Trump’s Authoritarian Moment Is Here - Far too many Republicans are complicit in the President’s continuing efforts to overturn the election results. - link
What the San Francisco Bay Area Can Teach Us About Fighting a Pandemic - The region’s hyper-local response has lessons for us as we confront the winter wave and begin to distribute vaccines. - link
Georgia’s Senate Runoff Elections: Live Updates - The latest results in the races that will decide control of the U.S. Senate. - link
Donald Trump’s Alarming Call to Battle in Georgia - The outgoing President is fighting not for his legacy but to unconstitutionally and criminally hold on to a position that he has already lost. - link
A Test for Congress’s Commitment to Democracy - Lawmakers who do not support Donald Trump’s effort to subvert the election will need to keep their wits about them. - link
Democrats’ double victory will fundamentally change the next two years of American politics.
It’s finally over: Five full days after the actual year 2020 ended, the 2020 elections have ended too.
And they ended with a bang early Wednesday morning, a slim but decisive victory by Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who in one fell swoop turned both of Georgia’s US Senate seats Democratic. In doing so, they ensured that the party will have a razor-thin 50-50 Senate majority once Vice President Kamala Harris takes office on January 20.
The results will thus fundamentally change the next two years of American politics. Instead of being hamstrung by an intransigent Republican majority leader in the Senate, President-elect Joe Biden will have a narrow majority in both Houses of Congress. So long as Senate Democrats are in unanimous agreement, Biden will be able to use budget reconciliation to pass further Covid-19 vaccination measures, additional economic stimulus and aid to states and cities, and investments in green energy and caregiving as part of his “Build Back Better” agenda. Policy ideas once considered dead on arrival, like a national public option for health insurance, suddenly look, if not likely, at least possible.
That’s only the beginning of the implications of the results from the Georgia special election. Here’s who ended up ahead and who fell behind.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
For one thing, there was only supposed to be one Senate election in Georgia this year; the other wasn’t up for reelection until 2022. But Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson surprised everyone in August 2019 by announcing his resignation for health reasons, effective at the end of the year. At the time, my colleague Li Zhou wrote that the move “could have major implications for Democratic efforts to retake the upper chamber.” Did it ever.
<img alt="People at an election rally hold signs, one of which reads, “Ossoff and Warnock,” and one reads, “Vote! Flip the Senate, vote Jan 5.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fe2Hp16rTs0vrhl5-hBfid0tQpk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216746/GettyImages_1230426368.jpg" />
<cite>Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Supporters of Democratic candidates for Senate Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock listen to US President-elect Joe Biden speak during a rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 4.</figcaption>But more broadly, Georgia was not supposed to be the tipping point state. In other closely fought states, Democrats really did get their dream candidates. Gov. Steve Bullock ran in Montana; their top recruits in Arizona and Colorado, astronaut Mark Kelly and former Gov. John Hickenlooper, respectively, ran too. Kelly and Hickenlooper won (and Bullock ran ahead of Biden in a deep red state), but in states like North Carolina and Texas where top Democratic prospects didn’t run, the party fell short.
None of the top Georgia Democrats ran in 2020. No incumbent member of the US House stepped up; former gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams, national Democrats’ top prospect, declined, as did 2014 governor nominee Jason Carter, 2014 Senate nominee Michelle Nunn, and former deputy US Attorney General/Georgia US Attorney Sally Yates.
Instead, Warnock and Ossoff, two candidates with no experience in elected office, got the nods. Ossoff in particular, who fell short in a closely watched, heavily funded congressional special election in 2017, felt almost like a default candidate. Warnock has a long background as a pastor that gave him a built-in base; Ossoff had little more than name recognition.
Both were true underdog candidates. Yes, they got massive national support, in financing and campaigning, especially when it became clear their runoffs would decide control of the US Senate. But they are both unlikely senators, with Ossoff, only 33, becoming arguably the first millennial to join the body. Warnock will be the first Black senator from Georgia, and only the second Black senator from the South since Reconstruction.
It’s a huge personal victory for Warnock and Ossoff, even if the national implications of their wins might overshadow that.
—Dylan Matthews
Shortly after being sworn in to the Senate for his first term in 1985, Mitch McConnell set a goal for himself: to become the chamber’s majority leader. It took 30 years, but he finally achieved it in 2014 when, after eight years leading Republicans in the minority, the GOP retook control of the chamber. McConnell then protected his majority through tough election cycles in 2016 and 2018, got three conservative Supreme Court justices confirmed, and won his own reelection for his seventh (and, many believe, final) term in November.
But Republicans’ double defeat in Georgia means McConnell will begin that term as minority, rather than majority, leader — an outcome he has been trying desperately to avoid since it became clear that President Trump lost reelection and that Senate control would be decided in Georgia.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IJi5fAzROPSNn0Nu6T3-M6oTCoM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216662/GettyImages_1230235843.jpg" />
<cite>Samuel Corum/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Sen. Mitch McConnell will now be the Senate minority, rather than majority, leader.</figcaption>His strategy, at first, was to let Trump have some room as the president refused to concede, to avoid dividing the GOP before the runoffs. In his first Senate floor speech after the election was called for Biden, McConnell snarked about Democratic hypocrisy, said the president was merely pursuing legal options as candidates often do, and claimed “our system” would work things out. (That’s the day an anonymous senior Republican official told the Washington Post, “What is the downside for humoring him [Trump] for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change.”)
But if you give Trump an inch, he’ll take a mile, and the president’s frenzied and corrupt (and scattershot and incompetent) effort to dispute the results has not yet ended. He became obsessed with overturning the results in Georgia specifically, pursuing personal feuds against state officials who would not rig the results in his favor. All this culminated this past weekend when Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to “find” votes for him — resulting in Raffensperger’s team leaking a recording of that call, foregrounding Republican disarray two days before the special Senate elections.
To McConnell’s (very limited) credit, he did nothing to outright help Trump’s election-stealing effort (and if you read between the lines of his statements, you could tell he wasn’t on board). Indeed, shortly after the Electoral College voted in mid-December, McConnell did acknowledge Biden’s win. But in November, he had made the choice to let Trump run wild rather than try to rein him in — and given his stature in Republican politics, that was a signal to many other GOP politicians that they should do the same.
It’s far from clear whether, if McConnell had more forthrightly challenged Trump back in November, it would have changed Tuesday’s outcomes. (It may well have made things worse if Trump had declared war on the Senate GOP rather than campaigning for Loeffler and Warnock.) But in addition to the Trump fallout, another recent McConnell decision — his refusal to allow the Senate to vote on a clean measure to send out $2,000 stimulus checks — will also be in for some second-guessing. What’s clear is that the post-election period has been a disaster for McConnell, and that his long-cherished prize has slipped out of his fingers — at least for now.
—Andrew Prokop
It’s still too early to say exactly why the Republicans blew what seemed like two winnable Senate races. But there’s good reason to believe that President Trump — and his anti-democratic attempts to overturn the presidential election in Georgia and other states — will end up shouldering a significant portion of the blame.
There are at least two reasons to believe that Trump’s attacks on the election hurt Loeffler and Perdue.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8_2ssC8W-WnnjCBurpqJKXvn0pE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216673/GettyImages_1230429308.jpg" />
<cite>Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>President Trump campaigns alongside Sen. Kelly Loeffler in Dalton, Georgia, on January 4.</figcaption>First, his repeated attack on the integrity of the electoral process — arguing that Georgia, in particular, experienced massive fraud in the presidential election — seems to have convinced many Republicans that the election was in fact fraudulent. CNN’s exit polls found that 76 percent of Republican voters believed the state’s presidential election wasn’t fair, and Republican turnout was on the lower end compared to expectations. While exit polls aren’t super reliable, it’s possible that a small but crucial number of Republicans were so committed to Trump’s fraud claims that they didn’t even bother to show up at the polls — a boycott encouraged by some Trump allies angry at the national party for not going all-in on his claims.
Second, Trump’s attack on the election inflamed Democrats and helped nationalize the races in a particularly unhelpful way, turning what could have been contests driven by local considerations into a referendum on Trump in a state he lost. It’s possible that Republican attacks on Ossoff and Warnock might have been more effective if Trump weren’t constantly in the news; it’s also possible that Loeffler and Perdue might have benefited more from their votes in favor of the popular coronavirus relief bill if Trump’s election shenanigans weren’t front and center.
To be clear: It’s way too early to say with certainty what role, if any, Trump played in Georgia’s results. But these theories are likely to become a staple of cable news insta-postmortems and the GOP circular firing squad that will emerge on Wednesday morning. The more this becomes part of the public narrative of what happened in Georgia, the worse Trump’s election attacks will look even among partisan Republicans.
That’s a good thing for American democracy.
—Zack Beauchamp
In just over two weeks, Joe Biden becomes the president of the United States. Warnock’s and Ossoff’s victories mean that Republicans in the House and Senate will not be able to actively sabotage the executive branch of the federal government. With a Democratic Senate, Biden will be able to confirm a Cabinet, confirm at least some judges, and sign at least some spending bills thanks to a process known as “budget reconciliation.”
But the balance of power in that Senate will be held by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), the most conservative member of the Democratic caucus. If Republicans unite in opposition to a Biden nominee, it will most likely be Manchin who decides whether that individual is confirmed. When Biden hopes to negotiate a budget or a new Covid-19 relief bill, Manchin will play an outsize role in those negotiations.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gHmNfGunvIPYjVSM1QTEY_J7qhU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216688/GettyImages_1230129930.jpg" />
<cite>Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) unveils a proposal for a Covid-19 relief bill alongside a group of bipartisan lawmakers on December 14, 2020.</figcaption>Biden will control the executive branch, but it is only somewhat of an exaggeration to say that Joe Manchin — the most likely tipping point for any number of measures — will control the legislative branch. Manchin, it’s worth noting, has a record of working with Republican senators like Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Mitt Romney (UT), all of whom occasionally break from their party on significant votes. But where he disagrees with his sometime Republican allies, Manchin is likely to hold the 50th vote in the Senate, and the power to decide whether important matters succeed or fail.
Whenever a controversy arises in Congress, the first question on every reporter’s lips will be “what does Sen. Manchin think?” Not long after it became clear that Warnock and Ossoff were likely to prevail, Joe Manchin’s name started trending on Twitter.
Unfortunately for Biden — and for America — Manchin also gains the power to decide whether most of Biden’s legislative agenda will be dead on arrival. Manchin is a staunch opponent of abolishing the filibuster, the antiquated process that allows a minority of the Senate to block most legislation unless 60 senators agree to end that blockade.
Republicans will no doubt deploy the filibuster ruthlessly against Biden, just as they deployed it against President Obama. Meanwhile, Democrats and liberal policy wonks are likely to come up with various plans to weaken the filibuster without abolishing it — I’ve proposed exempting statehood bills from the filibuster, for example.
Will any of these proposals to weaken but not eliminate the filibuster prevail? That’s likely up to Joe Manchin.
—Ian Millhiser
The real face of Democrats’ victory in Georgia isn’t Jon Ossoff or Raphael Warnock; it’s Stacey Abrams.
Abrams, the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate and founder of the voting rights group Fair Fight, was encouraged by many to run for the Senate herself. Instead, she opted to help organize, along with dozens of other voting rights groups.
She had long argued that Georgia was on the cusp of becoming a swing state and could get there given enough dedicated resources and organizing. Years of hard work from dozens of groups made it a reality; first with Biden’s November win, and then with Ossoff’s and Warnock’s stunning January victories.
“Our time is now,” Abrams told Vox in an email interview shortly before the November election.
<img alt="Two women in pink breathing masks hold up “vote signs, one with a drawing of Jon Ossoff and one with a drawing of Stacey Abrams." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iAT6eI-Z-ueMYgRz4gdMX-9SI2U=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216699/GettyImages_1230426491.jpg" />
<cite>Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Stacey Abrams and local organizers have successfully made Georgia a swing state.</figcaption>Between the 2018 midterms where Abrams narrowly lost the governor’s race and the November 2020 election, 800,000 Georgians registered to vote. And there was no rest for Georgia’s voting organizers from November to January.
“We do voter registration 365 days a year, not just during a major election,” Deborah Scott, the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, told Vox recently.
A coalition of dozens of groups coordinated by America Votes knocked on 8.5 million doors in Georgia; they also made about 20 million phone calls and sent over 18 million texts. Some groups got creative in the pursuit of turning out low-propensity voters, mobilizing with food drives and Thanksgiving turkey giveaways to encourage people to register and get out to the polls.
Ultimately, their work paid off in a huge way, proving that Joe Biden’s November win in Georgia wasn’t an aberration.
“Folks didn’t allow themselves to hope,” said Nsé Ufot, CEO of the voting rights group New Georgia Project. “Ultimately, you have to conceive of it first before we can build it; folks have to believe that it’s possible.”
—Ella Nilsen
The last time a Democrat was president and Republicans controlled the Senate, in 2015 and 2016, Mitch McConnell nearly shut down all confirmations to the federal appellate bench. And, of course, there was that whole affair with Judge Merrick Garland, the Obama Supreme Court nominee who wasn’t even given a confirmation hearing by a Republican Senate.
Had Republicans maintained control of the Senate, it’s likely that McConnell would have repeated this performance. Biden could have struggled to confirm any judge, much less a nominee to a powerful appeals court. And a Biden Supreme Court nominee could very well have not even been considered.
But with Democrats controlling the Senate, even by a narrow margin, McConnell will not be able to blockade the judiciary. Among other things, that means that Justice Stephen Breyer, the 82-year-old Clinton appointee to the Supreme Court, can retire knowing that his replacement-in-waiting will not suffer Garland’s fate.
Biden, meanwhile, has promised to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court. If a vacancy arises on the high Court after Biden has already named many judges to the lower courts, Biden will likely be able to choose from among his own appointees. But if a vacancy opens up right away, the two most likely candidates are Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal district judge in DC, and Justice Leondra Kruger, who sits on the California Supreme Court.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dymRDm5dMIswEuKYyYx-YS4ylg4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216709/AP_795557115632.jpg" />
<cite>Rich Pedroncelli/AP</cite>
<figcaption>Leondra Kruger is sworn in as an associate justice to the California Supreme Court by Gov. Jerry Brown in Sacramento, California, on January 5, 2015.</figcaption>President Obama, it’s worth noting, interviewed Jackson for the nomination that eventually went to Garland, and Jackson clerked for Justice Breyer. Kruger clerked for the late Justice John Paul Stevens.
But regardless of whom Biden might choose for an eventual Supreme Court vacancy, one of the most significant consequences of Warnock and Ossoff’s victories is that such a vacancy is now overwhelmingly likely to be filled. That wouldn’t be the case if McConnell were in charge.
—IM
President-elect Biden made additional coronavirus relief an explicit part of his pitch to Georgia voters earlier this week — and now that Democrats have won the Senate, more cash aid is far more likely to become a reality.
“By electing Jon and the reverend … [those $2,000 checks] will go out the door immediately to people who are in real trouble,” Biden said while stumping on Ossoff’s and Warnock’s behalf on Tuesday. While it likely won’t be quite that straightforward, it is true that additional stimulus has a much better chance of getting approved with Democrats in control of the Senate.
Thus far, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has prevented the $2,000 payments from advancing by tying them to a repeal of liability protections for tech companies and repeatedly blocking a standalone vote on them. With Republicans out of the majority come January 20 (when Kamala Harris can act as tie-breaker and elect Chuck Schumer as majority leader), McConnell won’t be able to set the Senate’s legislative agenda any longer.
That change could well clear the path for another stimulus package: Democrats have emphasized, for instance, their support for larger checks as well as more state and local aid. And while they’ll still need some Republican backing if they go the route of a typical vote, they won’t have to contend with McConnell quashing the bill before it even gets to the floor.
—Li Zhou
Democrats will hold the edge with a split Senate, giving them a shot at governing.
Winning a pair of January 5 Senate runoffs in Georgia, Democrats have regained control of the US Senate, but just barely.
By capturing Georgia’s Senate seats — an impressive feat few political observers thought likely after the November election — Democrats have given themselves the barest of Senate majorities. They are technically split 50-50 with Republicans, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaker for simple majority votes. Importantly, though, it will be Democrat Chuck Schumer, not Republican Mitch McConnell, who will hold the title of majority leader.
Tuesday’s victory solidifies the party’s control of Congress as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office with an ambitious policy agenda. It guarantees Democrats will at least be able to decide what bills make it to the Senate floor, as well as be able to more easily confirm Biden’s Cabinet appointments and judicial nominees.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9Mhf_fC_Dxf_4oF86lXcnwjwkW8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216353/GettyImages_1294511866.jpg" />
<cite>Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>President-elect Joe Biden campaigns with Jon Ossoff, left, and Rev. Raphael Warnock in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 4.</figcaption>Still, Democrats will have to get buy-in from at least 10 additional Republican senators in order to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to pass most major bills. They may be able to work around the filibuster in budget reconciliation bills, but getting broad bipartisan support to pass most legislation will be unavoidable.
Senate Democrats and Biden clearly see their first priorities as trying to curb the spread of Covid-19 with additional relief and funding for vaccine distribution and a more coordinated federal and state response to the pandemic. Economic recovery is another immediate priority, which could include an infrastructure package.
“We feel a great sense of responsibility and a great sense of urgency,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), chair of the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, told Vox last fall. “There’s so much that has to be rebuilt and repaired, but it has to start with getting our arms around this once-in-a-generation pandemic.”
Infrastructure could be one of the few opportunities for bipartisanship; a number of moderate Republicans are willing to work on such a bill, but other Republicans have already begun to raise concerns about the national deficit and additional spending after themselves passing a massive tax cut in 2017 that ballooned the deficit. Still, Biden, who served as a senator for decades before becoming Obama’s vice president, has a long working relationship with McConnell in the Senate. This could prove to be an asset going into his presidency.
“President-elect Biden, one of his strengths is reaching out and finding common ground,” Phil Schiliro, who served as President Barack Obama’s legislative director, told Vox. Schiliro added that Biden and McConnell “have a shared experience and history in the Senate; they have a shared respect for the Senate, and I think that’s helpful.”
Realistically, the likelier scenario for a closely divided Senate is more partisan gridlock.
Democrats widely agree a new Covid-19 relief and response package should be their first priority. A new bill would likely be modeled on the House-passed HEROES Act, which included $75 million for testing and contact tracing, “strike teams” to tackle challenges around long-term care and prisons, and funding to help cash-strapped state and local governments.
Next, Democrats say they want to deal with the stagnating economy. Biden has released a $2 trillion green jobs plan, aiming to create millions of jobs through green infrastructure, retrofitting houses, and manufacturing electric cars, among other things. There are a number of ways Biden’s White House can work on achieving these goals, but he needs Congress to fully realize it.
“In addition to fighting and containing the coronavirus, we will work aggressively to create jobs and improve the unemployment crisis caused by President Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Vox in a statement earlier this fall.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0MMFaPdUGTrjkH3J6AFdywvuBI0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216383/GettyImages_1291495701.jpg" />
<cite>Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer participates in ongoing talks for the Covid-19 relief bill on December 15, 2020.</figcaption>Biden shares the broad goal of getting the United States to net-zero emissions by 2050, but he’s also set more aggressive targets, like getting to 100 percent clean electricity in the US by 2035. House Democrats also passed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill in July, which could be merged with Biden’s climate plan.
Democrats will likely push for a climate component in any future infrastructure package, but Republicans may balk at that idea and push for a more targeted bill.
Democrats have a long wish list of other priorities including anti-corruption reforms and legislation to expand voting rights (which, again, is the first bill that will be taken up by the US House), policing reforms, and a public option to expand access to health care as well as immigration reform and universal background checks for guns.
Many of these will have to be put on the back burner for now, as Democrats have limited political capital — and the thinnest possible majority to do anything.
Once again, Democrats fall short of the filibuster-proof 60-vote Senate majority — by a whopping 10 votes.
The last time Democrats won a majority in the Senate was in 2008, when they rode Obama’s coattails to victory. They had 59 votes in the Senate, far more than Democrats do now.
Obama was able to pull over a few Republican Senate votes in 2009 to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act after the 2008 financial crisis. But on many other legislative priorities, McConnell’s Republican minority threw up a 60-vote barrier to passing most Democratic legislation.
McConnell admitted two years into the Obama era that he had planned to do everything he could to ensure the Obama presidency was “one term.” The former president wrote in his new memoir that the filibuster “would prove to be the most chronic political headache of my presidency.”
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/J0-AhoE2IWKzvFEBajYH_XW5MR0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22216358/GettyImages_1230409572.jpg" />
<cite>Kevin Dietsch/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell participates in a mock swearing-in for the 117th Congress with Vice President Mike Pence on January 3.</figcaption>“With President Obama, no matter how much outreach he tried to do with Congressional Republicans, there seemed to be absolutely no interest and no acceptance with what he was trying to do,” Schiliro said. “If congressional Republicans take that approach this time, it will be very difficult to get anything done.”
Democrats have a few options with 51 votes: attempt to work with Republicans on bipartisan issues, or pass big items through a process known as budget reconciliation that only requires a simple majority. Much less likely is blowing up the Senate filibuster. Doing so would require 51 votes, but moderate Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) have unequivocally said they’re opposed.
“That would break the Senate,” Manchin told the New York Times’s Luke Broadwater recently. “If you basically do away with the filibuster altogether for legislation, you won’t have the Senate. You’re a glorified House. And I will not do that.”
Still, some Democrats may continue to push for filibuster elimination or reform by a simple majority. Their argument? Don’t assume Senate Republicans are going to do the right thing.
“Basically, every member of the conference is concerned about not letting McConnell paralyze the place,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the Democrat leading talks about filibuster reform, told Vox earlier this year.
Ossoff’s win in Georgia is crucial for Democrats.
Democrat Jon Ossoff has won a Georgia Senate seat, beating Republican David Perdue in one of the state’s pivotal runoffs on Tuesday.
The race was called by Vox’s elections partner Decision Desk at 2:14 am ET.
Decision Desk HQ projects @ossoff (D) has won the Georgia Regular Senate Runoff Election, giving Democrats control of the Senate on January 20th.
— Decision Desk HQ (@DecisionDeskHQ) January 6, 2021
Race Called: 2:14AM EST 01.06.21
All Results: https://t.co/AOgwtoMxNF
Ossoff is the second Georgia Democrat to win in the January 5 runoff election. Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock also won his race late on Tuesday night, per a call from Vox’s elections partner Decision Desk. Crucially, Ossoff’s victory means Democrats have now won the two seats required to retake control of the Senate.
Ossoff is a former investigative journalist who ran for Congress in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District in 2017, narrowly losing to Republican Karen Handel in a runoff. Few elections experts in Georgia predicted he would beat Perdue, given the Democrat fell about 88,000 votes behind Perdue in November. Ossoff’s win two months later suggests higher enthusiasm for Democratic candidates and weaker enthusiasm for Republicans.
Ossoff and Warnock’s victories come on the heels of President-elect Joe Biden being the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992. House Democrats also flipped their only GOP-held district of 2020 in Georgia’s Seventh Congressional District, in Atlanta’s suburbs.
These big wins for Democrats signify a shift in Georgia’s diversifying electorate.
“The state is becoming younger and more diverse every day,” Ossoff told Vox in an interview this fall. “The investment in Democratic infrastructure over the last decade has been massive.”
Ossoff’s win is also a firm rebuke of President Donald Trump in a Senate race that the outgoing president made largely about him and his November loss in Georgia. Ossoff’s Republican opponent, Perdue, was one of Trump’s earliest allies in the Senate, and a staunch defender of the president after the November 3 election. Perdue and fellow Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler backed Trump in his battle with Georgia Republican state officials, counting on the president’s support in the state to power them to victory.
That support ultimately didn’t materialize.
Joe Biden may have won the presidency on November 3, but he doesn’t have much chance to deliver on the bold agenda he’s proposed without buy-in from Congress.
Biden is entering office facing multiple crises: The Covid-19 pandemic is worsening in the US even as vaccines start to be delivered across the country, and there are still millions out of work due to coronavirus-related layoffs. After months of partisan gridlock, Congress managed to pass a $900 billion economic relief package before the new year. Biden has said he wants more economic stimulus, but whether a future package can pass will largely be determined by which party controls the Senate.
“The power is literally in your hands. Unlike any time in my career, one state can chart the course — not just for the next four years, but for the next generation,” Biden said at a Monday rally in support of Ossoff and Warnock.
Even with this victory, Democrats will have to contend with Senate Republicans. Securing both Georgia seats gives Democrats 50 seats in the Senate, plus Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as a crucial tie-breaker for simple majority votes. The catch is that most bills need to clear a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. Therefore, even if Democrats have control of the Senate, they will generally need around 10 Republican votes to get things done.
Passing Democratic bills will be extremely difficult in a 50-50 Senate. It will be tough to even pass broad bipartisan bills. But winning Georgia’s seats is the only thing that guarantees that Democrats — rather than McConnell — will have a say on which bills come to the Senate floor for debate. It would also give them the ability to more easily confirm Biden’s Cabinet picks, or his nominees to the federal judiciary and US Supreme Court.
Ossoff’s win in Georgia ensures Democrats can at least count on that razor-thin Senate majority.
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Albert Roux: Chef and culinary 'legend' dies aged 85 - Gordon Ramsay remembers late chef Albert Roux as "the man who installed gastronomy in Britain".
Virgin joins Tui and Thomas Cook in cancelling holiday bookings - Virgin Holidays joins Tui and Thomas Cook in cancelling holidays after latest coronavirus restrictions.
Music festivals could be cancelled this month, MPs told - Organisers are facing "dire straits" if the 2021 music festival season is scrapped, MPs are told.
Bucking Trump, NSA and FBI say Russia was “likely” behind SolarWinds hack - Trump has downplayed the mass compromise and Russia's involvement. Underlings disagree. - link
In a parting gift, EPA finalizes rules to limit its use of science - On its way out, the Trump administration makes things harder for the next one. - link
Court says Uber can’t hold users to terms they probably didn’t read - Adding a link to a registration page isn't good enough, court says. - link
This P2P car-sharing company has a plan to boost Black entrepreneurship - Turo partners with Kiva to provide interest-free loans to an underserved community. - link
Telegram feature exposes your precise address to hackers - Messenger maker has expressed no plans to fix location disclosure flaw. - link
Karen: Doctor, I've not been feeling well lately
Doctor: Well, I've looked at your lab reports and I'm afraid I have some bad news...
Karen: Don't give me this lab nonsense, you bureaucratic paper pusher! I don't believe Western medicine anyways! I've been following homeopathic medicine, faith-based approaches, and healing crystals all my life, and they never let me down. Now, will you do things my way, or do I need to talk to the hospital management?
Doctor: Sure, sure, lady. We'll do things your way. Does an astrology-based approach work for you?
Karen: That's better! Of course, it would!
Doctor: What's your birth sign?
Karen: Cancer.
Doctor: Well what a fucking coincidence.
PS: it's my Cake day, I am Cancer (July), I am a doctor, I hate quacks! It fits.
Edit: oh my! Thank you so much kind people! This is the first time I got awards and so many upvotes. You made my day!!
submitted by /u/sajanacharya
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This guy sticks his head into a barbershop and asks, "How long before I can get a haircut?"
The barber looks around the shop and says, "About two hours."
The guy leaves.
A few days later the same guy sticks his head in the door and asks, "How long before I can get a haircut?"
The barber looks around at his shop full of customers and says, "About two hours."
The guy leaves.
A week later the same guy sticks his head in the shop and asks, "How long before I can get a haircut?"
The barber looks around the shop and says, "About an hour and a half."
The guy leaves.
The barber looks over at a friend in the shop and says, "Hey, Bill, follow that guy and see where he goes."
In a little while, Bill comes back into the shop laughing hysterically.
The barber asks, "Bill, where did that guy go when he left here?"
Bill looks at him and says, "To your house."
submitted by /u/rnicholson77
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I mean, I know that "Amen" comes from Hebrew and means "so be it", and therefore "Awoman" would make no sense in Hebrew.
In Shebrew, however, it makes complete sense!!!
submitted by /u/Moerox111
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To get his customers' attention, he begins yelling, "Dam fish for sale! Get your dam fish here!"
A pastor hears this and asks, "Why are you calling them 'dam fish.'" The boy responds, "Because I caught these fish at the local dam." The pastor buys a couple fish, takes them home to his wife, and asks her to cook the dam fish.
The wife responds surprised, "I didn't know it was acceptable for a preacher to speak that way." He explains to her why they are dam fish.
Later at the dinner table, he asks his son to pass the dam fish. He responds, "That's the spirit, Dad! Now pass the f*cking potatoes!"
submitted by /u/esc1999
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Are we going to start having to sing hymns and herns?
Edit: hers to herns per a great suggestion
submitted by /u/Doctah_Feelgood
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