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The
results are in. Georgia’s voters of color have delivered the
two Georgia U.S. Senate seats to the Democrats, giving them the
Senate majority. Biden especially owes the Black community for his
election to the presidency and for providing him the Senate majority
so that he can govern. As noted in an earlier column, African
Americans, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, the Latinx
population, and Native Americans pushed the Democratic candidates
over the top.
None
of this would have happened without the exemplary leadership of women
who organized voters on the ground and turned them out in record
numbers for a run-off race: Stacey Abrams, Founder of the New Georgia
Project; Nse Ufot, CEO of New Georgia Project; Latosha Brown,
Co-Founder of Black Voters Matter; Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of Fair
Fight Action, Rep. Nikema Williams who now holds the Congressional
seat of the late John Lewis and chairs the Georgia Democratic Party,
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms; and many other voting rights
activists from Georgia and throughout the nation.
As
a consequence of their efforts, Georgia is sending its first African
American (Raphael Warnock) and the first person of Jewish descent
(John Ossoff) to the U.S. Senate. Both of their vote totals exceeded
that of President-Elect Joe Biden’s 12,000 vote margin over
Donald Trump on November 3, 2020. This is an historic achievement for
a state in the Deep South and a sign of the state’s changing
demographics.
It
reinforces a quote used by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that “The
Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.”
It is also socially conscious, and it has led us as Americans to
continue working toward forming a more perfect union.
The
narcissistic and childish antics of soon-to-be departed President
Donald J. Trump significantly aided these multi-racial and
multi-generational efforts. His continued promotions of false
allegations of voter fraud, which have been dismissed by more than 50
judges across the nation, have not deterred his madness.
More
than half of Republican House members and thirteen Republican
Senators led by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), who
hope to endear themselves to the Trump voter base as they prepare to
run for President in 2024, joined with him. With these latest
outcomes, their presidential aspirations appear to be going up in
smoke.
Trump
appears to be in a state of political delirium as he called Georgia’s
Secretary of State last Saturday to pressure him to re-calculate the
vote count and find him an additional 11,780 votes to enable him to
win the state. He also demanded that Vice President Mike Pence refuse
to certify last Wednesday’s electoral vote count, and Pence had
to tell him he lacked the authority to do so.
The
Republican Party is now in disarray and may provide the Democrats
with a greater incentive to heal the rifts between the progressives
and moderates as they prepare for the 2022 midterms. If the Democrats
do not use this situation as a teachable and learning moment, after
their loss of House seats in 2020, they will deserve to lose their
majority.
Democrats
must repair their breaches quickly if they are to govern effectively
for their constituencies. Since they will control all three branches
of the elected federal government, it is imperative that they take
immediate advantage of the opportunity that Trump and their voters
have provided them.
Biden
is on target in his desire to reconcile the nation’s divisions,
but he must do so in a way that satisfies the political hunger of the
progressives, and they likewise must realize that with the slim
Democratic majority in the House and the Senate that they will have
to compromise. Democrats must use this period to bulk up their
majority status in Congress so they will not repeat the political
mistakes of 2010 when their larger majorities in the House and the
Senate were wiped out.
It
is now time for a laser-like focus on the coronavirus to get vaccine
shots in the arms of the most vulnerable minorities - Native
Americans, African Americans, Latinx Americans, and Asian and Pacific
Islander Americans - who are the most victimized by COVID-19. Biden
must also move quickly to fill all the open federal judicial seats
while he has the Senate majority.
The
ground-breaking political transformation in Georgia should serve as
an important guidepost for where we are headed as a nation. As the
nation becomes more demographically diverse, it is incumbent among
our political leaders that they forge a new kind of politics that is
respectful of all of the nation’s racial and ethnic groups.
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