Today: Georgia Senatorial runoff elections / in 15 days Biden/Harris will be inaugurated

Good Morning!

Today is Tuesday, January 5th, 2021.

Yesterday, the fallout from Trump's hour-long, wholly inappropriate and most likely very illegal shake-down telephone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger and his attorney, (on Saturday, released to the press on Sunday, talked about everywhere on Monday) was large. Tom Cotton, one of Trump's most staunch supporters from a Trump +35 state, said he will not assist in Trump's attempted coup.

Back to the shakedown conversation: because literally everything Trump said to Raffensberger as he pitifully tried to pull out the stops in order to get the guy to overturn the Presidential election results in Georgia was nothing more than a pack of lies, Georgia's Voting Systems Manager, Gabriel Sterling, went before the press on Monday and debunked every single lie that Trump spoke. It took him about 30 minutes to do it, but the video is worth watching:



Sterling is part of the Secretary of State's office.

If you thought that would keep Donald Trump from continuing to lie and say that he won Georgia when in fact, he lost, if you thought he would actually campaign for the 2 GOP Senate candidates whose elections are today and not spend the entire time at last night's Dalton, GA rally talking about himself, well, then you will be sorely disappointed:



Literally within seconds of taking the podium, in the midst of his death-cult children-of-the-corn followers screaming "USA, USA MAGA MAGA", Trump's 2nd line (after "thank you") was:

"Hello Georgia, by the way, there's no way we lost Georgia"....

From there on out, it went downhill very quickly, through the slippery-slidy-slopy muddy rabbit-hole of

"THEY STOLE THE ELECTION, VOTES WERE FLIPPED, YOUR GOVERNOR IS A WORTHLESS SOB, DOMINION IS IN BED WITH VENEZUELA AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH" and so on and so on and so on....

So, lying autocratic egomaniac is as lying autocratic egomaniac does. With that wonderful, uplifting, heartwarming backdrop, today is Runoff Election Day in Georgia!!

And btw, the very moment that Trump entered the stage last night, his team filed a 13th-hour lawsuit to have a judge throw out the Georgia Presidential election results. Here is the state of Georgia's response. This is, of course, all show, because the court date is set for 2020-01-008, two days after Congress reads the electoral count. Also, there is this:

Silly, silly, silly Donald. Surely, a decision will be coming today. But it really does show just how desperate Trump is. Tilting at those cancer-causing windmills once again.

CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale has an interesting theory about why Trump lies so much:

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Today's runoff elections (Perdue vs Ossoff / Loeffler vs Warnock):

it's going to be a



of a day!!!

The polls will close at 7 PM ET this evening and no one on either side is expecting the races to be called quickly. In fact, it may go late into the night before we begin to see a trend emerge. With slightly over 3,000,000 votes having been cast early, this means that the majority of the election has already happened, so the results at 7 PM will be just a fraction of the total. Wait and see what happens.

I will post results links later today.

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Tomorrow, a joint session of Congress will convene to open and read the electoral results, which are already known:

Biden 306 / Trump 232
Harris 306 / Pence 232

This is usually a boring, no-brainer event, but since Trump, attention whore that he is, really, really REALLY wants this to be all about him, there will be a circus tomorrow, but when all is said and done, Joe Biden will be elected (for the gazillionth time) our nation's 46th President and Kamala Harris will be elected our nation's 49th Vice-President.

Electoral challenges are allowed on the floor of the chamber when one single Rep submits a challenge (it must be in writing) and said challenge is co-signed by a Senator. Then, the two Houses of congress separate from each other and debate the point(s) of contention for 2 hours, take a vote among themselves and then the two houses reconvene. In order for an electoral challenge to suceed, BOTH houses of Congress must sustain the electoral challenge by majority vote. Then, the written slate of electors that are challenged are sent back to the Governor of that respective state (how much do you wanna bet that the Governors of AZ, GA, MI, PA and WI are going to be very close to the joint session of Congress, perhaps invited guests??). The Governor then has a say as to whether or not the slate he certified in the first place are still valid, or not. If he say, "why of course they are still valid" then the issue is technically dead in the water and that's that. But we only get this far if BOTH Houses decide to sustain the electoral objection by MAJORITY vote (a high minority plurality does not count) and since the Democratic controlled HOR is never going to vote to sabotage Biden/Harris, this thing is already long dead in the water without even having to explain anything further. Unclear is if each and every challenge receives 2 hours of debate time apiece, which could push this thing through the night or even into Thursday, or if Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi hammer out a procedural agreement to hear the challenges all together and perhaps extend the debate time in one longer, all-encompassing general round of he said she said no he said she said. There is surely some leeway in the actual application of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which btw was enacted 11 years after the 1st time that the Republicans cheated and stole an election (1876: Hayes vs Tilden) - verifiably. So, there will be a circus tomorrow, with unforeseen consequences for an number of politicians' careers. It will likely be a dirty, ugly day under the veneer of forced civility because actually, no one is allowed to speak in the Chamber except for the President of the Senate (Mike Pence), the Senate Majority Leader, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the four tellers (and the tellers are only allowed to speak to read the actual electoral vote totals, alphabetically, by state). Any Representative, Senator or guest who breaks this rule can be





from the joint session of Congress. If Trump decides to appear (which would be allowed although wholly inappropriate), he too must remain silent, something I doubt the man can do.

So, once tomorrow is in the history books, we look forward to Joe Biden's Inauguration, which will be 15 days from today!




-Stat

 

Last Georgia Senate Poll:
Georgia Senate Run-Off Election - Perdue vs. Ossoff Trafalgar Group (R) Ossoff 49, Perdue 49 Tie
Georgia Senate Special Election Run-Off - Loeffler vs. Warnock Trafalgar Group (R) Warnock 48, Loeffler 50 Loeffler +2

 

Thanks for proving once again that MSM = Fake News.

 

MSM polling usually understates popular support for Republicans.

But election rigging can always trump popular support and real votes.

 

Terrifying for Republicans that when the best numbers that Trafalgar, a rabidly Conservative pollster, can honestly publish, are ties in an R+15 state, says everything we need to know.

 

1. Democrats have not won a Senate seat in Georgia in over 20 years.

2. Both Republicans had leads over there Democratic rival with Loeffler having a massive lead.

3. With early voting Democrats were said to be ahead but still fell short election day. Even Donald Trump had fewer votes than the senators. The early vote lead this time still means nothing.

4. It's a historically RED state and even with tens of millions in campaign money the Democrats are facing a huge uphill battle.

5. Scott Pressler and others have been getting many newly registered voters and Republicans ready to vote for today to ensure they keep thier lead. Also alot of door knocking going on.

6. The president has held rallies ensuring the Republicans must vote so we can win this.

7. The majority of voters in the state are Republicans who don't want the radical left agendas and stupid BS that the Democrats want and won't vote for a D regardless what they see or hear.

It's wishfull thinking to think the Democrats have any chance of winning this without cheating.

Also the polls have been proven inaccurate when estimating Republican support.

 

Ossoff and Perdue were in a tie in November, but there was a third candidate. This time, one of them must get at least 50.1% of the vote.

I don't get that second poll ... Warnock and Loeffler also had a third contender in November, but didn't Warnock outperform Loeffler by nearly double digits? (Google gave me only runoff info, can't seem to find those November numbers.)

 

Republican vote was split in the Warnock-Loeffler race. Now Republicans have consolidated behind her.

 

Doug Collins a Republican ran on the same ticket as Loeffler and received almost 100,000 votes. He was also popular. If you add his votes to Loeffler she is way ahead of Warnock.

Loeffler had almost 1,300,000 votes. Combined that puts them around 2.3 million votes. Warnock had about 1.6 million votes.

That's about 600,000 vote lead for Loefler and this time around more Republicans are voting.

 

I don't want Mitch in power but I would rather have him than Chuck Shumer or any Democrat.

 

I've been torn about this, and really believe we need a Republican Senate. I don't want any party to have both chambers & WH at the same time. That is always terrible for Americans.

I hope Trump hasn't ruined it. We'll see if his calling Georgians fraudsters for eight straight weeks has taken a toll. That would be the ultimate karma, and we'll get through two years of total control.

Prediction: If the reds win; perfectly fine. If the blues win; totally fake news; rigged; fraud; lies; unfair; more recounts needed.

Plus; the only thing worse than Mitch in charge is Shumer in charge.

Republicans and democrats - a pox on both their houses.

 

Counties that are at >98% reporting:

Pulaski County:
Perdue +39 (was Perdue +41.1 in November)

Lanier County:
Perdue +40 (was Perdue +43.7 in November)

Turner County:
Perdue +21 (was Perdue +26.6 in November)

 

Over 60% reporting with over 80% of Fulton County where Georgia is located has reported. With Atlanta almost done we should know a winner tonight.

Atlanta put the Democrats in the lead but the remaining counties should mostly favored the Republicans.

Perdue has actually been ahead of Ossoff a few times now. It is close but that should change.

Perdue doing better than Loeffler may be because she is running against a black man (Warnock) and many blacks admitted to voting for Obama only because he was black.

 

Both Republicans have now taken the lead with the majority of votes most likely favoring them, they should start to extend thier leads.

 

Looks like the Democrats will take the Senate. I see $2,000 checks in the near future.

 

Many Republican counties still only 91%-95% reporting so it's not over yet.

If you wanted stimulus you should have been happy with Trumps 1.8 trillion deal. To bad for you Nancy helped blocked that deal.

 

So, it's been called for Raphael Warnock, while it's still too close to call for the other race.

 

Thank you, President Trump, for giving us the awsomeful phrase, "Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer."

Blech.

 

Like you, I'm not comfortable with either party having a power trifecta, however, this does take the Senate gavel away from McConnell, which IMO is a very good thing.

I have a feeling that the 2022 midterms will remedy that.

 

Almost certainly.

 

Wait and see. We could have a long thread about what is wrong with the actual nuts and bolts of conducting elections, including years of service and Senate rotation.

 

George W. Bush, our nation's 43rd president, has excoriated the MAGA-crowd in a letter called "on the insurrection at the capitol"

 

The Problem for Democrats With a 50-50 Senate

Yascha Mounk, The Atlantic

 

Good.

 

I just can’t understand how anyone could be so happy that their taxes are going up, medical care is going down, and the borders are going to be flooded with illegals which will put an incredible strain on our welfare system considering the Democrats that you think care so much about the citizens of this country will give them free housing, free healthcare, and of course we have to feed them all at taxpayers expense. All being funded with your tax money. What could possibly go wrong?