Two days that could shape future of America

There are days in history you can point to as unassailable moments that defined the path of the future that would follow. Call them critical junctures.

July 2, 1776, comes to mind, when the Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia voted to declare independence from Great Britain. We celebrate July 4 as Independence Day because that’s when the document was read aloud in public for the first time.

Dec. 23, 1783, is one that involves Annapolis. That was the day Gen. George Washington resigned his military commission before Congress, laying the foundation for civilian and not military rule in the United States.

Others might include Jan. 1, 1863, Aug. 18, 1920, Dec. 7, 1941, Aug. 6, 1965, and April 4, 1968. Anyone’s list would include Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 20, 2009, would be cited by many.

The next two days might join that list. Today, voters in Georgia will decide the control of the U.S. Senate for at least two years, either handing the reins of federal government to President-elect Joe Biden and the Democrats, or Sen. Mitch McConnell and a Republican majority in the upper chamber of Congress.

Polling released by Five-Thirty-Eight Monday shows Democratic challengers

Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff holding wafer-thin leads over Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Polling doesn’t have the best credibility after November, and many forecasters give the edge to the Republicans, but no matter how today’s vote turns out it seems assured to affect what the Biden presidency will accomplish.

Wednesday, Congress opens Electoral College votes and certifies the winner of the presidential election. Former Vice President Joe Biden won the popular vote and the electoral college vote by wide margins, but President Donald Trump has led a chorus of disbelief with bald-faced lies about Democrats stealing the election.

At least 140 representatives are expected to vote to reject the results in the House, and 11 senators led by Ted Cruz of Texas. That’s not enough to block Biden from becoming president, but it is enough to launch a sham debate before the eventual vote and worsen unfounded doubts among conservative voters about the validity of the election.

And what happens on the streets while this is going on could just as important. Proud Boys, a white supremacist group, and others are responding after Trump tweeted calls for “wild” protests. The National Guard has been mobilized. Civil unrest in a time of government transition is fraught with the potential for escalation.

Most honest reporting on this predicts the debate in Congress is likely to have no effect on the outcome of the largely ceremonial vote.

But it will represent a political raw point for the nation’s already dysfunctional legislature.

No doubt, the Democrats will seek revenge the next time a Republican wins the White House, or perhaps in some legislative hocus pocus more about gamesmanship than statesmanship. The cycle will continue because neither side cares more about governing than power.

Perhaps, if we are lucky, today’s vote in Georgia will shift the status quo just enough to bump us out of this destructive period of American history.

A narrow majority in the Senate, along with a small majority in the House, will force fractious Congress to govern from the center. Compromise might even be possible once Republicans wake from the nightmare of Trump’s four years in power if they see his grasp slipping in a defeat in Georgia and Washington.

Here’s hoping that Thursday will bring the dawn of something different.