https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/06/georgias-voters-end-trump-era-definitively/
E. J. Dionne in WashPost:
Thanks to the voters of Georgia, the 2020 election looks very different than it did 48 hours ago. Barring a highly unlikely shift in the vote count, President-elect Joe Biden will now govern with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. The margins will be thin, but the power of Republicans to obstruct has been sharply diminished.
And the political map of the United States looks very different, too. Four years ago, it was unimaginable that Democratic control of the elected branches of the federal government would be cemented by victories in Senate races in Georgia. The Rev. Raphael Warnock won and Jon Ossoff leads in a state that had not elected a Democrat to the Senate in two decades.
The likely outcome put an exclamation point on Biden’s success and a dagger into the Trump era. President Trump almost certainly hurt Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both directly and indirectly.
Trump’s insistence, against all the evidence, that the November vote in Republican-led Georgia was fraudulently counted split his party and may have discouraged GOP turnout on Tuesday. And Republicans will confront the reality that some voters drawn to the polls when Trump is on the ballot have no interest in participating when he’s not. They are more Trumpublicans than Republicans.
But the president did still more damage to his party by denigrating the $600 stimulus checks in the recently passed economic relief package and calling for $2,000 payments instead. His unexpected veto threat played directly into the argument made by both Warnock and Ossoff: that only Democrats could be trusted to deliver relief to the economically ailing, including the middle class.
Ossoff was unabashed in appealing directly to voters’ immediate interests: “You send me and Reverend Warnock to the Senate, and we will put money in your pocket.” Biden was equally direct when he campaigned for the Democratic duo on the eve of the election. “If you send Jon and the reverend to Washington, those $2,000 checks are going out the door, restoring hope and decency and honor to so many people struggling right now,” Biden said. “If you send Sens. Perdue and Loeffler back to Washington, those checks will never get there. It’s just that simple.”
Last November, exit polls showed that voters most worried about the pandemic tended toward Democrats, while those worried about the economy leaned Republican. This led critics on the Democratic left, but also from elsewhere in the party, to argue that its candidates had failed to define a clear economic message.
Warnock and Ossoff did not make that mistake when they were given a second chance in the runoffs. Their defining issues were economic, and their victories would make it far easier for Biden to enact a large new relief package, a major infrastructure program, and expansions in health-care coverage and child care — as well as democracy reforms and voting-rights protections.
Georgia’s outcome also showed that the swing of middle-class suburban voters toward the Democrats was not a one-off reaction to Trump. Democrats feared and Republicans hoped that, with Trump defeated, at least some Republican-inclined anti-Trump voters would come home to the GOP on Tuesday. They didn’t — and were likely put off when Perdue and Loeffler embraced Trump’s efforts to nullify the November votes of their own state and elsewhere.
The contest also lifted up the power of organizing. Led by Stacey Abrams, the Democrats’ 2018 gubernatorial candidate, civil rights and voting rights groups registered hundreds of thousands of new Georgia voters. They lifted Biden to his 11,779-vote victory in the state and then went back to work, registering more voters for the runoff and getting them to cast ballots. The result: turnout for the runoff that came remarkably close to matching November’s levels while Warnock and, likely, Ossoff secured margins larger than Biden’s.
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Read the full article at the link.
Thank you, Georgia!
With the “Demented Fascist Sore Loser” and “Traitor Ted” Cruz & company stoking the fires of sedition in the streets and revving up an attack on the Capitol through their knowingly bogus anti-American, White Supremacist hate speech, false narratives, vile lies, and baseless conspiracy theories, it’s time to put the GOP to bed for good.
There also should be a move to censure and eventually remove from office through the ballot box Cruz, Hawley, McCarthy, Johnson and the rest of the GOP clowns and traitors whose lies and pandering to Trump stoked this outrage and have brought our nation to the precipice of anarchy. The voters of Georgia have showed us how with hard work, the right pro-humanity message, even against the odds, the anti-democracy GOP can be removed from office at all levels.
Not surprisingly, the Traitor Trump Treason Twitter Account has been “locked.” Too little, too late!
Moscow Mitch and other GOP toadies’ protestations in support of American democracy are far too little, far too late! They are the nihilists who have joined Trump in subverting American democracy and committing “crimes against humanity.” They should not escape accountability!
Then there are still GOP scumbags who refuse to condemn Trump or acknowledge the crimes of his thug rioters! They must be removed from public office, now!
The 81 million of us who saved American democracy need to work hard through legal means to make sure that the anti-democracy minority (“GOP”) never seizes power again! The GOP has proved its disloyalty to our Constitutional order.
It’s time for the GOP to be dissolved and replaced by a legitimate opposition. Even now, scummy GOP legislators insist on delaying the electoral process with bogus claims. I’m tired of indulging these evil clowns and subversives, and particularly, their ignorant anti-American supporters.
⚖️🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
01-06-21