HaHaHa! I looooove it!!! We did it! Time to dance on the roof! Make no mistake, we were major, major, major underdogs in these races. This is nothing short of an amazing day! Thank you ALL for doing everything you could to never give up and to keep fighting until we got a federal trifecta! We saved America! Woohoo! Today is a day for celebrating. Break out the best champagne. It took four long years but it was so worth it. I don’t know if I want to call Kamala Harris Madam Vice President or Tiebreaker Harris! I predicted that we had a 35% chance to get one seat and a 25% chance to get two. I love it when I underestimate Democrats!
WHY DID WE WIN?
First off because of postcards and donations from Colorado! And because Stacey Abrams has changed the political landscape of the country. What Democrats have always done in the South is run conservative white male Democrats in Southern races. As you can see from any map, that’s been a losing strategy. The thought was that if we ran a progressive or minority, it would drive up Republican turnout. Joe Manchin, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine and the like. Now we are going to have two of the most progressive senators representing Georgia!What does that mean? Going forward expect the powers to be to push more minorities and more progressives to run for seats in the South. If we can win in Georgia, we can win in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and North Carolina.
It took Stacey Abrams 9 years to do what she did (BTW, if you didn’t know, Faith Winter was Abrams’ trainer in her first race). What did she do? Simple math! She saw Democrats lose races because of lower than possible minority turnout. There were hundreds of thousands of unregistered minorities. They weren’t educated on issues and which candidates could make their lives better. And they were up against voter suppression (in registering, in voting and in making votes count). So she did the hard work of registering, educating and turning out minorities and she fought voter suppression. Last night I read a wonderful line:“Georgia isn’t a red state, it’s a suppressed state”.
The other mistake that the Democratic party has done in the past is not do extensive outreach to minority communities. They kind of took them for granted. Abrams showed us all what a big mistake that has been. So going forward, we need to build infrastructure in Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana so those states turn blue.
Make no mistake, even without the fact that it gives us the majority, this is a huge upset for Republicans! These runoff elections in Georgia (Mississippi has them too) are designed to prevent minorities from ever gaining power as the white majority will always be able to win in a 2-person race. This changes everything.Expect going forward that progressives will be on the ballot in Georgia(Abrams and Warnock in 2022 for Gov. and Sen.) and they will be well funded.
We have to also note that Trump was not on the ballot this time. This is the crux of the Republican problem. It has become a Trump party but when Trump is not on the ballot, Democrats win big! Too much of the Republican base is only loyal to Trump not the party. That is why all the Republicans support Trump…not because they like him, it’s because they are scared of what their voters will do if they don’t. Normally mid-terms are times when the president’s party gets crushed. But in 2022, Trump won’t be on the ballot and we’ll have just pulled out of covid and gotten back to normal. I doubt 2022 will follow the typical pattern.
WHAT’S NEXT?
The Republican party is divided and a mess. Trump just disempowered McConnell and he owns the party completely now. Many of you are upset about the baloney that’s going to occur at the capitol today. I am laughing my Ossoff! The Republican party is divided in two…the totally wacko and the ones who aren’t over the cliff yet. There will be so much infighting in the Republican party. We have a great chance to take advantage of this and elect more Democrats in 2021 and 2022.
I expect Stacey Abrams to declare for Governor in Georgia. She’ll run against Kemp, the king of voter suppression. Warnock will be on the ballot too as he is finishing the partial term. My question is who will be running for Secretary of State in Georgia…that’s the race I want to support too!
Kamala Harris becomes the most powerful vice president in history!
A 50+-50 senate majority will not allow huge legislation to pass as there are some Democratic senators who are conservative. Their states are different than ours and we have to understand that majorities matter but they don’t mean the progressive dreams will fly through the senate. But it will be so much better than these last 4 years and expect Biden to be able to appoint lots of judges.
The biggest thing that this will affect in the short term is Biden’s ability to nominate progressives to his cabinet. Sally Yates for example would never get through a Republican controlled senate where Doug Jones could. He hasn’t picked AG, commerce, labor, CIA, and small business administration. My guess is he was waiting to see if we won the senate and then he could pick the choices whom the Republicans wouldn’t confirm. We’ll see this week if my theory is correct.
Expect competent government, helping people affected by covid and ending the pandemic much, much faster than would have happened had Minority Leader McConnell stayed in power.
Here in Colorado we will get another congressional seat because of population growth. It will be in the Denver metro area wherever the commission draws it.Unlike past years when the Dems had a shallow bench, we have a deep bench of candidates who can win it. My hope is that we elect a woman and there are a bunch of wonderful ones who are gearing up to run when they see where the district lies.
Thank you all for all that you have done to save our country these last 4 years. We did it! It wasn’t easy but we persisted.
I just knew 2021 was going to be a good year. Now celebrate, take a break and we’ll be back at it in March!
Kris Moe