Senator Raphael Warnock is emerging as the winner by the minimum, against the football star who supported Trump
You know the Republicans are losing when you hear them say that “Democrats do a better job of getting their people out to vote.” That is what was heard last night in Georgia, where everything indicates that Senator Raphael Warnock will revalidate in the second round the seat in Congress that he has held since he temporarily won it two years ago. With his victory, Biden’s party wins the majority in the Senate and is freed from the tyranny that a conservative Democrat, Senator Joe Munchin, has exercised over his agenda, whose vote was essential for the vice president, Kamala Harris, to be able to break the tie.
The battle was close. With less than one point of difference (50.5-49.5, with 93% of the votes counted), the result seemed too close to claim victory, except for the fact that most of the votes that were still to be counted came from the Atlanta metropolitan area, Democratic stronghold. Rural Georgia had voted for Donald Trump’s candidate holding their noses, because by now no one considered him an exemplary senator. Proof of this is that the 81,000 votes of the libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, eliminated in the first round, were divided between Warnock and Herschel Walker, despite the fact that the Republican Party was his natural destination.
Walker had so many corpses in the closet that Senator Raphael Warnock, 53, presented the contest as “the fight between good and evil.” His rival, an old football glory at 60, exploited the fame he acquired with teams like the Dallas Cowboys, New Orleans Saints, Denver Broncos, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants and New Jersey Generals. It was in the latter, owned by Donald Trump, where he became friends with the tycoon. When it came time to pick a candidate of his own to wrest Georgia’s seat from the Democrats last year, the tycoon’s hopeful for a return to the White House convinced Walker, an African-American and Georgia native, to run for office. Republican Party primaries. With his help, Walker beat six other rivals, but he was not able to win the generals on the 8th and not even in this second round, where he started as favourite.
That is the great lesson of Georgia. Trump’s candidates can easily win the Conservative Party primaries, but they have a tough time in the generals. It is not enough to choose a famous black. Walker was an insult to African-American voters and an embarrassment to staunch conservatives, much as he advocated outlawing abortion completely in all cases at the federal level.
During the campaign he was accused by two of his girlfriends of having paid for the procedure to terminate the pregnancy. In addition, his ex-wife and another girlfriend with whom he had a five-year relationship accused him of domestic violence, and his 23-year-old son said on social media that “he has been a liar all his life.” the”. “We are not going to allow you to pretend that you are a moral family man at the expense of me and my mother,” Christian Walker confronted him. «He was an absent father. He had four children by four different women and was not home to raise any of them,” he tweeted. Her mother kept quiet during the campaign and even gave Walker her address so she could register in Georgia, but during an interview with ABC News in 2008 she had said that she had put a gun to her head, threatening to blow her “fucking brains out.” ».
Faced with such a character, Barack Obama presented Warnock as “a classy man that people like because you feel his integrity when you talk to him,” he said Thursday in Atlanta. “Someone who has served his entire life as a community worker, who tells the truth, who keeps his word, who treats everyone with decency and respect, even those who oppose him!”
Heavyweights from both parties have launched in recent weeks to defend their candidates in Georgia, throwing more money at a senator’s campaign than a presidential campaign costs. For Democrats, who have spent $388 million on Georgia’s first black senator, according to Open Secrets, the investment has paid off. Given the profile of the seats that will be contested in 2024, it is very possible that the two years ahead will be the last in which they can enjoy control of the Senate.
With this they will be able to easily ratify the nominations made by the president for federal or Supreme judges, ambassadors or cabinet members. They will not need to agree with the opposition on the presidencies of the committees, nor pay homage to the most conservative of their own ranks. But they will not be able to pass laws without negotiating with the opposition, because the Republican Party has obtained a majority in the Lower House. As the voters wanted, Democrats and Republicans are doomed to understand each other.
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