Democrats are about to take control of the Senate as they celebrate the victory of Reverend Raphael Warnock in one of Georgia’s two qualifiers and Jon Ossoff declares victory in the other.
“It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve in the U.S. Senate,” said Ossoff in a video released on Wednesday morning, while his margin of victory over Republican David Perdue, whose Senate term ended on Sunday, it grew to over 16,000 with 98% of the votes counted.
Final votes were still being counted and the dispute was not officially called in favor of Ossoff. But Republicans were pessimistic because most of the remaining un counted ballots were from the Atlanta and Savannah regions – areas where Democrats have accumulated significant majorities.
A key question is whether the race will be decided by a sufficient margin to avoid a recount. Under Georgia law, a candidate can request a recount if the margin is less than 0.5%; the difference on Wednesday was 0.4%.
But the Democrats appear to have gone beyond keeping the coalition that gave President-elect Joe Biden a victory in Georgia in November. Both Warnock and Ossoff led their Republican rivals by more votes than Biden’s margin on President Trump – thanks in large part to the large turnout among black voters.
The Republicans’ prospect of losing the Senate – their last bastion of power – came as they headed for an important day on Wednesday. Congress is about to officially confirm Biden’s victory in the presidential election, but only after an effort doomed to the failure of many Trump allies who plan to challenge the inevitable conclusion.
Leading Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York welcomed the results in Georgia, which, if they go as expected, will make him the majority leader in the Senate. “It feels like a new day,” said Schumer. “For the first time in six years, Democrats will have a majority in the United States Senate – and that will be very good for the American people.”
Neither Biden nor Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has yet commented on Georgia’s results. Biden’s new chief of staff, Ron Klain, said Warnock’s rival, Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, was hurt by declaring on the eve of the election that he would support Trump’s efforts to block approval of Biden’s victory.
“Spitting here, but it may be that telling voters that you intend to ignore the verdict and nullify the November election vote was NOT a big final argument for @KLoeffler,” wrote Klain on Twitter.
Even before Ossoff declared victory, Republicans were already beginning to blame Trump for the party’s poor performance, saying that his futile and baseless effort to reverse his own defeat in November bitterly divided the party and undermined its candidates in Georgia, who were trying to portray a Continuing situation The majority of the Republican Party in the Senate as a firewall against Democratic power.
“The president effectively eliminated the most powerful Republican argument by refusing to acknowledge that he lost in November,” said Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist close to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Holmes, who described the Republican Party’s mood now as “fervent,” said Republicans’ adoption of Trump-era conspiracy theories has particularly hurt the party among suburban voters.
“Suburbs, my friends, the suburbs,” said Holmes on Twitter. “We went from talking about jobs and economics to QAnon’s electoral conspiracies in just 4 years and – as it turned out – they were listening!”
Bernard L. Fraga, a political scientist at Emory University, tweeted that more black voters are likely to vote in the second round than in the presidential election, a notable reversal from previous contests, when black participation generally falls. The overall turnout is expected to reach just under 90% of what it was in November.
Prepared for their party to take control of Congress, leftist Democrats increased pressure on the party to pursue a progressive agenda, although a 50-50 split in the Senate, with Harris having a decisive vote as vice president, will make his proposals his own. more ambitious are difficult to approve.
“VICTORY in Georgia should lead to transformative changes across America!” Said Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), President of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on Twitter. “Recurring survival tests, union jobs that pay a minimum wage, guaranteed medical care, racial justice, voting rights, immigration reform, climate action, repro justice, education and MUCH more.”
The level of government aid to Americans hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic was among the curved balls that Trump threw against Republican candidates in Georgia. The president made an 11-hour proposal to increase $ 600 checks for individuals to $ 2,000 that Congress would pass as part of the COVID-19 relief legislation.
The Republican-controlled Senate rejected the idea, although Perdue and Loeffler supported the increase. Biden, speaking in Georgia on Monday, took advantage of the issue by promising to provide $ 2,000 if Democrats gained control of the Senate.
Rick Tyler, a Trump critic who was a political adviser to former President of the House, Newt Gingrich, said: “You would have to credit President Trump for completing his set of losing the House, the White House and now the Senate. Will the Republican Party ever wake up? “