Desperation

Every time the Republicans lose, they try to create a law that would prevent the same thing from happening again.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Warnock it is

The incumbent Democrat was leading with Democratic areas still to report when the race was called Tuesday night. Warnock bested Walker by just under a percentage point during the general election last month, but didn’t cross the 50-percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. His victory means Democrats will hold a 51-49 advantage in the Senate, expanding their slim majority in midterm elections that were projected to favor Republicans.

[...]

As far as public office goes, Walker will have be content with his “honorary sheriff” title and prop badge, which he brandished during the lone debate ahead of the general election last month.
  Rolling Stone

Seriously, though, it was way closer than it should have been.

I suppose if there are still Democratic strongholds to be counted, that image could look different, but it should have been a blow-out.

Throughout the campaign, Walker stumbled to respond to allegations of domestic violence and claims that he paid for ex-girlfriends' abortions, despite expressing support for a nationwide ban on the procedure. He was also prone to gaffes and false claims, exaggerating his record in academics and business and displaying a loose grasp of policy.

[...]

Walker, who Trump urged to run, was the only Georgia Republican not to win outright in November.

  NPR

Walker may be the least qualified person ever to run for office.  At least among the top of that list.

Warnock's win now gives Democrats [...] a cushion in trying to pass bills, assured committee control and eliminates procedural hurdles to carry on the business of the Senate.

[...]

Warnock's win offers Democrats a clear path for action for the final years of Biden's term.

  NPR

And the question now is, will they take advantage of it? I have my doubts.

Democrats now have enough wiggle room to lose one vote in their caucus and still move bills through the chamber without issue.

[...]

Because the current power-sharing agreement equally splits the Senate committees, tied votes must undergo an additional vote on the Senate floor to move ahead with bills or nominees.

But Warnock's win means Democrats will likely have an extra seat on every committee, clearing an open path to passage when Senators ubiquitously break on party lines.

[...]

In 2020, Schumer and McConnell settled on an agreement to share power in the evenly split chamber after an early stalemate that stalled the confirmation of President Biden's cabinet nominees.

[...]

Warnock's triumph means [Schumer] does not have to again negotiate a power-sharing arrangement.

I think we owe more credit - or at least as much - to John Fetterman in Pennsylvania for flipping a seat than to Warnock for keeping his.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  You can read this article if you want, but I'm pretty sure it's by not being Herschel Walker.

If the Republicans had nominated a halfway qualified candidate, they could have won this seat.  I'm glad they didn't.  I'm just saying, Democrats shouldn't feel smug, or even confident, in their standing in Georgia.

Obama in Georgia

His standup routine isn't half bad.

But did he think about using the name "Uncle Joe"?  Might have better used another name.  Or maybe he intended it.  I don't know.

BTW, do you wonder why you haven't seen Trump in Georgia campaigning for Walker?  It's because they don't want him there.

Too bad!

Surprised he didn't vote absentee or by mail to avoid mingling with the hoi polloi.

Oh wait, it was a stunt.  He says he couldn't bring himself to vote for either one.  "Showing up to vote, but not voting for either one of them."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Whew

Luckily for him, his supporters don't care what he says.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ha

Apart from the obvious lie about Warnock, have they decided Herschel can't be trusted to do his own campaigning?

I mean, they're probably right, but FFS.  Also, I wouldn't pick Lindsey Graham to do it for him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Dems get if they get Warnock

Aside from a little bit of breathing room if one senator is out of the picture for some reason:

Trump gets another reprieve?

Christ. He's probably right.  

DOJ is between a rock and a hard place. Waiting until after December 6 so as to not affect the Georgia runoff makes a certain sense, but if they don't charge before Trump announces his candidacy for 2024, it will look like they did it in retaliation. And he's apt to do that at any moment. Probably best to do it ASAP.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Byung Pak resignation: the rest of the story

White House officials pushed Atlanta’s top federal prosecutor to resign before Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs because President Trump was upset he wasn’t doing enough to investigate the president’s unproven claims of election fraud, people familiar with the matter said.

A senior Justice Department official, at the behest of the White House, called Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak and told him he needed to step down because he wasn’t pursuing vote-fraud allegations to Mr. Trump’s satisfaction, the people said.

Mr. Pak resigned abruptly on Monday—the day before the runoffs—saying in an early morning email to colleagues that his departure was due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

  WSJ

But why did he cave? He should have forced DoJ to fire him like Berman.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More fallout from Trump's call to Georgia

The latest lawyer repercussion is in addition to Cleta Mitchell "resigning" from her law firm after being in on Trump's call to the Georgia Secreaty of State.

A Fox Rothschild partner, who was on the call Jan. 2 in which President Donald Trump pressured Georgia officials to “find” votes that would reverse the results of the presidential election, is leaving the Philadelphia-based Am Law 100 law firm.

In a statement Thursday evening, the firm said Alex Kaufman and his father, Robert J. Kaufman, who were both partners in Atlanta, “reached a mutual agreement with Fox Rothschild LLP today to depart from the firm and pursue new professional opportunities.”

  LLaw.com

And his father too? Dang.

Fox Rothschild has acknowledged that Alex Kaufman was “present for” the Jan. 2 call between Trump and Georgia officials. According to the law firm, “Neither Alex Kaufman nor Fox Rothschild represent or have ever represented the President or his campaign.” Kaufman did not speak on the Jan. 2 call.

[...]

Fox Rothschild said in a statement that Alex Kaufman, in his individual capacity, is the general counsel for the Fulton County Republican Party and an associate general counsel for the Georgia Republican Party.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Still at it

Gabriel Sterling runs the Georgia election system.  If you missed his press conference, it was pretty awesome.  I feel for the man.  Trying to battle the orange asshole's constant lies.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

So proud of Georgia

The south lost the civil war in 1865, but today is the day the South fell. The people of Georgia now know what they can do. And the people of Mississippi and Alabama were watching. I look forward to a new black holiday. Janteenth doesn't quite fit, but January 5 is a red-letter day. Black Lives DO Matter.

Democrats appear on the brink of taking control of the U.S. Senate with Raphael Warnock the projected winner over Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Jon Ossoff leading Republican Sen. David Perdue in Georgia’s two Senate runoff elections.

  USA Today

And Mitch McConnell has lost his seat! The whole country won. (I'm assuming a win for Ossoff if the votes they're counting now are mail-in and those fall the way they did in the general election.)

Trailing much of the night, Ossoff surged ahead of Perdue by more than 8,500 votes after batches of votes from Democrat-heavy DeKalb County were released. Most uncounted votes remain in Democratic strongholds in the metro Atlanta area.

[...]

Around 2 a.m. ET Wednesday, the Associated Press projected Warnock the winner over Loeffler after the Atlanta pastor built his statewide lead to more than 46,500 votes.

And that should widen under my assumption about the mail-in votes.

Warnock made history with his election win, becoming the first Black Democrat elected as a U.S. senator from a state in the South and only the 11th Black senator in the history of the nation. He becomes the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race in Georgia in 20 years.

[...]

The Perdue campaign was not ready to concede.

Of course not.

“We will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots are properly counted. We believe in the end, Senator Perdue will be victorious.”

Gabriel Sterling, Georgia voting system implementation manager, said he expects most ballots to be counted by Wednesday but for final counts not until Friday.

[...]

The possible Senate sweep in Georgia would give Democrats control of the Senate for the first time since 2004 and boost President-elect Joe Biden’s ability to carry out his early legislative agenda.

Not to mention take McConnell's foot off the throat of the Senate and actually allow bills to come to the floor for votes.*

Tuesday’s election was a rare double run-off. Ossoff and Warnock ran against Perdue and Loeffler in the Nov. 3 general election, but no candidate in that race passed the 50% threshold under state law to win the Senate seats outright, forcing Tuesday's runoffs.

And don't think the MAGAts won't be screaming about being cheated because of it. In fact, I'm actually rather surprised Georgia uses that system. I suppose that reveals a level of arrogance on the part of the GOP that no other state has dared reach.

Georgia election officials said turnout Tuesday shattered the previous record for a run-off in the state, including more than 3 million who voted early.

[...]

Following the playbook that helped Republicans retain control of the Senate after the general election, Loeffler and Perdue attacked their opponents as "radical socialists" and said the fate of nation was at stake with the race.

Well, they were right about that last part.

Congratulations, Georgia! You may have just saved democracy in America.

P.S.  A lot of credit goes to power house Stacey Abrams, who worked tirelessly organizing blacks to vote.  Governor Kemp's days are numbered.

UPDATE 8am:

Democrat Jon Ossoff, who leads Republican David Perdue by about 16,000 votes in the Georgia runoff that could give Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, claimed victory Wednesday in the race. The Associated Press, which NPR relies on for its results, has not yet called the contest.

  NPR 

*I didn't realize Senate Majority leader does not automatically go to the party with the most senators. (I thought that would be a tie, broken by Kamala Harris.) I just read this tweet that seems to indicate the Senate votes on the leader, no matter who has the most seats. Manchin better not bail on the Democrats. Surely he wouldn't, would he?

 

The Trump Show in Georgia

By all accounts, it was the dumpster fire you would expect it to be.  I didn't watch.  Couldn't.  

President Donald Trump’s trip to Dalton, Georgia, on Monday evening was ostensibly about stumping for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ahead of their hard-fought runoff elections on Tuesday. Predictably, however, Trump spent much of what’s likely to be his last rally as president whining about his loss to President-elect Joe Biden and pushing unfounded conspiracy theories about the election being stolen from him.

In fact, the very first words out of Trump’s mouth after “Hello, Georgia,” were: “By the way — there’s no way we lost Georgia. There’s no way. That was a rigged election.”

  Vox

Are we certain it was his last rally as president? He's still got 15 days.

During the early part of his speech, Trump went through the motions of trying to promote Perdue and Loeffler, but his heart didn’t really seem in it.

[...]

On numerous occasions, cameras panned across obviously bored and silent faces as Trump offered praise for Loeffler and Perdue that didn’t go much beyond their support for him.

[...]

He didn’t seem to realize that Perdue wasn’t actually in attendance (he’s quarantining after Covid-19 exposure) and instead of mustering much enthusiasm for the senators, Trump’s followers spent much of the rally chanting things like “fight for Trump!” and “stop the steal!”

To be fair, they didn't come for Loeffler and Perdue. They came to participate in The Trump Show™ by chanting three word slogans.

He criticized the Supreme Court for “not stepping up” for him and, along similar lines, blasted Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state — Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, respectively — for not helping him steal the election. “I’ll be here in about a year and a half campaigning against your governor, I guarantee you,” Trump said about Kemp.

Or maybe you'll be behind bars in New York.

The speech came a day after the Washington Post published bombshell audio of a phone call from over the weekend in which Trump unsuccessfully tried to bully Raffensperger into helping him “find” enough votes in the state to overcome his loss to Biden. The call was widely criticized and as my colleague Ian Millhiser wrote, was “most likely a criminal offense,” but Trump — stealing a page from his impeachment playbook — tried to turn reality on its head by proclaiming, “everyone loved my phone call.”

It was a perfect call.

Notably, the pandemic was never mentioned at a rally in which many attendees were packed together and mostly not wearing masks.

He is well over Covid-19. For him, it no longer exists.

He suggested congressional proceedings on Wednesday during which his Electoral College loss to Biden will be certified might produce a drastic reversal of fortunes, even while it’s quite clear — since most lawmakers plan to vote to certify the vote — it won’t.

At one point the president said, “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us” — suggesting the vice president, who will oversee Wednesday’s hearing, might attempt to overturn the results in the eleventh hour.

He's trashing Pence's possibility of running for president in 2024. Intentionally.

“MIke Lee is here, too. But I’m a little angry at him today,” Trump said, alluding to Lee’s refusal (so far) to join the Republican effort to challenge the results.

Trump also spoke about his presidency in the past tense, lamenting (falsely) that Mexico “is paying” for his border wall — but then adding, “or if I were here, they would be.”

[...]

Overall, as Trump read lines from his pre-presidential stump speech without even bothering to update them to reflect the reality that the election is over and he lost, it became clear he was mostly mailing it in.

“We will never, ever surrender,” Trump said toward the end of his nearly 90-minute speech — and in case it wasn’t obvious, he was talking about himself. Regardless of what happens during Tuesday’s runoffs, for Trump, it will be an afterthought by Wednesday.

LOSER. That's the worst thing you could call Trump in his mind. So I'm happy to use it.

Aaron Rupar, as always has the goods in video clips, including one that proves he sees holding office as personal gain and not as service to the country.

UPDATE:

He does tangentially, but then Congress has the power to overrule him.  Trump is setting Pence up to fail in 2024.  Intentionally.

UPDATE:

I'm not feeling a bit of sympathy.

Georgia on my mind

Georgia may never recover from Trump's shitshow

The president of the Georgia chapter of the NAACP said Wednesday that he is resigning from a bipartisan election task force formed by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to improve voting policies because the process is a “farce.”

The Rev. James Woodall told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he’s participated in weekly meetings with dozens of other community leaders, elections experts and politicians to review policies and suggest improvements but that “nothing has happened” with their recommendations.

“It’s all for show,” he said in an interview. “He’s trying to play both sides.”

Woodall said he’s long been frustrated with the committee, but that he decided to resign after Raffensperger criticized a judge’s ruling Monday that rejected challenges to the eligibility of more than 4,000 Georgia voters. Raffensperger, a Republican, called the decision a “direct attack on the rule of law in Georgia.

“The latest attempt to disenfranchise eligible Georgia voters flies in the face of the integrity of safe, secure and accessible elections,” he said. “And that’s why I can no longer participate in such a farce.”

  Atlanta Journal-Constitution

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Democracy tested

So far, democracy is successfully waging a defense against Trumpism.  But Trumpism has not been conquered.

Two Georgia counties must reverse their decision to purge thousands from voter rolls in advance of the state’s 5 January runoff elections that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the US Senate.

Georgia federal judge Leslie Abrams Gardner said in an order filed late on Monday that these two counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address information to invalidate voter registrations, Reuters reported.

  Guardian

I have no doubt Georgia Republicans will file an appeal. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will hold firm and deny standing as they have in other Trumpist state case battles. Republicans will keep working to change the courts and the laws to favor Republicans and disenfranchise voters who vote against them. The battle is more out in the open and more dire than it has ever been.

“Defendants are enjoined from removing any challenged voters in Ben Hill and Muscogee Counties from the registration lists on the basis of National Change of Address data,” she said in the court order. This judge is the sister of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic activist who lost a race for Georgia governor in 2018.

She'll be getting MAGA death threats. Bet on it.

Let's AL amplify Lin Wood's insanity

It will put two Democrats from Georgia in and flip the Senate.

He wants Trump voters to boycott the Georgia runoff.  I say, YES!

"SCOTUS can then invalidate the Presidential election."  What's he smoking?  "Real conservative senators can then be appointed."  Appointed??  What on earth does an invalidated election bring in its wake?  "Kemp, Perdue, and Loeffler" will be arrested.  On what grounds?

"Listen very closely to what President Trump says.  His words ALWAYS have a deeper meaning."

Indeed they do.  But only as deep as, "Worship me and do my every bidding."

I worry about what Trump fanatics are going to do on January 6.  And January 20.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Excellent ad for Georgia - and everybody else

Michael Flynn's pardon unleashed his cuckoo

He suggested to a Newsmax presenter that Trump could call out the military to rerun the presidential election in swing states where Trump lost. And then...

During an interview on Newsmax TV’s “Greg Kelly Reports,” Flynn said the Republican Party needs to “start standing up” to support President Trump as he continues to dispute the results of the 2020 election.

“They’re all worried about Georgia,” Flynn said. “They’re all worried about this runoff in Georgia. It’s a fake election.”

  The Hill

It's a fake election. Ding dong.

“You can’t have another election on the same system,” Flynn said. “It’s a broken system, and we cannot allow a system that’s tied to foreign powers to be used to vote for the president or any election, any elected office in our country.”

Cuckoo.

Kelly then said that Republicans would “breathe a sigh of relief” when Trump leaves office.

Well, I'm sure that's true.

“They’re weak and they lack courage,” Flynn responded. “There’s a few of them, there’s not enough of them.”

That's true, too. But not in the way Flynn means it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump being Trump

Republicans are growing increasingly concerned that Trump’s decision to turn on his own — like Kemp and Raffensperger — for not aiding him in his crusade to reverse the election results will cost them the Senate. And it looks like Trump could be fine with that. The president has been aggressively fundraising for the Georgia runoffs, but most of the proceeds are going toward his newly launched PAC — not the candidates.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.