Fight for Senate majority boils down to Georgia The dual runoffs, with the Senate majority on the line, would set the stage for a nail-biting finish to an already chaotic, historic election year, with millions already set to pour into the state. ............. The dynamic will put Georgia at the center of the political universe for roughly the next 60 days with two races that are already being nationalized. Multiple officials who will be involved in the race declined to put a price tag on the runoff, but one GOP official didn’t rule out that it could top $100 million. ............. Winning both Georgia Senate races if they go to runoffs will be tough. ........ the path for Democrats would rely heavily on high turnout in Atlanta and the suburbs. ........... “If there are any Republicans out there that think this is going to be a cake walk, I think they should pay more attention to the fight that’s happening right now at the presidential level and understand what’s coming”
Stacey Abrams lauded by Democrats for mobilising black voters in Georgia Voting rights activist credited as architect behind grassroots efforts to turn state ‘blue’ ......... It was an endorsement in February from Jim Clyburn, the veteran black Democratic congressman, that resurrected Joe Biden’s flailing presidential primary campaign. .......... “As Democrats chart a course forward as a party, the first person they should turn to is Stacey Abrams.” .......... Voter registration figures, early voting data and county-level election results suggest similar patterns helped Mr Biden edge out Mr Trump in other battleground states, notably Pennsylvania and Michigan. ..................... a surge of black people signing up to cast ballots in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the start of the summer. ......... “The truth of the matter is when democracy needed recalibration, it was the most consequential voting bloc in American history.”
Trump Moves Into the Burn-It-Down Phase The president’s White House press conference showed that he knows his reelection prospects are fading, and he’ll try anything to keep power. ............. Trump is a showman who prizes presentation above everything else, who watches his interviews with the sound off, who critiques appearances with precision, who famously mocks his opponents as “sleepy” and “low energy.” When Trump goes back to watch his performance tonight, he’ll see a salesman who wasn’t selling. ......... On Fox News, John Roberts described Trump’s remarks as the words of a man who was losing and trying to hold on to power. Even the loyal New York Post described the president as “downcast” and his charges as “baseless.” The talkers on CNN were even more withering: Jake Tapper deemed the appearance a disgrace. “We knew the president wasn’t going to lose gracefully, if he lost,” he told viewers. “But frankly, watching him flail like this is just pathetic.” Trump’s lone nominal defender on the network, former Senator Rick Santorum, said the president’s accusations were without merit and “dangerous.” Anderson Cooper likened the president to “an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun.” .......... Among conservatives, there is already talk of asking Republicans in the Pennsylvania state legislature to overrule the popular will and submit their own electors on Trump’s behalf.
Even If Joe Biden Wins, He Will Govern in Donald Trump's America The 2020 election did not go according to plan for the Democrats. It was a far cry from the sweeping repudiation of Trump that the polls had forecast and liberals craved. After all the outrage and activism, a projected $14 billion spent and millions more votes this time than last, Trump’s term is ending the way it began: with an election once again teetering on a knife’s edge, and a nation entrenched in stalemate, torn between two realities, two orientations, two sets of facts...... the congressional Republicans who enabled him instead notched unexpected gains ....... The GOP appeared likely to retain the majority in the Senate and cut into the Democratic House majority, defying the polls and fundraising deficits. Republicans held onto states such as Florida, South Carolina, Ohio and Iowa that Democrats had hoped to flip. They cut into Democrats’ margins with nonwhite voters, made gains with Latinos in South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley, and racked up huge turnout among non-college-educated white people, while halting what many conservatives feared was an inexorable slide in the suburbs. ......... “Democrats always argued, ‘If more people voted, we would win,’” says GOP strategist Brad Todd, co-author of The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. “Well, guess what? Everybody voted, and it didn’t help the Democrats. There is a multi-racial, working-class ethos that is animating the new Republican coalition.” ........... he will be governing Trump’s America: a nation unpersuaded by kumbaya calls for unity and compassion, determined instead to burrow ever deeper into mutual antagonism. Win or lose, Trump has engineered a lasting tectonic shift in the American political landscape, fomenting a level of anger, resentment and suspicion that will not be easy for his successor to surmount .............. The COVID-19 pandemic has just entered its worst phase yet, rampaging across the country virtually unchecked. The economic fallout from the virus continues to worsen without new federal aid. .............. something is completely rotten in the foundations of our democracy ........ our identity crisis continues. ....... He made little alteration to his bull-in-a-china-shop attitude, even though the hellscape he raged against was now one that unfolded on his watch. ......... Biden shattered campaign-finance records—his campaign hauled in $952 million, dwarfing the incumbent by more than $300 million ...... “These Trump rallies and Trump parades and all those kinds of things, they don’t strike me as the type that would be answering a polling call” ................. “He’s still going to be the leader of the party and the biggest voice, and he’ll at least flirt with the idea of running again. It’s going to continue to be a populist, grievance-fueled party.”
US election 2020: Why racism is still a problem for the world's most powerful country It's the mindset that led President Woodrow Wilson, in office from 1913 to 1921, to oversee the re-segregation of multiple federal agencies. This is the same president who publicly backed the Ku Klux Klan. It's the mindset that at the turn of the 20th Century saw the vilification of black people as wide-eyed "happy negroes" content with their lot as poor share croppers and shoe shiners. .................. African Americans don't have that luxury. The past is the present, the racism is the same. ......... A big issue in the campaign was urban crime and the Clinton administration's controversial 1994 Crime Bill that critics say increased mass incarceration and led to the disproportionate jailing of tens of thousands of black men. Joe Biden helped get that legislation on the books, and his involvement has come back to haunt him. .............. the fear of a bad encounter with the police lives in the mind of every African American.
