Georgia Rhythm - The (Not Really) Final Chapter

Lost in the noise made by the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol last week was the fact that Democrats managed to win not one but both of the U.S. Senate seats up for election in a pair of runoffs in Georgia.  They were given at best the chance of winning one of those seats, which would not have been enough for the Democrats to take control of the Senate, as winning both seats was (with incoming Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote).  Thanks to Stacey Abrams and her relentless drive to get voters in Georgia to the polls, however, incoming President Joe Biden now has a chance to get the most sweeping Democratic agenda since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program passed.  And Georgia couldn't have chosen two better individuals to help him.

Raphael Warnock is the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s old job.  And like Dr. King, Reverend Warnock has been committed to social justice, having demonstrated for human rights and universal health care in particular and having campaigned and protested (and gotten arrested) for his beliefs.  He is a genuinely caring and magnanimous pastor, and he will work hard for the interests of all Georgians. 

Jon Ossoff got what few Democrats who lose elections get - a second chance at public office.  Having been the nominee in a special election to fill a U.S. House seat in 2017, he lost a contest that many felt he should have won, and he was written off as a one-hit wonder, like so many other failed Democratic nominees for public office.  But Ossoff, who was an intern with the late Georgia congressman John Lewis and has worked as an investigative journalist and documentary producer exposing human rights violations around he world, was undeterred by his loss.  Using the same dogged determination that he applies to his work as a documentary filmmaker, he worked hard to get a seat in the Senate to bring his liberal values to Washington, and his relentlessness paid off.  If he works as hard for Georgia as a U.S. Senator as he did to get elected - and he will  - Georgia will be all right.

And now that the Democrats have won the Senate, all of those Democratic Senate candidates on other states who came up short can be forgiven. And forgotten.  Jamie Harrison in South Carolina turned out to be a paper tiger, and no one is going to give Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, after his "sexting" scandal, another shot at a Senate seat when the retiring Richard Burr's seat is up in 2022.  Sara Gideon in Maine, whom Democrats pinned so many of their hopes on to oust Susan Collins?  Girl, you're through.  If you can't beat Susan Collins, you need to get out of politics and find another line of work.

To think that many Democrats put more of an emphasis on Maine than Georgia.  It looks like they focused on the wrong state famous for its pine trees.