve as a force multiplier for Democrats in Savannah, with a leading Black Democrat visiting a predominantly Black city to stump for Mr. Warnock, who is also Black and is a Savannah native. The move demonstrates how Democrats have embraced a strategy espoused by Stacey Abrams, the party's former candidate for governor, that emphasizes paying attention to, and spending money turning out, the state's minority voters.

While that strategy appears to have given Democrats an early edge, it remains to be seen if it will be enough to counter a surge of Republican voters who are probably waiting until election day to turn up at the polls, as has traditionally been the case.

"Democrats have shown up for the early vote, and the overt emphasis on Black voters has seemingly paid off," Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist based in Georgia, said in a text message on Wednesday. "Republicans, though, still have a lot of votes out there they can get, particularly in northwest Georgia, where Trump is going Monday. The G.O.P. candidates will win handily among election day voters, so the bigger the turnout on Tuesday, the better the Republican chances."

But Republicans had similar hopes for Mr. Trump in the general election, in which he fell short by about 12,000 votes in Georgia. And it is unclear whether Mr. Trump, in his visit to Dalton, will end up motivating his followers or causing more headaches for Republicans.

Mr. Trump's tweet calling for Mr. Kemp to resign was already commanding some of the political spotlight on Wednesday. At a hastily convened news conference, Mr. Kemp did not address Mr. Trump's comments directly, saying he would not be "distracted" from his goal of electing Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler. The governor also said he was too focused on responding to the coronavirus pandemic to become involved in political infighting.

"That horse has left the barn in Georgia," Mr. Kemp said of Mr. Biden's victory in Georgia - dismissing Mr. Trump's false claims that the state's election was tainted by fraud.

How the jockeying plays out will not only affect the balance of power in Washington but also offer the first hints at how both parties navigate the post-Trump political future. Mr. Trump has proved to be a unique motivator of the Republican base, and the party is yet to find a figure who is equally adept at maximizing turnout among white conservatives.

Democrats are eager to prove that Mr. Biden's success in November was not a fluke, and that voters want a robust liberal agenda rather than the Republican-led obstructionism that defined Mr. Obama's administration.

Mr. Ossoff, who is facing off against Mr. Perdue, has sought in particular to make the election a referendum on Republican inaction on the pandemic. The latest issue at hand this week was whether the Republican senators would support a Senate vote on giving Americans stimulus checks of $2,000 rather than $600, a prospect that Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, appeared to dash on Wednesday.

"People are in dire straits," Mr. Ossoff said. "And if Senators Perdue and Loeffler - who are in the majority, and, let's be clear, it's the majority that controls floor action - and if they are serious about $2,000 relief checks for the people, then they should put maximum pressure on Mitch McConnell to move that legislation immediately."

In a gaggle at her event in Macon, Ms. Loeffler avoided the question. Though she has said she supports the increased stimulus checks, she avoided placing pressure on Senate Republican leaders to bring forth the issue on the floor without caveats. Ms. Loeffler also avoided another hot-button Republican issue: whether to object to the presidential results on Jan. 6, when the Senate must ratify the Electoral College outcome.

"Leader McConnell and I have spoken about bringing another relief package," Ms. Loeffler said. "But we're in this situation because Democrats have blocked relief throughout this summer."

Her carefully chosen words highlighted her current political pickle. In both Georgia and Washington, siding with Mr. Trump can also mean being in direct opposition to Republicans like Mr. McConnell or Mr. Kemp.

Mr. Washburn, the state representative, said the infighting among Republicans had made operating in the state more difficult.

He said he worried that the discord, and the Republicans who have questioned whether their votes will count in the runoffs, were hampering turnout for the party.

"Obviously we would prefer to have complete unity, but the situation is what it is," Mr. Washburn said. "And we have to tap down any conversation that your vote doesn't matter. Because it does matter."

He added, "It's definitely a big concern."

Astead W. Herndon reported from Macon, Ga., and Richard Fausset from Atlanta. Stephanie Saul contributed reporting from New York.

[Rad]

Sasse Slams G.O.P. Effort to Challenge Election Results as a "˜Dangerous Ploy'

Senator Josh Hawley's plan to object to the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 is exposing a rift among Republicans.

By Catie Edmondson
NY Times
1/1/2121

WASHINGTON - Senator Ben Sasse on Thursday condemned a drive by his Republican colleagues in Congress to challenge the results of the 2020 election, rebuking the effort as a "dangerous ploy" led by lawmakers who are "playing with fire."

In a blistering open letter to his constituents, Mr. Sasse of Nebraska became the first Republican senator to publicly condemn a decision by Senator Josh Hawley to challenge President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s victory, saying it was intended to "disenfranchise millions of Americans."

"Let's be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there's a quick way to tap into the president's populist base without doing any real, long-term damage," Mr. Sasse wrote. "But they're wrong - and this issue is bigger than anyone's personal ambitions. Adults don't point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government."

Mr. Sasse's scathing remarks came a day after Mr. Hawley, Republican of Missouri, announced that he would object to Congress's certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, the final procedural step in affirming Mr. Biden's victory.

Mr. Hawley's move ensures that the process, usually a formality, will force up-or-down votes on the House and Senate floors, requiring lawmakers to either show loyalty to President Trump and object to the results or protect the sanctity of the electoral process.
   
There is almost no chance that the effort, led by Mr. Hawley in the Senate and a small group of Republican lawmakers in the House, will succeed in reversing the outcome. But Mr. Hawley's decision to challenge the results is forcing a test of how far the Republican Party is willing to go to back Mr. Trump's false claims.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has discouraged lawmakers from objecting to the results, and on Thursday, he told members of his conference on a private call that he considered his vote on Jan. 6 the most consequential one he would ever cast, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

Mr. McConnell did not explicitly say how he would vote, and made clear he was not trying to sway senators to vote one way or another, the people said. But he framed the vote to certify the election results as a critical moment to defend the backbone of the electoral system and invoked votes he had taken on wars and impeachment to underscore its significance.

Even some of Mr. Trump's usual allies have called his efforts to cling to power unseemly.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board called it a "kamikaze mission" this week and said "Republicans should be embarrassed by Mr. Trump's Electoral College hustle."

The New York Post, which has supported Mr. Trump for years, proclaimed on Monday: "Give it up, Mr. President - for your sake and the nation's."

Mr. Trump has continued to falsely claim that Mr. Biden unfairly won the election because of widespread voter fraud and has demanded that congressional Republicans work to overturn the results. Attorney General William P. Barr has acknowledged that the Justice Department had uncovered no such fraud that would have changed the outcome and the Supreme Court, as well as courts in at least eight key states across the country, has refused or rejected challenges waged by the Trump campaign in an attempt to throw out the results of the election. Those challenges have not come close to overturning the results in a single state.

Still there is a substantial rift in the party. While a steady stream of House Republicans have announced their willingness to object to the electoral votes of critical states, Mr. Hawley is the first senator to do so. He hinted on Wednesday that other senators could soon join his effort, telling reporters "a number of offices have reached out via staff to ours and said, "˜We're interested.'"

On Thursday, he blasted out a fund-raising pitch highlighting his plan. "We must ensure that one vote means one vote in America," read the message, which was positioned alongside a photo of Mr. Hawley and Mr. Trump. "I plan to object to the results of the Electoral College on Jan. 6, but I need your help."

It is unclear how many - if any - of his Senate colleagues will rally to his side.

His announcement on Wednesday was met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm in many conservative circles. On the private conference call on Thursday with Senate Republicans, Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, who is retiring in 2022, spoke up to make clear his "strong" disagreement with Mr. Hawley's plan, a spokesman for Mr. Toomey confirmed.

On that same call, details of which were earlier reported by Axios, Mr. McConnell pressed Mr. Hawley to explain how he expected his objection to play out, according to a person familiar with the conversation. But Mr. Hawley was absent from the call and did not respond, prompting him to email members of the conference later, explaining that he intended to force a debate on the issue of election security and noting that the election had left many of his constituents at home disillusioned.

Mr. Hawley's objection will force the Senate to debate his claim for up to two hours, followed by a vote on Mr. Biden's victory. With every Senate Democrat expected to certify the election, along with at least several Republicans, the Senate is likely to affirm Mr. Biden's victory. The House, which must also conduct the same vote, is controlled by Democrats, making certification a certainty.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said he was "curious to see" the evidence driving the objection, but expressed skepticism at the effort, noting that a slew of courts had already overturned challenges from the Trump campaign.

"There's a lot of things I don't want to happen that happen," Mr. Cornyn said. "So you just got to learn to deal with it. And I think this is one of them."

"I question why he is doing it when the courts have unanimously thrown out the suits that the president's team have filed for lack of credible evidence," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. "Senator Hawley is a smart attorney who clerked for the Supreme Court so he clearly understands that."

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who has questioned whether Mr. Biden fairly won the election and is often eager to wade into battles demanded by Mr. Trump, said he was supportive of Mr. Hawley's effort but would not join him in objecting. He left open the possibility that he would vote to support the objection.

"There's no reason for more people to object," Mr. Johnson told reporters. "All it takes is one. But I'll support his efforts and support the efforts of the conference" to "hear the issues."

House Republicans have been more eager to challenge the results. On Thursday, eight Republican members of Pennsylvania's congressional delegation announced that they would challenge Mr. Biden's electoral votes, citing the use of election procedures they claim were unauthorized by state legislators. Pennsylvania's Republican state legislators also wrote to Mr. McConnell on Thursday urging him to "dispute the certification until an investigation is completed" into allegations of election law violations.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, said he believed that more than 100 Republican lawmakers could ultimately vote to sustain the objections in the House. In December, 126 Republican lawmakers in the House including the party's leader - making up more than 60 percent of the conference - joined a legal brief supporting an extraordinary lawsuit seeking to overturn Mr. Biden's victory, and dozens have already signed onto the effort to challenge the results on Jan. 6.

Mr. Kinzinger, a vocal critic of attempts by Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress to overturn the election, said on "The Bulwark Podcast" that he hoped his colleagues would prove him wrong.

"I'm just over the undermining of democracy and the frankly massive damage that's being done with this," Mr. Kinzinger said.

Some of his colleagues have agreed that the effort amounted to an inappropriate undertaking. Representative-elect Nancy Mace of South Carolina told The Post and Courier that she would not vote to overturn the results. "I do not believe that Congress knows better than voters or better than the states," she said.

But more House Republicans announced on Thursday that they would support the drive, and none came forward to condemn it. Four members of Missouri's House delegation followed Mr. Hawley's lead, acknowledging in a joint statement they knew the effort would ultimately fail.

"We have no illusions about the outcome, at the end of the day, this is still Nancy Pelosi's House," they wrote. "Our only hope is that more will join us - that more will value protecting the vote of every American living in their state as much as we do fighting for yours."

Other lawmakers, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, had been trying a different tactic to try to block Mr. Biden's victory. They filed a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence that tries to invalidate the 1880s law that governs the Electoral College vote, a move aimed at getting a judge to inform Mr. Pence that he does not have to accept the electoral votes.

But on Thursday, the Justice Department, arguing on behalf of Mr. Pence, asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, pitting the department against Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress.

The department said in its response that Mr. Gohmert did not have standing to sue Mr. Pence over performing the duties that he is allowed to by law, and that - if lawmakers wanted to change the statute - they should sue Congress, which was responsible for its passage.

The Justice Department also made clear in its filing that it welcomed any comments from the federal judge in the case, Jeremy D. Kernodle, that would clarify that Mr. Pence's role in the election is procedural and that he does not have the power to reject votes or decide the results of the election.

[Rad]

US judge dismisses suit filed against Pence seeking to overturn election result

Lawsuit aimed at allowing vice president to reject electoral college votes is latest in a long line of cases to be thrown out

Reuters
Sat 2 Jan 2021 04.35 GMT

A US judge has rejected a lawsuit from a Republican congressman that sought to allow vice president Mike Pence to reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden when Congress meets on Wednesday to certify his victory over president Donald Trump.

The latest long-shot attempt by Trump's Republican allies to overturn the November election result was dismissed by one of Trump's own appointees to the federal bench, Jeremy Kernodle.

He ruled that representative Louie Gohmert of Texas and a slate of Republican electors from Arizona could not show they suffered any personal harm "fairly traceable" to Pence's allegedly unlawful conduct and, therefore, lacked legal standing to bring the case.

The standing requirement "helps enforce the limited role of federal courts in our constitutional system. The problem for plaintiffs here is that they lack standing," Kernodle wrote.

A spokesman for Trump referred questions to Pence's office. A spokesman for Pence declined to comment.

Gohmert and his fellow plaintiffs said they would appeal. In an interview with the broadcaster Newsmax, the congressman said the ruling was "an example of when the institutions that our constitution created to resolve disputes so that you didn't have to have riots and violence in the streets, it's when they go wrong."

"All this stuff about it [election fraud] being debunked, unsubstantiated, those are absolute lies," he said, without evidence. "Basically in effect the ruling would be that you got to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa and BLM [Black Lives Matter]."

Trump has refused to concede defeat and has repeatedly falsely claimed the election was tainted by widespread fraud. He and his allies have lost dozens of court efforts seeking to reverse the election results.

Biden beat Trump by a 306-232 margin in the electoral college and is set to be sworn in on 20 January.

Under the electoral college system, electoral votes are allotted to states and the District of Columbia based on their congressional representation.

Some Republicans have said they plan to object to the count of presidential electors next week in Congress. The effort could trigger a lengthy debate in the Senate but has virtually no chance of overturning the results.

A justice department lawyer representing Pence on Thursday had urged Kernodle to dismiss the lawsuit, saying they had sued the wrong person because they raised "a host of weighty legal issues about the manner in which the electoral votes for president are to be counted".

"The Senate and the House, not the vice president, have legal interests that are sufficiently adverse to plaintiffs to ground a case or controversy," Pence's filing said.

[Rad]

Trump Calls Georgia Senate Races "˜Illegal and Invalid'

President Trump continued his assault on election integrity, baselessly claiming the presidential results and the Senate runoffs in Georgia were both invalid - which could complicate G.O.P. efforts to motivate voters.

By Richard Fausset
NY Times
Jan. 2, 2021

ATLANTA - President Trump took to Twitter Friday evening to make the unfounded assertion that Georgia's two Senate races are "illegal and invalid," an argument that could complicate his efforts to convince his supporters to turn out for Republican candidates in the two runoff races that will determine which party controls the Senate.

The president is set to hold a rally in Dalton, Ga., on Monday, the day before Election Day, and Georgia Republicans are hoping he will focus his comments on how crucial it is for Republicans to vote in large numbers for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the state's two incumbent Republican senators.

But Mr. Trump has continued to make the false claim that Georgia's election system was rigged against him in the Nov. 3 general election. Some Republican leaders are afraid that his supporters will take the president's argument seriously, and decide that voting in a "corrupt" system is not worth their time, a development that could hand the election to the Democrats.

Some strategists and political science experts in the state have said Mr. Trump's assault on Georgia's voting system may be at least partly responsible for the relatively light Republican turnout in the conservative strongholds of northwest Georgia, where Dalton is, in the early voting period that ended Thursday.

More than 3 million Georgia voters participated in the early voting period, which began Dec. 14. A strong early-voting turnout in heavily Democratic areas and among African-American voters suggests that Republicans will need a strong election-day performance to retain their Senate seats.

Mr. Trump made his assertion about the Senate races in a Twitter thread in which he also made the baseless claim that "massive corruption" took place in the general election, "which gives us far more votes than is necessary to win all of the Swing States."

The president made a specific reference to a Georgia consent decree that he said was unconstitutional. The problems with this document, he argued further, render the two Senate races and the results of his own electoral loss invalid.

Mr. Trump was almost certainly referring to a March consent decree hammered out between the Democratic Party and Republican state officials that helped establish standards for judging the validity of signatures on absentee ballots in the state.

Mr. Trump's allies have unsuccessfully argued in failed lawsuits that the consent decree was illegal because the U.S. Constitution confers the power to regulate congressional elections to state legislatures. But the National Constitution Center, among others, notes that Supreme Court rulings allow legislatures to delegate their authority to other state officials.

Since losing the election to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in November, Mr. Trump has directed a sustained assault on Georgia's Republican leaders - including Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger - saying they have not taken seriously enough his claims of voter fraud. He has called Mr. Kemp "a fool" and called for him to resign. At a rally for Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue last month in Georgia, the president spent considerable time airing his own electoral grievances, while devoting less time to supporting the two Republican candidates.

[Rad]

 Dems poised to win the Senate as Trump's voter fraud delusions harm Republicans in Georgia runoffs

January 03, 2021
Raw Story
Bob Brigham

Tuesday is the final day of voting in the two Georgia Senate runoff elections that will decide control of the U.S. Senate.

Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) is being challenged by Democratic John Ossoff, while interim Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) is being challenged by Democrat Raphael Warnock.

Trump will be traveling to the Peach State on Monday for an election eve rally that is being held despite the coronavirus pandemic.

    Will be in Georgia on Monday night, 9:00 P.M. to RALLY for two GREAT people, @sendavidperdue & @KLoeffler. GET READY TO VOTE ON TUESDAY!!!
    - Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)1609596771.0

Yet only hours later, Trump again called into question the legitimacy of the November election in Georgia.

    ....Just a small portion of these votes give US a big and conclusive win in Georgia. Have they illegally destroyed"¦ https://t.co/13AvDqYADp
    - Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)1609604447.0

The mixed messages -- that it is important for Republicans to vote for Perdue and Loeffler, but that the election is rigged and there's no point in voting -- appear to be harming Republicans in the polls.

Five Thirty Eight election analyst Nate Silver noted, "Polling trends haven't been favorable for Perdue and Loeffler lately."

The story Silver linked to showed Five Thirty Eight's polling averages in the two runoff elections.

While the Republicans both held small leads at Christmas, Ossoff now leads Perdue 48.7% to 47.5% in the averages. And Warnock leads Loeffler 49.1% to 47.3%.

    Polling trends haven't been favorable for Perdue and Loeffler lately. https://t.co/jNFvD5ZNhd
    - Nate Silver (@Nate Silver)1609625127.0

[Rad]

'One state can chart the course': Biden rallies in Georgia on eve of Senate runoffs

President-elect speaks at Atlanta rally alongside Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and the Rev Raphael Warnock

Lauren Gambino in Washington
Guardian
5 Jan 2021 21.53 EST

Joe Biden urged Georgia voters to surprise the nation once again by sending two Democrats to the US Senate, on the eve of a pair of critical runoff elections that will determine the balance of power in Washington and the scope of the president-elect's ambitious legislative agenda.

Biden, speaking at a drive-in rally in downtown Atlanta alongside the Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and the Rev Raphael Warnock on Monday afternoon, did not mention Donald Trump's increasingly brazen efforts to overturn the results of the November election, which escalated this weekend when the president pressured Georgia's secretary of state to "find" enough votes to reverse his defeat in the state. Instead, he focused on what Democrats could accomplish with control of the Senate.

"Georgia, the whole nation is looking to you," he said. "Unlike any time in my career, one state can chart the course not just for the next four years but for the next generation."

Meanwhile Trump, who spoke hours later at a rival rally for the Republican candidates in Dalton, Georgia, continued to deny that he lost the presidential election and to recite debunked claims about election fraud.

"If the liberal Democrats take the Senate and the White House - and they're not taking this White House," Trump said of Democrats, "we're going to fight like hell."

Democrats ask FBI to investigate Trump's Georgia phone cal..l Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/04/trump-georgia-phone-call-democrats-ask-fbi-investigate

If Democrats win both seats - no easy feat - the Senate would be evenly divided, with Kamala Harris, the vice-president-elect, serving as the tie-breaking vote. If Republicans win at least one of the races, Mitch McConnell will remain the Senate majority leader, making it far more difficult for the president-elect to deliver on top policy priorities such as healthcare, taxation and climate.

Three million Georgia voters cast ballots during the early voting period, which ended on Thursday - a record for runoff elections in the state. Nearly half a billion dollars has been spent on the twin races, as residents are bombarded with political ads and messaging urging them to vote in Tuesday's elections.
Supporters listen to Joe Biden as he addresses a campaign rally for Jon Ossoff and the Rev Raphael Warnock in Atlanta, Georgia.

Biden and Trump's duelling visits to the state on Monday highlight the urgency - and the stakes - of the contests, which will shape the political landscape for the first years of the incoming administration.

Biden was the first Democratic presidential nominee in nearly three decades to win Georgia, where changing demographics, long-term voter mobilization efforts and a political realignment across the Atlanta suburbs have turned this once reliably Republican southern state into a presidential battleground.

The state has certified Biden's 11,779-vote victory in Georgia, but that hasn't stopped Trump, who has refused to concede his defeat, from continuing to amplify false claims about the state's election process and its results. On Monday, Biden thanked Georgia voters for electing him and joked that he had won the state "three times" because of the two statewide recounts.

In an hour-long phone call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Saturday, Trump implored him to "find 11,780 votes" - just enough to reverse Biden's victory in the state's presidential election. A day after a recording of the conversation was made public, Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia, delivered a point-by-point denunciation of the meritless claims and debunked conspiracy theories cited by the president as evidence that the election was stolen from him.

At the rally on Monday, Trump suggested that Pence should use a ceremonial role on Wednesday, when he will preside over the Senate convening to certify the electoral college vote, to reject the outcome of the election. "I hope Pence comes through for us," Trump said, adding he would not "like him quite as much" if he did not.

Alluding to Trump's machinations in recent weeks, Biden said he would never demand loyalty from the state's senators, who he said were elected to serve the people of Georgia and the constitution, not the president.

"Politicians cannot assert, take or seize power," he said. "Power is given, granted by the American people alone."

The tape of Trump's call with Raffensperger has rattled Republicans in Georgia, who were already nervous that Trump's fixation on his electoral loss could depress turnout among his supporters. During a rally in Georgia last month, Trump devoted considerably more time to airing his own political grievances with the state's Republican leaders than promoting the Republican candidates he was there to campaign for.

With control of the Senate at stake, the races have drawn firepower from some of the biggest names in politics. In a tweet on Monday, Barack Obama cast the runoffs as an opportunity to safeguard democratic institutions from an assault on American democracy.

"We're seeing how far some will go to retain power and threaten the fundamental principles of our democracy," the former president wrote. "But our democracy isn't about any individual, even a president - it's about you."

Earlier on Monday, Mike Pence was in Milner, Georgia, to campaign on behalf of the Republican candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Speaking to supporters at a megachurch, the vice-president made no mention of the call between Trump and Raffensperger. Nor did he reconcile his support for an effort to reverse Trump's defeat with his argument that Republicans need Perdue and Loeffler in the Senate to serve as a bulwark against the incoming Democratic administration.

"We need Georgia to defend the majority," he said, adding: "A Republican Senate majority could be our last line of defense."

Pence's visit came a day after Harris held a drive-in rally with the Democratic candidates Ossoff and Warnock in Savannah. In her remarks, Harris assailed Trump for his call with Georgia's secretary of state, calling it a "bald-faced, bold abuse of power" and "most certainly the voice of desperation".

Revealed: David Perdue bought bank stocks after meeting financial officials..Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/04/republican-david-perdue-georgia-senate-runoff-traded-bank-stocks

Trump's sustained assault on Georgia's election system has further cleaved the party at the very moment they would benefit from unity. Since the November election, Trump has relentlessly attacked Georgia's Republican leaders, whom he has accused without evidence of ignoring instances of voter fraud. Last month, Trump called Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, a "fool" and said he should resign.

In Atlanta on Monday, Ossoff and Warnock seized the shared stage with Biden to galvanize their supporters one last time before polls opened on Tuesday morning for in-person voting.

Warnock envisioned a "new Georgia" represented by "a young Jewish man, the son of an immigrant, and a Black preacher, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church, where Martin Luther King Jr used to serve and where John Lewis used to worship".

Osoff declared that Democrats were on the "cusp of a historic victory".

Lois Beckett contributed reporting

[Rad]

Georgia Senate runoffs: Democrat Raphael Warnock wins against Kelly Loeffler

Democrats within striking distance of taking control of the upper chamber in triumph that marks dramatic moment in American politics   

Ed Pilkington in New York and David Smith in Atlanta and Peter Beaumont in London
Guardian
Wed 6 Jan 2021 06.14 GMT

Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Martin Luther King once preached, has won one of the two runoff elections for the US Senate in Georgia, putting the Democrats within striking distance of taking control of the upper chamber.

Warnock's victory over the ultra-Trump loyalist Kelly Loeffler was called by Associated Press just after 2am. It solidifies the astonishing transformation that has seen Georgia reshape itself from a southern Republican stronghold into a diverse and increasingly progressive state, just two months after Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win there in almost three decades.

The result puts the Democrats just one seat away from gaining control of the Senate. The second run-off election of the night, that of the former documentary film-maker Jon Ossoff against Republican incumbent David Perdue, was still too close to call with fewer than 2,000 votes between them.

A Democratic sweep of both runoffs, now potentially within the party's grasp, would have seismic ramifications. It would strip the Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell of his vice-like grip over the Senate which under his control has been likened to a "legislative graveyard".

By extension, it would vastly widen the vistas of the incoming Biden administration over such critical and potentially epochal areas as tackling the climate crisis the Covid-19 pandemic, appointing federal judges, and addressing racial and income inequality.

Taken on its own, Warnock's triumph marked a dramatic moment in American politics. The first time a Democrat has been sent by Georgia to the US Senate in 24 years, it raises several awkward questions for the Republican party that has seen its dominance in the state crumble in such short order.

There is also likely to be soul-searching over whether Donald Trump's refusal to concede defeat in November's presidential race, and his on-going attempts to overturn the results of the election, damaged the party's standing among moderate Republicans.

The president-elect himself summed up the high stakes on the eve of election day at a rally in Atlanta. He told the crowd: "One state can chart the course not just for the next four years, but for the next generation."

Warnock delivered what amounted to a victory speech before any of the TV networks or Associated Press had called his race. Shortly after midnight, with his lead over Loeffler looking increasingly solid, he went online and introduced himself effectively as Georgia's new senator-to-be.

Calling himself a "son of Georgia whose roots are planted deeply in Georgia soil", he promised to work in the Senate for all of the state's people. "We were told that we could not win this election, but tonight we proved that with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible."

He went on: "Washington has a choice to make - all of us have a choice to make: will we continue to divide, distract and dishonor one another, or will we love our neighbors as we love ourselves?"

Warnock's lead in a race in which he was relentlessly attacked by Loeffler and the Republicans as a far-left "socialist" was presaged by the candidates' contrasting fortunes in turnout. In Republican areas of the state, turnout was notably down on the presidential race in November which Biden won by a paper-thin margin.

By contrast, Democratic-leaning counties saw both Warnock and Ossoff markedly improve on Biden's record.

As Dave Wasserman of the non-partisan Cook Political Report pointed out, turnout in majority African American counties was especially striking. "Black turnout looks, frankly, phenomenal," he wrote on Twitter.

Throughout Tuesday, polling stations across the state reported a steady stream of voters who defied a devastating surge in coronavirus infections in Georgia to vote in person. Individual Georgians went to extreme lengths to take part in what have been described as elections that could set the course of America for a generation.

According to state election officials, the number of Georgians who had cast their votes in advance of election day - either through absentee ballots or by early voting - reached 3.1 million. That, on its own, smashed the standing record set in 2008 for a Senate runoff in Georgia which attracted a total of 2.1 million voters.

By the time the final votes are counted, election officials suggested the total is likely to reach 4.6m - more than double the 2008 record.

The enormous electoral energy swirling around the runoffs was reflected in key counties where the results of both races could be won or lost. Dekalb county, which covers the eastern suburbs of Atlanta, saw turnout on Tuesday exceed even that of the presidential election day in November.

For participation in runoff elections to surpass that of a presidential race was extremely rare, and was welcomed as a positive signal by Democrats given that Biden soundly defeated Trump in Dekalb county by 83% to 16% in November. However, a similar story of large turnout was also being told in key Republican-leaning counties, such as Forsyth county and Cherokee county where long lines were witnessed outside the polling places.

Stacey Abrams, who has been seminal in building a Democratic ground game through her group Fair Fight, put out a tentatively celebratory tweet shortly before midnight, when both runoff elections remained in the balance. "With new votes joining the tally, we are on a strong path," she said, adding: "Across our state, we roared."

With the data leaning tentatively in the Democratic direction as the night progressed, excitement was building around the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, where Warnock is pastor and Martin Luther King Jr grew up and often preached. The 134-year-old church was firmly closed, its doors plastered with coronavirus warnings, but people outside could sense history in the making.

Cheryl Johnson, a voting engagement activist and community historian, said: "We're hoping, we're hoping. We know that Georgia is in the midst of a great change. We believe that we can lead the country forward as we have always led the country in many different ways. We have a history of great leadership. We have always been change-makers."

Warnock would be the first Black person from Georgia elected to the Senate. Johnson stood on Auburn Avenue, which she noted was once the heart of Black wealth in America. "We had millionaires from one end of the street to another. All of these churches that you see were built by African Americans who had just come out of slavery.

"So this is where we we drew our strength. This is where Dr King was brought up. People think that it's a surprise for Atlantans but it's not, because Atlanta has been known to birth and to develop leadership."

Johnson, 54, has heard Warnock preach at the church. "He can break it down intellectually but when it comes to talking about the issues that impact our community, social justice issues, homelessness, healthcare issues, police reform, he comes in the tradition of the Baptist church, which is passionate, engaged. He challenges people to think about who are you? If you say that you are this, what does that mean?"

Fears of trouble or even violence outside polling stations appeared not to have materialised. Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, told CNN that "we have never seen an election is more secure and has had more integrity."

His fellow Republican official, Gabriel Sterling, said that incidents of difficulties with voting mechanisms were passingly few. At a press conference, he said that only 0.1% of scanning machines across the state had failed to work while 0.02% of counting machines had to be replaced.

Destabilising both parties herculean efforts to get their supporters to the polls on Tuesday was the mercurial influence of Donald Trump. The president continues to refuse to concede defeat in the presidential election, and has persisted in a campaign of falsehoods targeting Georgia with unfounded claims of voter fraud.

Trump lit a fuse under the double runoffs on Saturday when he called Raffensperger and tried to cajole him into overturning the certified results of the presidential race. The conversation was taped and leaked, and has led to calls for Trump to be prosecuted for election crimes.

The president's antics have left some Republicans in Georgia fretting that his claims that his victory was "stolen" would dissuade party supporters from turning up at the polls on Tuesday. But it remained to be seen just how much impact his incendiary interventions would make, and in what direction.

The Republican contestants have attempted to move beyond Trump's baseless complaint about the presidential count and focus their campaigns on what they have depicted as the "radical socialism" of their Democratic rivals. The airwaves have been flooded with unprecedented numbers of political adverts on both sides, with the campaigns of the four candidates jointly splurging more than $833m on the state according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Nonetheless Loeffler, the richest member of the Senate who also prides herself as being the chamber's most conservative, has announced that she will vote to challenge the electoral college results at a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.

************

Ossoff campaign: 'We fully expect he will have won' when all votes are counted

Raw Story
1/6/2121

The Georgia Senate runoff wasn't a blowout for Democrats, but it appeared that Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff could eke out a win.

While the race looked better for Rev. Warnock, Ossoff thinks that he will prevail over Perdue when all votes come in.

"When all the votes are counted we fully expect that Jon Ossoff will have won this election to represent Georgia in the United States Senate," campaign manager Ellen Foster said in a statement. "The outstanding vote is squarely in parts of the state where Jon's performance has been dominant. We look forward to seeing the process through in the coming hours and moving ahead so Jon can start fighting for all Georgians in the U.S. Senate."

See the statement below:

    NEW from @Ossoff: "When all the votes are counted we fully expect that Jon Ossoff will have won this election to re"¦ https://t.co/YFVXHnYvm1
    - Andrew Solender (@Andrew Solender)1609914431.0

[Rad]

Georgia runoffs power a Democratic comeback: Last election of Trump era may lock GOP out of power

January 06, 2021
Heather Digby Parton, Salon

As I write this, the results of the two Senate runoff races have not yet been officially certified, but most of the smart election analysts project both Democrats have won. The Cook Reports' Dave Wasserman issued his famous "I've seen enough" early Tuesday evening for Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock, who successfully challenged unelected incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, and a couple of hours later tweeted the same for Democrat Jon Ossoff, who has apparently defeated Republican multimillionaire David Perdue to become the first millennial in the Senate.

Anything's possible in close races so I am withholding my euphoria - but if this holds, it's hard to overstate just how important this result is going to be. No matter what ultimately happens in the race between Ossoff and Perdue, as multiple outlets have called Warnock the victor over Loeffler, Democrats have at least managed to wrestle control of the Senate away from Republicans. If the Senate is ultimately tied 50-50, Kamala Harris is able to cast the deciding vote as vice president.

Georgia's election results mean the difference between the U.S. finally controlling the pandemic to recover economically and ... not doing that. Lives will be saved and families and businesses will be able to get back on their feet. That is the immediate crisis we face and with the Congress in Democrats' hands, the Biden administration can move much faster and more efficiently than if Mitch McConnell remained in the way as majority leader of the upper chamber.

As for the rest of the Democratic agenda, we will have to see. History shows that when the Congress is divided so closely, power tends to flow to the "moderates" in both parties who tend to form a coalition and serve as a veto point for both conservative and progressive legislation. In Barack Obama's book, this comment in the preface is an important insight that I hope he's discussed with his wingman Joe Biden:

    "I confess there have been times during the course of writing this book, as I reflected on my presidency and all that's happened since, when I've had to ask myself whether I was too tempered in speaking the truth as I saw it, too cautious in either word or deed, convinced as I was that by appealing to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature, I stood a greater chance of leading us in the direction of the America we've been promised."

In his quest to unify the country and embrace a bipartisan Grand Bargain, Obama now seemingly admits, he empowered slick hyper-partisans like Paul Ryan, the former Republican from Wisconsin who served as speaker of the House, by treating him as an honest broker. The Republicans responded to Obama's overture by sabotaging as much of his presidency as they could. It took Obama and his team much too long to realize that the Republicans were radical obstructionists regardless of what he proposed or how much he tried to "reach across the aisle." The administration's flailing in the first term only made Republicans realize the extent of the power and they have been exercising it ruthlessly ever since. After Trump, Republicans will no longer be bound by any sense of shared commitment to the Constitution or even democracy.

Considering how close the Senate split is likely to be, it's also important to remember that Obama was hindered by some of the centrist divas in the Democratic caucus as that may end up being a greater challenge for Joe Biden.

Even with a Senate majority, there will still be Joe Manchin, D-W. Va, both Kirsten Sinema and probably Mark Kelly, the moderate Democrats from Arizona, along with some others like Virginia's Mark Warner and Delaware's Chris Coons who will join with the GOP's perpetually concerned caucus of Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, Maine's Susan Collins and Mitt Romney of Utah to wring their hands and clutch their pearls about anything necessary for fundamental change. We already know this much:

    Former President Barack Obama has called on the Senate to do away with the filibuster, but that won't happen if West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has anything to say about it.
    "I will do everything I can to prevent it from happening," Manchin, a Democrat, told Yahoo News in an interview on Wednesday. "We will not have the democracy we know today if that [filibuster elimination] happens, I can assure you."

Recall that the Democrats briefly had a 60-vote majority in 2009 and getting Obamacare passed was a months-long, hard-fought negotiation that ended up being stymied when Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy died and was replaced by Republican Scott Brown. Even with 59 seats, Democrats still had to pass the Affordable Care Act through the reconciliation process so they would only need 50 votes. It barely passed.

Doing anything important is difficult in a polarized country with an undemocratic institution like the Senate. Sometimes a crisis can move the dial a bit more dramatically, but, for the most part, it's like pulling teeth to make fundamental change through legislation these days. I'm just hoping that Biden will use whatever executive power he has and that the Democrats move quickly to deliver material improvements to people.

None of that is to say this isn't a huge relief and a major opportunity. With a Democratic majority, Biden will be able to make the appointments he wants, including judges, and the Democrats will set the agenda. They will control the committees and will have the ability to investigate what has happened during the Trump era and seek some justice for the outrageous assaults on our democracy over the past four years.

Those assaults continue today as what would normally be a pro-forma ceremonial task of confirming the Electoral College votes in the U.S. Congress is being turned into a circus sideshow by the president and his followers. On Tuesday night the president refuted a New York Times report that Vice President Pence had informed him that he didn't have the authority to change the election outcome, which he certainly does not. Trump simply refuses to believe it, apparently, and is now threatening to take revenge on Republicans who failed to help him overturn the election. It sounds like Pence might be among them.

One name that won't be on the list is Kelly Loeffler, whose loss in the runoff in Georgia was likely because of her servile bootlicking of Trump. His insistence that the vote was stolen is almost certainly one reason why the Democrats won. At the Georgia rally on Monday night, Trump predicted, "If they win, I'll get no credit, if they lose, they're gonna blame Trump." He's undoubtedly right about that. According to the New York Times, voter surveys showed that 56 percent of Georgia voters said they disapproved of Trump's handling of the results of the presidential election. It turns out that insulting their leaders and trying to coerce them into overturning an election wasn't such a great get-out-the-vote strategy.

What happens now is anyone's guess. But now that the Senate appears to be in Democratic hands I would be lying if I didn't admit to feeling a tremendous sense of schadenfreude at what's about to take place in the Republican Party. It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of people.

[Rad]

Furious GOP official says Trump has done more damage to Georgia than anyone since General Sherman

January 06, 2021
Brad Reed
Raw Story

Furious GOP official says Trump has done more damage to Georgia than anyone since General Sherman

Many Republicans are still furious at President Donald Trump for likely costing them the Senate thanks to his constant complaints that the state had "rigged" its election against him.

In fact, CNN's Manu Raju reports that one "senior Republican official" unloaded on Trump Wednesday by making a brutal Civil War analogy.

"Not since General Sherman has one man done as much damage, to as many people, in as little time," the official said.

William Sherman was a Union Army general during the American Civil War who is infamous in Georgia for his "March to the Sea" in which he and his men traveled from Atlanta to Savannah while leaving a trail of burned cities, farms, and infrastructure in their wake.

After comparing Trump to Sherman, the GOP official also slammed Trump for his unique skill in driving Democratic voter turnout.

"No one in the history of our country turns out voters like Donald Trump," the official said. "The problem is, the overwhelming majority of them vote against him and anyone loosely affiliated with him."

[Rad]

Jon Ossoff wins Georgia runoff election, giving Democrats control of Senate

Victory unseats Republican David Perdue, who held the seat for the past six years, and follows fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock's win
   
Mark Oliver and agencies
Guardian
7 Jan 2021 22.25 GMT

The Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff has won his Senate runoff election, giving Democrats control of the Senate for the opening of Joe Biden's presidency.

Ossoff's victory against David Perdue, was called by the Associated Press late on Wednesday, and follows fellow Democrat Raphael Warnock's victory against incumbent Kelly Loeffler.

With the victories of Ossoff and Warnock, the US Senate is now 50-50.

Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris will serve as the tie-breaking 51st vote, giving Democrats control of the chamber for the first time since 2015.

A pastor who spent the past 15 years leading the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr preached, Warnock's victory makes him the first Black senator in his state's history.

The results were a stinging rebuke of Donald Trump, who made one of his final trips in office to Georgia to rally his loyal base behind the state's Republican candidates.

In an emotional address early on Wednesday, Warnock vowed to work for all Georgians whether they voted for him or not, citing his personal experience with the American dream. His mother, he said, used to pick "somebody else's cotton" as a teenager.

"The other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton picked her youngest son to be a United States senator," he said. "Tonight, we proved with hope, hard work and the people by our side, anything is possible."

The Democrats were propelled to victory in Senate runoff elections by Black voters, young voters and new arrivals to the rapidly diversifying state, a coalition just strong enough to topple a long-dominant GOP and take control of the US Senate.

Black voters cast 32% of the ballots, a slight increase from the presidential election two months ago, according to AP VoteCast. As in November, almost all - 94% - of those votes went for Democrats. Black voters accounted for about 60% of ballots for Democrats, according to the survey of 3,700 voters in the runoff elections.

Voters under the age of 45 also broke for Democrats, as did suburban voters, women, low-income voters and voters who have lived in the state fewer than five years, a group that cast about 60% of their votes for Democrats.

The coalition closely mirrored the one that handed Georgia's electoral college votes to President-elect Joe Biden, the first Democrat to win the state since 1992. In defeating Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Democrats will have half the seats in the chamber, leaving Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris to serve as tie-breaker.

The high-stakes runoffs drew hundreds of millions of dollars, media attention and a massive organizing effort. The result was a game of inches - both Republicans and Democrats largely held their voters from November, the survey showed, but Democrats did just slightly better in pushing their voters to the polls.

The GOP candidates won an overwhelming majority - almost three-quarters - of white voters and 60% of voters 65 and older. They also captured majorities from voters earning $75,000 or more. That coalition in the recent past likely would have been enough to keep Perdue and Loeffler in the Senate. But shifting demographics and an energized Democratic party have turned the tables.

************

Democrats' Georgia success reshapes US political landscape

Projected election victories will give Biden a majority in the Senate and were built on a revamped strategy and organisational effort

Lauren Gambino in Washington and David Smith in Atlanta
Guardian
7 Jan 2021 19.53 GMT

The US state of Georgia on Wednesday afternoon looked set to present an early inauguration gift to Joe Biden, giving him a decent shot at breaking Washington gridlock and enacting his agenda.

If Democrats win both Senate runoff elections in that state and gain control of the chamber, as is now widely expected, it will also mark a profound political shift in the American south, full of grim omens for Donald Trump and a divided Republican party.

The Rev Raphael Warnock, who defeated Senator Kelly Loeffler, made history as the first Black senator from Georgia, a state shaped by the legacy of the civil war, the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement. Jon Ossoff appeared to be on course to unseat the Republican incumbent David Perdue and would become the youngest member of the Senate at 33.

The resulting 50/50 party split in the Senate would give the incoming vice-president, Kamala Harris, the tie-breaker vote and make Democrat Chuck Schumer majority leader. That would give Democrats an unlikely clean sweep of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives in the lengthy aftermath of the November presidential election.

Warnock and Ossoff may yet help Biden implement what could be the most progressive legislative agenda in generations. In order to facilitate everything from confirming his cabinet nominees to raising taxes and enacting a sweeping climate plan, Biden will need Senate approval. Senate committees will be chaired by Democrats rather than Republicans.

Of course, it will not be plain sailing. The Democratic senator Joe Manchin of the staunchly pro-Trump state of West Virginia, will now wield extraordinary influence and be able to curb progressives' ambitions.

And the Senate cloture rule - which requires 60 votes to cut off debate on most measures - enables Republicans to filibuster significant parts of the Democrats' agenda. But the budget reconciliation process will allow Biden to circumvent the filibuster for some of his spending plans.

It is all vastly preferable to what had seemed the probable alternative: the Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell as majority leader, ruthlessly blocking the incoming Democratic president's legislative goals and judicial nominees. Haggling in what used to be called smoke-filled rooms would have been the order of the day.

Trump now seems destined to go down in history as the man who lost the presidency after one term and was impeached along the way, then lost the House and - after two months of particularly wild and corrupt behaviour - lost the Senate to boot.

This undercuts the narrative that down-ballot candidates rode his presidential coat-tails and strengthens the argument that his brand of mendacious demagoguery has become a liability, and all amid an out-of-control coronavirus pandemic that he downplayed from its start almost a year ago.

"If they win, I will get no credit and, if they lose, they're going to blame Trump," he said with characteristic self-pity at possibly his last campaign rally as president in Dalton, Georgia, on Monday night.

Loeffler and Perdue fiercely aligned themselves with the president, including his bogus claims of election fraud. Their loss may be a warning to other Republicans about the limits of Trump's appeal after he leaves office, particularly in fast-changing parts of the country.

Georgia now looks more like Arizona - another once reliably conservative state with an increasingly diverse electorate anchored around a major city - than its southern neighbors. After backing Trump in 2016, Arizona has since sent two Democratic senators to Washington and voted for Biden in November.

For Democrats, their success was affirmation that a "new Georgia" was rising in the south. In their telling, the state's political transformation began long before Trump ran for president, spurred by not only by demographic change and a reverse migration of young Black - and white - residents to Georgia but also by decades of long-term organizing to get out the vote.

Population growth and immigration have turned the once-conservative and mostly white suburbs of Atlanta into diverse and Democratic-friendly territory, and in addition, Black voters surged to the polls in some rural areas and smaller cities where such turnout has historically lagged.

Until the 1970s, conservative Democrats dominated Georgia politics. Unlike its neighbors, the state initially resisted Republicans' rise across the deep south but ultimately relented in the early 2000s. Georgia has been reliably Republican in the two decades since.

During that time, activists say the Democratic party fought to regain its foothold by returning to an old playbook. The party ran candidates who sought to appeal to moderate white voters while relying on Black voters, who represent nearly a third of the state's electorate and lean heavily Democratic.

This clashed with a new vision for Georgia Democrats, championed by a group of Black female leaders, who pushed the party to abandon the fiscal and social conservatism of the past and embrace a new, more progressive and inclusive politics.

They saw a party that reflected the state: a broad coalition of Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters, politically active young progressives and white, well-educated suburban women.

For decades, activists worked to register disaffected voters, newly arrived immigrants and young people. Their work was year-round but their gains were gradual and they struggled to convince donors and national leaders to take the state seriously as a battleground.

Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the state house of representatives, who founded a voter registration group called the New Georgia Project, has become the public face of these efforts.

Her near-miss in the state's 2018 governor's race helped persuade national party leaders and campaigns that the approach could work. Two years later, Biden became the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry the state in nearly three decades.

At a campaign rally on the eve of the runoffs, Biden praised Abrams's work: "You've changed Georgia and you're changing America."

[Rad]

How Black voters lifted Georgia Democrats to Senate runoff victories

Kenya Evelyn in Washington
Guardian
Thu 7 Jan 2021 11.00 GMT

Black voters showed up in record numbers for Georgia's Senate runoff election on Tuesday, handing the Democratic Senate candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff decisive victories against the Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively.

According to the Associated Press, more than 4.4 million votes were cast, about 88% of the number who voted in November's contest, when turnout was 68 percent overall.

Just weeks after flipping the conservative stronghold in the general election, local strategists and community organizers across the state are being credited with once again galvanizing a voting bloc critical in delivering Democrats' victory.

"Black runoff turnout was phenomenal and the [Donald] Trump base just couldn't keep up," the political analyst Dave Wasserman tweeted shortly after being one of the first to call the race for Warnock.

Tuesday's win makes the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist church the first Black senator from Georgia and the first in a former Confederate state since Reconstruction. The milestone is considered by some analysts to be a factor in the surge in participation.

    Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise, given the stakes of the race and the political moment, but this was a remarkable and high turnout. I mean, yea, there was probably slightly more Trump vote dropoff--see the result--but the turnout in >80% Trump areas was still at 88% of general
    - Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) January 6, 2021

Black voters in the state were the deciding force in both Democratic victories, particularly in urban and rural communities with large Black populations. Typically, these groups are less likely to vote in state and local contests than their white counterparts.

The runoffs garnered national attention after Black voters - along with new Georgia residents of all races - successfully flipped the state from reliably Republican to a competitive purple in November, with the Democrat Joe Biden narrowly winning over the incumbent president by more than 11,000 votes.

"The margins are so small that every action, including your vote, matters and will make a difference," Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, told CNN. "Black voters got that message. Black voters recognized that we need to complete the task."

According to exit polls, turnout for the Senate races was high overall, reaching more than 80% of the turnout in the November general election. That rate was slightly higher in predominantly Black districts.

Roughly 93% of Black voters supported Ossoff and Warnock. Ossoff earned 92% of Black voters in Tuesday's contest compared with 87% in November. According to NBC data, Warnock won 92% of Black voters against Loeffler.

Meanwhile, although Republicans Loeffler and Perdue received 71% of the white vote, turnout was slightly down from the general election.

"Democrats need to get at least 30% of the white vote to be competitive in any race," Andra Gillespie, political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta, told the Guardian. "But Black voter turnout, when reaching record levels, will ultimately decide the race every time."

Gillespie noted that as Georgia continues to attract young, more liberal populations, residents will see many competitive election cycles to come. According to Pew Research Center, the Black voting bloc has grown to make up a third of Georgia's electorate in the last two decades. Other analysts also credit new Black residents with making more southern states like North Carolina, and Texas and Florida more competitive.

    Black women did this-but this isn't just "Black Girl Magic." This is the result of pure organizing, labor, and love that Black women have poured into GA.

    Gratitude to every one of my sisters who willed the possibilities of this moment into existence. We see you and we love you.
    - Cori Bush (@CoriBush) January 6, 2021

Front and center amid post-election praise are the former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and the Black Voters Matter founder LaTosha Brown, who, along with Black grassroots organizations, have led campaigns to reach hundreds of thousands of Georgia residents since November's general election.

"Across our state, we roared," Abrams tweeted as votes were counted, calling on Georgians to "celebrate the extraordinary organizers, volunteers, canvassers & tireless groups that haven't stopped going".

Adopting a strategy that Brown called "meeting voters where they are", voting rights activists spent the last weeks traveling to typically low-turnout areas to knock on doors, register voters and combat an onslaught of conservative disinformation attempts.

Many advocates say these get-out-the-vote efforts were effective in driving Black voters who otherwise wouldn't have voted, or perhaps didn't in November. According to a state vote tracker, more than 100,000 Georgians who didn't vote in the presidential requested a mail-in ballot for the runoff.

Georgia residents largely rejected Republicans Loeffler and Perdue, who backed Trump's conspiracy theories questioning the election's legitimacy. Just this week, leaked audio revealed that the president had urged Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" votes that would overturn the election.

The president and campaign surrogates have launched dozens of legal challenges, primarily in cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia and Detroit, alleging fraud.

In the same vein, both Loeffler and Perdue have refused to concede so far, challenging election results and calling on officials to count every legal vote.

Meanwhile, Raffensperger has maintained that the election was secure and the results accurate.

    Black. Voters. Matter.
    - LaTosha Brown (@MsLaToshaBrown) January 6, 2021

Activists argue schemes to toss out votes in primarily Black, Democratic strongholds follow a history of Republican efforts to disenfranchise primarily African Americans.

For Georgia activists, Black voters flipping the state and reclaiming Democratic control of the Senate reinforces African Americans' influence in the conservative south when they show up to the polls.

"Black voters matter," Brown succinctly tweeted.