Biden fights for Dems in Georgia runoff election
President-elect Joe Biden urged Georgia Democrats on Tuesday to vote “as if your life depends on it” in the state’s unusual double runoff elections, which will determine partisan control of the Senate next month.
Campaigning for Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock in Atlanta, Biden described the Jan. 5th runoffs as a critical electoral hump that will in many ways determine the course of his presidency.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, and I plan to get to work right away doing it, and I need two senators from this state who want to get something done — not two senators who are just going to get in the way,” Biden said to cheers and honks from a drive-in rally audience in Atlanta’s Kirkwood neighborhood. “Because, look, getting nothing done just hurts Georgia.”
Ossoff, who unsuccessfully ran for a House seat in 2018, is seeking to oust first-term Republican Sen. David Perdue. Warnock, a longtime civil rights activist in the state, is challenging Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to her post in January.
Biden, who beat President Trump in Georgia by a razor-thin margin in the general election, said the key to defeating Loeffler and Perdue is turnout.
“You’ve got to vote in record numbers again. Because, yes, the lives of every Georgian still depend on what you do, and, yes, you still need to vote as if your life depends on it,” Biden said. “You have the power to win this election again.”
Biden criticized Perdue and Loeffler as “roadblocks” for not supporting a sweeping new economic aid package as the coronavirus pandemic surges. In contrast, he said Ossoff and Warnock would “fight for progress and not just get in the way.”
His voice rising, Biden took sharp aim at the GOP senators for joining a failed Trump-backed legal effort to have the Supreme Court invalidate all election results in Georgia and three other states over baseless and debunked accusations of voter fraud.
“They fully embraced nullifying nearly 5 million Georgia votes,” Biden said. “You might want to remember that come January 5.”