Georgia’s voters administer definitive end to Trump era

Thanks to the voters of Georgia, the 2020 election looks different than it did 48 hours ago. President-elect Joe Biden will now govern with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. The margins will be thin, but the power of Republicans to obstruct has been diminished.

And the political map of the United States looks different, too. Four years ago, it was unimaginable that Democratic control of the elected branches of the federal government would be cemented by victories in Senate races in Georgia. The Rev. Raphael Warnock won and Jon Ossoff leads in a state that had not elected a Democrat to the Senate in two decades.

The likely outcome put an exclamation point on Biden’s success and a dagger into the Trump era. President Donald Trump almost certainly hurt Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both directly and indirectly.

Trump’s insistence, against all the evidence, that the November vote in Republican-led Georgia was fraudulently counted split his party and may have discouraged GOP turnout on Tuesday. And Republicans will confront the reality that some voters drawn to the polls when Trump is on the ballot have no interest in participating when he’s not.But the president did still more damage to his party by denigrating the $600 stimulus checks in the recently passed economic relief package and calling for $2,000 payments instead. His unexpected veto threat played directly into the argument made by both Warnock and Ossoff: that only Democrats could be trusted to deliver relief to the economically ailing.

Ossoff was unabashed in appealing directly to voters’ immediate interests: “You send me and Reverend Warnock to the Senate, and we will put money in your pocket.” Biden was equally direct when he campaigned for the Democratic duo on the eve of the election.

“If you send Jon and the reverend to Washington, those $2,000 checks are going out the door, restoring hope and decency and honor to so many people,” Biden said. “If you send Sens. Perdue and Loeffler back to Washington, those checks will never get there.”

Last November, polls showed voters most worried about the pandemic tended toward Democrats, while those worried about the economy leaned Republican. This led critics on the left and elsewhere to argue that Democratic candidates had failed to define a clear economic message.

Warnock and Ossoff did not make that mistake when they were given a second chance in the runoffs. Their defining issues were economic, and their victories would make it far easier for Biden to enact a large new relief package, a major infrastructure program, and expansions in health-care coverage and child care.

Georgia’s outcome also showed that the swing of middle-class suburban voters toward the Democrats was not a one-off reaction to Trump. Democrats feared and Republicans hoped that, with Trump defeated, at least some Republican-inclined anti-Trump voters would come home to the GOP on Tuesday. They didn’t.

Georgia’s outcome will make an enormous difference in Washington — easing passage of Biden’s program, speeding the confirmation of his appointees and enabling the new president to fill empty court seats.

And Warnock’s victory seemed especially fitting after a tragic year of suffering and brokenness that fed a demand for change. This led to Biden’s election, and Georgia’s voters have now opened the path for the rest of the journey.