With each and every day in this post election period bringing sensational headlining news with even Donald Trump having to fight to dominate the stage, Ray Charle’s evocative rendition of Hoagy Carmichael’s Georgia On My Mind keeps playing again and again in my mind. For Georgia is where this whole reality show is now taking central stage. The finale is set for January 5, 2021, a fortnight before Biden’s inauguration, when two Senate seats will be decided which will determine which party controls the chamber. In fact the whole tempo and impact of the new administration’s policies on the immediate future in the country may well be depend on “Sweet Georgia”. In the meantime Trump, his ragbag burlesque crowd of a legal team and various committed diehards keep on their quixotic challenge that his election loss was as a result of a gigantic conspiracy involving Hugo Chavez, voting machine makers, Republican and Democratic heads of States, battalions of dead voters and the like. Much of Trump’s recent anger has been focussed towards the Republicans in this Southern sunbelt state, Georgia.
The two Senate seats are currently held by Republicans and all things being equal the Republican should retain them comfortably. Incumbents very rarely lose interim elections. Long time Republican Georgia has been accused of voter suppression and these very elections are as a result of one of their more obtuse strategies to achieve this end. In Georgia they abandoned primaries for the Senate elections. Rather In the general election it is a free for all, Democrats and Republicans competing on the same ballot. If none of the candidates reach fifty percent the top two have a run off. The rationale behind this absurdity is that historically the large black electorate’s attendance second time around was woefully down all but ensuring that the GOP candidate would be elected. The problem for the GOP is this time around, for a ton of reasons, the future ain’t what it used to be.
STACEY ABRAMS
Problem number one for the GOP is activist and authoress Stacey Abrams and the changing demographics of Georgia. In 2018 Stacey Abrams, then the minority Democratic leader of the State Senate gave the Republican nominee for Governor an unprecedented run for his money. It was an acrimonious encounter as Kemp, the former Secretary of State, had axed seven hundred thousand voters from the rolls, the majority of whom just happened to be African American. However Abram’s showing in the Gubernatorial race did not just happen. Five years earlier she had founded the “New Georgia Project” which conducted grassroots campaigns to register voters. Following her narrow loss at becoming the first African American Governor of Georgia she founded “Fair Fight” which had a host of objectives which were directed at getting younger voters registered, protected and to the polls in twenty of the most vulnerable states. She also produced a highly successful documentary on Amazon entitled, “All in the Fight for Democracy”. Biden won Georgia by thirteen thousand votes and the reason the Democrats are in with a fighting chance in the current runoff is because of her efforts. And the work continues sine the November election “The New Georgia Project” has registered five hundred thousand new voters.
There are more than a few African American women involved in get out the vote movements some of whom have been going for a decade. Then there is an influx of progressive groups from other states that have joined the struggle. The Sunset group from New York has as its objective to register twenty thousand who will turn eighteen by January 5, 2021. They have also raised nearly four hundred thousand dollars. They have contacted their supporters who might well give the Democratic Party ala Georgia a miss to exhort them to vote
THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES
It is fair to say that the GOP candidates would not be Jay H. Ell’s choices for this crucial encounter. Both were investigated for insider trading related to stock sales following top secret briefings. David Perdue had two thousand five hundred and ninety six trades in one term in the Senate - a record. Several of these were associated with movements of stock which could well have been the subject of secret briefings of his cybersecurity committee. One stock that he bought and sold sixty - one times related to a cybersecurity company FireEye which had Federal Government contracts, Perdue’s timeous tradings could fill a book. While no charges followed and both were cleared of wrong doing the whole sordid mess won’t go away. David Perdue who is running against a highly talented Jon Ossoff who literally made mince meat of him in the debates portraying him as a greedy self serving crook who had done nothing for the Covid afflicted. Perdue who refused to debate against Ossoff ever again is part of the Georgian scenery and has a loyal following. Under normal circumstances he would be hard to dislodge.
Then there is Kelly Loeffler having been appointed, against Trump’s advice, to replace a retiring Republican Senator. She is the wealthiest member in Congress. Since then however she has done everything to prove that if Lindsey Graham would just get out of the way then she would prove that she was Trump’s number one acolyte. She donates her Senate salary to anti LGBTQ and anti abortion groups. She Is more pro gun than Davey Crocket. Her husband is Head of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange - not exactly the peoples’ candidate. Her opponent is the highly respected Reverend Warnock who heads Martin Luther King’s former church. Highly articulate but has not been that politically sensitive to issues in his sermons in the past. However he stands out like a saint next to Loeffler.
The two sets of candidates are literally linked for better or for worse. The Republicans’ biggest problem is Trump. They need his support as he did after all get seventy - four million votes. He did however lose in Georgia. He is also conducting an all out assault on the Republican State leadership for simply not overturning the vote and giving him the electoral College victory.
TRUMP THE REPUBLICAN PARTY THE STOLEN ELECTION AND THE GEORGIAN REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT
To this day Trump has not conceded the election. He is the victim of a giant conspiracy. He has pursued this in the courts till it reached the stage that his conventional lawyers backed off. They were obviously no longer prepared to sully their reputations by presenting obvious garbage to the bench and be subject to the judiciary’s scorn and abuse. For those that don’t understand the byzantine plot which toppled him as narrated by lawyers and his good self he has an explanation that shows his lack of insight and megalomania. He argues, One - “He is the Republican Party”. Two - “The GOP gained a ton of seats in 2020”. Three -“It is statistically impossible that he who is responsible for the latter’s victories to get fewer votes than them!”.
Now the Republican Legislators are going along with this fantasy because whether they like it or not he may not be the country’s choice but he is their base’s. It is all a bit uncomfortable as he fires anyone who does not concur with his learned assessment. This particular so after lapdog Attorney General, Bill Barr, who otherwise believes that Trump has divine rights, concluded after investigation, that there was no malfiscience that could have changed the outcome of the Presidential election.
The question is how is this charade playing in Georgia where it really matters for the moment?
GEORGIA AH GEORGIA…….THE ROAD LEADS BACK TO YOU
So Georgia is bearing the brunt of Trump’s frustration because that is where the action is and where he will get the biggest bang for his buck. There are number of Republican constituencies that he is at loggerheads with including the Georgia State elected officials, Trump and his band of uncontrollable lawyers, the Republican establishment of Georgia, the two Republican candidates and of course the Republican base are not on the same page.
Trump has attempted to pressure every battleground State but none have the future of the control of the Senate coming up. He has lambasted Governor Kemp for not negating the certified election results, mumbling that he never should have supported him, and in private referring to him as a “moron” and a “nut job”. But the Georgian elected official that has come most under Trump’s repeated wrath, is Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State who ultimately certified the election. Trump has called him “an enemy of the people” He pressured the two Republican candidates to call for his resignation. However the latter has given as good as his got. In a series of public defenses he has accused Trump of throwing him under the bus, As the days have moved on Raffensperger has become bolder and bolder. In response to yet another tweet from Trump, he replied that “Even after this office requested that President Trump quell the violent rhetoric being born out of winning claims of states he obviously lost he tweeted, “Expose the massive voter fraud in Georgia”. Trump in the meantime conducted two rambling incoherent interviews, one with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo and the other with himself on FaceBook where he trotted out the well worn schtick.
Raffensperger backed his Voting Implementation Manager who had laced into Trump and his team of lawyers whose rhetoric had resulted in threats to innocent election workers who were doing their jobs. A twenty - year old contractor for the voting machines had received death threats as well as others who even needed protection. He told Trump to “Stop inspiring these people to commit violence”. He cautioned, "Someone is going to get killed". Most significantly he exhorted the two Republican candidates to denounce Trump’s behavior as well. No way was that about to happen because they had already backed Trump's call for Raffensperger to resign.
Added to the mix was Trump’s team of lawyers who were piling logs onto the fire. Joe DiGenova suggested that Trump’s fired cybersecurity chief who had stated that there was no evidence of any vote tampering be taken out and shot. Then Linn Wood and Sidney Powell pleaded with Georgians not to vote in the upcoming Senate election till Trump’s claims of fraud were investigated. These exhortations were not contradicted by the POTUS. However the local Republican establishment led by Saxby Chambliss and John Izakson, former Republican Senators, who had previously backed the Secretary of State’s claim of a free and fair election, to plead with the Republican base to come out and vote in this crucial election.
Nobody knows where the Republican base will finally come down in this massive family fight, They are definitely agitated as illustrated at a meeting chaired by the Republican National Committee Chairperson at a “Meet and Greet” meeting. There she met with a rowdy crowd who countered her electioneering by asking her why they should donate money and bother to vote if the result is already decided. They quoted Trump’s mantra about the machines and many of his talking points. Her pleas apparently fell on deaf ears,
So it is fair to say that the Republican Party are in disarray in Georgia. However parsing the senatorial contests that led to the January 5 run off they have room to spare. In the November contest the combined Republican votes were well ahead of the Democrats. However they obviously feel it is worth the risk to have Donald do one more of his mega virus spreading events. And risk it is because although he will have had drummed into his head that he must just laud the candidates and get out the vote out that is not on what has been on his mind of late. Rather he has focussed on how the election was stolen from him, making outlandish demands to politically alter the outcome, attacking Georgian officials, collect more money for his slush fund and work on pardons for his family.
HAIL TO THE CHIEF IN GEORGIA
Preceding the Trump jamboree Georgians were addressed by three high power surrogates - Barack Obama, Vice President Pence and Stacey Abrams. The tone set was decidedly sedate compared to what was to be the main event the next day.
Well Trump could hardly have inspired early confidence in the Republican establishment that he would stick to script when prior to leaving to Georgia he called Governor Kemp requesting him to call a special State Legislature session and persuade Republicans to overturn the Biden victory and send electors that would vote for him. This interlude was not kept secret resulting in Trump supporters surrounding the Governor’s residence demanding he accede to Trump’s request. Well Trump never disappoints and in-between reminding the crowd that the Senate was for all the marbles and that they must go and vote for Loeffler and Purdue it was an hour and a half of grievances, victimhood, lies and attacks on the local Republican gentry. He never bothered to square why they should go out and vote in a rigged election. It doesn’t matter cause the cult lapped it all up and there were thousands of them. He resolved facing them as a loser by telling them he was a winner. He had a new logic as to why this was so - no Republican had lost the Presidency after winning Florida and Ohio!
FROM NOW ON
So with a month to go the world will concentrate on Georgia. Already a record amount of cash has been spent and collected. While the Democratic small donations are double the Republicans the latter’s big donors have weighed in. The polls, that have had a bad run, put the Democrats ahead but not nearly far enough to be relevant. However a million absentee ballots have been applied for which has been to the Democrats advantage in the past and indicative of their ground game , If the squabbling and idiocy carries on within the Republic Party its not going to help their cause.
In the meanwhile Trump has fooled his adoring followers, who believe they are donating to the defense team, to put over two hundred million dollars in his own personal political action committee. Although the Republican Party want to forget about him and have organized a 2024 election strategy meeting without him he controls the base. They can’t win the Presidency with him and they can’t win without him. For the record Kemp and Raffensperger haven’t totally abandoned ship, they face an urgent interdict in Federal Court on Monday to explain why they have purged two hundred thousand votes from the rolls.
This is a fight for the ages. The Democrats have to hope that Trump has angered enough Republicans and independents who will be disgusted enough to leave the locals and vote against him via Warner and Ossoff. The latter having the toughest battle by far.
RAY CHARLES HAS THE LAST WORD
I said Georgia, No peace I find, Just that old, Sweet song, that keeps you Georgia on my mimd.
I
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