Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia is significant: on the one hand, a Trump candidate loses another winnable election. On the other hand, with the additional Senate seat, the Democrats can more easily appoint judges and press ahead with investigations.
Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia also gives Democrats an important advantage as they look ahead to the 2024 election.
Even before the runoff election on Tuesday in Georgia for the last remaining Senate seat, the Democrats had achieved their most important goal: They were able to defend the status quo in the Senate with 50 out of a total of 100 seats at the midterms on November 8th. Since Vice President Kamala Harris has the casting vote in the small chamber of parliament, the left maintained its wafer-thin majority there. And because the ruling party in the USA lost an average of four Senate seats in midterm elections in the past, the Democrats also triumphed over historical laws with this success.
On Tuesday, Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock also won the runoff against his Republican challenger Herschel Walker with around 51 to 49 percent of the vote. This means that President Joe Biden’s party now has a majority of 51 to 49 seats in the Senate. For the first time since 1934, a governing party managed to defend all of its Senate mandates in midterm elections.
Georgia illustrates the basic problem of the Republicans
The Democratic victory in Georgia clarifies the current basic problem of the Republicans. Donald Trump-backed candidates also lost winnable races for Senate seats in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In the increasingly multicultural southern state of Georgia, it made perfect sense to also nominate a black candidate against the African-American pastor Warnock. But in former football star Walker, the Republicans have fielded a challenger whose personal life and factuality are as slovenly as those of his longtime friend and mentor Donald Trump.
During the election campaign, Walker positioned himself as an opponent of abortion and a family man with a deep Christian faith. In June, however, he had to admit the existence of three illegitimate children. Two women later accused him of urged to have abortions. He was lying and didn’t take care of his children, criticized one of his sons in angry posts on Twitter.
While weak Trump candidates also lost their Senate elections in other states, the defeat in Georgia seems to be of particular importance. Trump was the first Republican to lose the race for the White House against Joe Biden in November 2020 in the southern state in almost three decades. In a telephone conversation, he asked Republican election commissioner Brad Raffensperger in Atlanta to find his missing votes and threatened criminal prosecution. However, Raffensperger and Republican Governor Brian Kemp remained steadfast and certified Biden’s election victory.
Since then, Raffensperger and Kemp have been considered traitors by Trump. But while the two upstanding Republicans easily won their re-election on November 8, the Republican Trump nominee now lost the runoff for the Senate seat. This does not bode well for Trump’s re-election for the presidency in 2024. Especially since Warnock’s victory reaffirmed the Southern state’s status as the new swing state. Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania – where the Trump candidates gambled away a possible majority in the Senate – are also likely to make the difference between victory and defeat in the presidential election in two years’ time.
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser and current critic, blamed the ailing tribune directly for the defeat in Georgia. In a tweet, he wrote: “Trump remains a tremendous liability (to Republicans) and the greatest asset of Democrats. It’s time to break away from him.”
One seat brings many advantages for the Democrats
For the Democrats, the additional Senate seat brings meanwhile very practical advantages. If the committees were previously equally occupied, the left now gets one more seat. Among other things, this will allow her to speed up judge nominations and potentially select more progressive candidates. Beginning in January, Democrats will also be able to summon witnesses to investigations on Senate commissions without requiring Republican approval. Since the Conservatives will use their new majority in the House of Representatives to initiate a whole series of investigations, the Democrats can now counteract them with their own investigations in the Senate.
At the same time, the extra seat gives Democrats a cushion in two ways. If there are party changes or vacancies in the Senate, the balance of power can change quickly. In the event of death or serious illness, governors could in certain conservative states a Republican until the next election send to Washington in place of a previous Democrat. Until now, such a vacancy would have been enough to overturn the balance of power in the Senate. From January it would take two such cases.
Warnock’s victory in Georgia is also precious for the Democrats in view of the 2024 election. In two years, the Democrats must defend 24 of a total of 34 Senate seats up for election. Among them are mandates in republican states such as Montana, Ohio and West Virginia. Now the left has at least a small reserve to brace itself against the loss of its majority in the Senate in 2024.