It’s runoff Election Day in Georgia when the balance of power in the U.S. Senate will finally be decided, determining how easily President-elect Biden will be able to ram through his progressive agenda. But Politico is not reporting optimistically about Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
In a piece titled, “Biden transition hoping for victory but bracing for defeat in Georgia,” Politico explains that Biden’s advisers are “privately skeptical” about the Democrats’ chances against Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
The transition team has been busy preparing different scenarios for its legislative agenda depending on Tuesday’s results, the outlet said.
One member of the Biden transition team told Politico that pulling off two victories in a state where a Democrat hasn’t been elected to the Senate in more than two decades would be “nothing short of a miracle.”
Privately, Biden’s team does not expect to win the races, according to Democratic officials, but they are more optimistic about their chances than they were weeks ago.Though the president-elect narrowly won the state in November, they attribute that to a powerful anti-Trump sentiment that did not translate down the ballot. Perdue received about 88,000 more votes than Ossoff, and the top two Republicans combined got more than 636,000 votes than Warnock in the special election.
One former Democratic official said few Democrats, if any, are preparing for victory. It's not "their organizing principle," the official said of the incoming transition team, adding that their planning has focused on Democrats not having control of the Senate. (Politico)
According to the report, however, the Democrats’ optimism has increased over the last two months in part because of President Trump’s election claims, particularly in Georgia.
In a recently leaked phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, for example, Trump repeatedly claimed he won the state and asked to “find 11,780 votes.” Critics argue the call was evidence Trump was trying to pressure an election official into changing the results in the state, which Biden won by 11,779 votes.
Responding to the audio, Republican David Perdue said he wasn’t worried about the call affecting the election and noted that Trump spoke no differently than he has been in the last two months.
“We’ve had some irregularities in the election in November and he wants some answers,” Perdue said on Sunday. “He has not gotten them yet from our secretary of state, it’s one reason why I asked for him to resign, we haven’t got it from our state legislature because there’s been no special session called, and then the president went to court and then I went to court, and the courts have denied us hearings saying it’s more of a legislative issue.”