NEW from GA: Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are running as a unity ticket in the runoffs.
It’s a delicate dance not contradicting Trump’s refusal to concede. But subtext is clear: Biden will be president and Senate is the “firewall” to stop his agenda.
The complication is that Loeffler and Perdue ran different campaigns until now. She ran as an Attila the Hun conservative (literally) in the hope of beating Doug Collins. He struck a more modest general election tone.
A revealing glimpse into David Perdue’s mindset for the Senate runoffs: “What we have to do is not persuade people. What we have to do is get the vote out,” he tells a crowd in Cumming, Ga. nbcnews.com/politics/2020-…
One woman I talked to at this Loeffler-Perdue rally outside Atlanta said she’s disappointed by the election result because she expected and hoped Trump would imprison Hillary Clinton in a second term.
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Democrats have an uphill climb — they need to flip both Senate seats to capture the chamber. And they haven’t done well in runoffs here, e.g. losing one by 15 points in ‘08.
Says @ReverendWarnock: “This is a very different state than 2008.”
Georgia Democrats are running hard on Senate control, unlike their counterparts in other purple states who downplayed it. They say a D Senate is about giving Biden’s agenda a chance to succeed, and argue McConnell would seek to obstruct and induce failure. nbcnews.com/politics/2020-…
Kamala Harris, in suffragette white: “While I may be the first woman in his office I will not be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”
Harris: “Now is when the real work begins. The good work, the hard work, the necessary work.” She mentions Covid, economy, systemic racism, combating climate change + “heal the soul of our nation.”
“The road ahead will not be easy, but America is ready. And so are Joe and I.”
Joe Biden: “We don’t have a final declaration of victory yet. But the numbers tell us a clear and convincing story. We’re going to win this race.”
Biden on his big popular vote lead: “They’ve given us a mandate for action, on covid, the economy, climate change, systemic racism. They’ve made it clear they want the country to come together, not pull apart.”
(Side note: How much of that stuff gets through a GOP Senate?)
One of many ironies in the "socialism" attack: It was deployed by a president who put his name on $1,200 cash payments to Americans, bailed out farmers hurt by his trade war, tried to send $200 drug discounts to seniors and favors $400B on F-35 jets that don't shoot straight.
The other irony of "socialism" is that the two most socialist programs in the USA, Social Security and Medicare, are mega-popular and politicians who use the word as an epithet tend to take care to show support for them.
Yet another irony of the "socialism" rhetoric is that it is often lobbed by politicians whose states are net beneficiaries of federal dollars from other states they decry as too socialist.