With a few hours to go until the second round of elections in Georgia to decide which party will control the United States Senate, President-elect Joe Biden held a demonstration in Atlanta on Monday, while Democrats hope to eliminate incumbent rulers, Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
“Power is literally in your hands, unlike any other time in my career. A state, a state can chart the course not just for the next four years, but for a generation, ”said a nervous Biden to a crowd of supporters at a rally to get votes.
Georgia has become the center of the political universe in recent weeks due to the Senate’s two second rounds, as well as President Trump’s attempts to turn the results around in the November elections. Over the weekend, the Washington Post ran an hour-long tape of Trump chasing Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the nearly 12,000 votes he would need to win the state. Raffensperger, a Republican, has repeatedly stated that the election was free and fair, and noted that Trump has shown no evidence to the contrary.
If Democratic US Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock win their respective contests on Tuesday, the party will control 50 seats in the chamber, allowing new Vice President Kamala Harris to cast the tie vote. If Warnock or Ossoff lose, however, the Republican Party will retain control of the Senate and its ability to block the passage of progressive legislation on everything from healthcare to immigration reform and coronavirus relief.
Biden pointed to the relief of COVID-19 as the main reason for Georgians to elect Warnock and Ossoff. “If you send Jon and the reverend to Washington, those $ 2,000 checks will come out the door, restoring the hope, decency and honor of so many people,” said Biden, referring to the stimulus checks defended by Democrats and Trump still reduced by Senate Republicans. Otherwise, said Biden, “those checks will never get there”.
The president-elect also accused Loeffler and Perdue, who were caught in the crossfire between the president and Georgia’s top Republicans like Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp, of thinking that his “loyalty is to Trump, not to Georgia”.
Georgia, once a Republican stronghold, voted Democrat for President for the first time since 1992, when Biden won the state by just under 12,000 votes in November. The move from the state to the Democratic column resulted from a mix of demographic changes, the unpopularity of Trump in the wealthy suburbs of Atlanta and the relentless efforts to register liberal voters as the former presidential candidate Stacey Abrams.
While it is notoriously difficult to accurately research special elections, both Ossoff and Warnock have raised more than $ 100 million each since November in their efforts to overthrow Perdue and Loeffler. Both Biden and Harris have campaigned several times in the state since the November election. Trump, for his part, is scheduled to reunite Republicans in the state on Monday night.
Several Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have agreed to a futile effort to challenge the election’s legitimacy when Congress meets to formally certify the results on Wednesday. Trump encouraged his allies to try to invalidate the November election, which he easily lost to Biden, although Republican leaders in Congress have signaled that trying to overturn the results would be not only useless, but also politically damaging to the Republican Party.
Biden, for his part, made no mention of the Republican Party’s efforts to overturn the election on Monday, instead it sounded an optimistic note in encouraging Democrats in the state to continue fighting.
“Georgia, as dark as these winter days may seem, I am still more optimistic about this country than I have been in my entire life,” said Biden.
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