The road leads back to you, come January. And no peace you’ll find, no peaceful dreams you’ll see till this thing is sorted.
Disclaimer: I’m not American (as you all know); correct me if I err in my claims.
Where are we at? Let’s face it, Biden has won whilst the Republicans are being, well, snowflakes. Georgia looks almost certain to be flipped Blue. The turnout is phenomenal. Not only did Trump smash 2016’s Republican turnout, but Biden blew out the Democratic turnout.
But the real battle is over the Senate because without the Senate, Medicare for all, some sort of Green New Deal, SCOTUS, all of Biden’s hopes and dreams are at least largely stifled. It is looking like the GOP will retain majority rule there.
Except Georgia. If both Georgia’s Senators flip to Democrat, the 50/50 split would give the deciding vote to Harris, Biden’s presumptive VP.
Due to special rules in Georgia, a candidate needs at least 50% to win outright, given there are often several third party candidates. in the event of no clear winner (>50%), the election goes to a run-off on January 5th. This will obviously happen with Warnock (D) and Loeffler (R), but with these last few ballots being counted, it looks like this could happen with Perdue (R) and Ossoff (D). Even though Ossoff, in my opinions, bettered Perdue in the debate I saw parts of, he is trailing Perdue by a few percent, I think just shy of 3% right now.
Here is what will happen:
- The Republicans and Democrats will thrown an absolute tonne of money at this race. Like you’ve never seen (to quote an illustrious leader…). It will go nuclear, with cash being splashed and media descending at an unprecedented level. Spending a whole bunch of money with the Democrats having already done this for the Senate races (and still “losing” them). As John King said on CNN, now’s the time to buy a cable station in Georgia! Both parties have everything to gain and lose in this race.
- The stats are against the Dems. Previously, a 3% race disadvantage ended up being a 14% loss (IIRC).
- This means that Dems would need to mobilise voting to a degree never seen down-ballot. It has happened in other states before, but not Georgia.
- The Republicans, in this election, voted in higher numbers for Republican Senate candidates (split over two candidates in the Warnock race) than Democrats by a fairly comfortable margin. Thus, there is every reason to think it is unlikely that the Dems will win either race unless they can mobilise the presidential voters and enthuse them to the same degree (those black, urban voters, as well as those Stacey Abrams-registered rural black voters, as one demographic example) to vote for the Senate election.
- Obama had this same choice in 2008 and decided to stay way from a localised race just after he had been elected because he didn’t want to start off his presidency by looking weak in what was probably going to be a Senate loss. Biden will have to choose whether to go all-in to campaign for this Senate race but potentially lose and look weak, or give the campaign the best chance of winning by going all-in and putting the might of his infrastructure behind Ossoff and Warnock knowing the whole of his term will be defined by what can and can’t happen as a result of the Senate make-up.
- My suggestion would be to mobilise Obama in a big, big way. He has been so competent and erudite on the road recently that he will surely be an asset in Georgia.
[Apologies for the focus on politics, but it’s only natural given the present context.]
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