Georgia shocked the nation by giving its 16 Electoral College votes to Joe Biden. What will it take for Georgia to do it again on the January 5th runoffs, elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and hand control of the Senate to the Democrats?
Frame the choice correctly. Voting for Ossoff and Warnock is voting to give Joe Biden the best chance to repair a broken Congress, make Washington work and bring America together. Voting for the two partisan incumbents, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, is voting for more Washington gridlock in a time of crisis.
Perdue and Loeffler will surely try to present themselves as necessary for bipartisan government to reign in Washington. But that is a farcical argument. Perdue and Loeffler have no serious record of bipartisanship on which to stand.
Here’s the proof: The Lugar Center rates senatorial bipartisanship based on how often senators sponsor bipartisan legislation. And in a ranking of 250 senators who have served over the last 28 years, Purdue ranks near the bottom at 213. His score is worse than every other senator from Georgia who has held office since 1993 except one. (Two former Georgia senators are in the top 10: Sam Nunn and Zell Miller.)
Loeffler hasn’t been in the Senate long enough to be included in the Lugar Center ranking, but she has done nothing so far to earn a high bipartisan score. In her 10 months in office, she has been the primary sponsor of 55 bills and amendments. Only 6 attracted any Democratic co-sponsors. Only one bill and one amendment of those won passage in the Senate.
Of course, the Republicans will paint Ossoff and Warnock as radical partisans who will empower the far left by giving Democrats control of the Senate. But the math of the Senate clearly shows Washington will not run by the incredibly small number of self-described socialists with seats in Congress.
If Ossoff and Warnock are elected, the Senate will have 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, with Vice-President Kamala Harris able to break tie votes. The filibuster will still be in place, as Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have pledged to never eliminate it. Other Democrats have expressed reluctance to get rid of it as well, but Manchin and Sinema have been unequivocal, and without their support, the votes do not exist for elimination.
That means most legislation will require 60 votes for passage, and that will require support from at least 10 Republicans. (It also means hysterical claims about “packing the Supreme Court” should be disregarded, since without abolition of the filibuster there’s no way the Senate could ever pass legislation to add seats to the Supreme Court.)
If Georgia sends Ossoff and Warnock to the Senate, then when bipartisan legislation is written which President Biden is prepared to sign, the Democratic leadership would be able to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. If such legislation gets 60 votes, it will pass the House, be signed by Biden, and become law. That’s how Washington is supposed to work.
But if Perdue and Loeffler stay in the Senate, and Republicans control the Senate floor, Republicans can prevent bipartisan legislation from receiving a vote, thwarting the will of the people, and denying President Biden the ability to fulfill his mandate to govern in bipartisan fashion.
Why is it important to stress that effective, bipartisan government is possible with Ossoff and Warnock, but not with Perdue and Loeffler? Because in November, Georgia turned blue, but not that blue.
Biden won 14,028 more votes than Trump, but was short of a majority of the overall votes since the Libertarian presidential candidate picked up 1.2 percent. Meanwhile, in the initial full-term Senate race, Ossoff earned 86,667 fewer votes than Purdue. And in the special election “jungle primary,” which featured 20 candidates, the combined Democratic vote was 46,467 short of the combined Republican total.
Runoff turnout will likely be lower than general election turnout, as there will be no simultaneous presidential election. Plus, there will be no third-party candidate. We can’t know in advance how that will affect the electorate. Perhaps Republican turnout will drop more than Democratic turnout because Trump is not on the ballot. Or perhaps it's Democratic turnout which will drop most, for the same reason.
Since we can’t know, we can’t assume the progressive base of the Democratic Party will be big enough to win a statewide election. Democrats still need to win the middle.
And the middle is big in Georgia. Biden’s victory was mainly built on a coalition of two overlapping constituencies: African-Americans and college-educated suburbanites. Both groups are partial to moderates.
According to Pew Research Center, 43 percent of black Democrats consider themselves “moderate” and another 25 percent embrace “conservative.” (And that’s just among blacks who are Democrats. A 2018 Pew study found that 16 percent of blacks did not identify as Democrat. Another 2014 Pew study found that number at 27 percent in Georgia.)
And the Atlanta suburbs, which voted for Biden, were once bedrock Republican communities. New York Times’ data journalist Nate Cohn noted that the available demographic and survey data suggests that the vast majority of the white suburban shift in Georgia was from “voters actually changing their mind,” and not from changes in demographic composition. In other words, many of these Georgian voters were voting Republican not too long ago.
Perdue and Loeffler, with the help of Republican Party organs that specialize in negative ads, will try to spook moderate voters into believing a Democratic-controlled Senate will lead to far left policies. So it will be important for Democrats to clearly communicate the facts and frame the race accurately, and tightly.
Georgians came out in force to fire Donald Trump. But as we have seen since Election Day, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler just can't seem to quit him. Trump was a car crash of a president, and we still have shattered glass on the roadway. We still need to clear the debris, so we can get the country moving again. Send Perdue and Loeffler packing, and give Joe Biden a chance.
Written by guest contributor Bill Scher. Bill is the co-host of “The DMZ” online show and podcast from Bloggingheads.tv, and the author of the book, “Wait! Don’t Move to Canada.” His writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The New Republic and several other outlets.