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      Could Asian Americans be crucial to swinging Georgia's Senate races?

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      Stephanie Cho remembers a time when she could walk the halls of the Georgia state capitol and see just two Asian Americans: the Republican state representative Byung J Pak and a member of his staff.
      She had recently moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles, in 2013, and was “shocked” by how few Asian Americans were involved in Georgia politics. Campaigns, Cho said, made little effort to engage Asian American voters, despite their growing presence in the state, and political leaders did not seem to grasp the potential voting power of this electorate.
      “When you think about California, what it was like 30 or 40 years ago, that’s Georgia,” said Cho, who is now the executive director of the civil rights advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. “It’s on a trajectory of change.”
      Though Asian Americans comprise only about 4% of Georgia’s population – a far smaller share than in places like California – they have emerged as an increasingly influential electoral force in this politically divided, southern swing state.
      Historic turnout among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters – who make up the fastest-growing segment of Georgia’s electorate – helped Joe Biden become the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1992. According to national exit polls, nearly two-thirds of Asian American and Pacific Islander voters cast their ballot for Biden.
      By some estimates, voter participation among Asian Americans in Georgia nearly doubled from 2016 to 2020 – a testament, Cho said, to the years-long voter engagement and mobilization efforts led by a new generation of Asian American organizers and activists.
      The next time she visits the state capitol, there will be six Asian Americans serving in the Georgia legislature, including five Democrats.
      “When no one was looking, we really changed things in Georgia,” Cho said.
      Now Democrats hope to replicate their success among Asian Americans in a pair of runoff elections on 5 January that will determine control of the US Senate. The campaigns for Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock say they view the AAPI community as critical to winning their races. Both teams have hired AAPI constituency directors to lead multilingual and multicultural outreach programs, that includes campaign visits to AAPI-owned small businesses and advertising in ethnic media.
      “We are absolutely crucial in this race,” said Anjali Enjeti, the co-founder of the Georgia chapter of the group They See Blue, which mobilizes south Asian Democrats. “We turned out in 2020 at a rate higher – much higher – than we have historically turned out and we can absolutely help bring it home again.”
      Though no single voting bloc can take credit for turning the state blue in November, as many as 30,000 Asian Americans voters in Georgia cast ballots for the first time in the November presidential election, nearly three times Biden’s 11,000-vote victory.
      High turnout among Black, Latino and young voters, as well as a rejection of Trump by white, college-educated suburban voters who traditionally lean Republican, were also key. Many organizers, including Enjeti, credited the work of Stacey Abrams, the 2018 candidate for governor who founded a voter registration group called the New Georgia Project, and other Black women organizers in the state who helped mobilize and engage new and low-propensity voters in minority communities.
      Four years ago, Sam Park defeated a three-term Republican incumbent to become the first Asian American Democrat elected to the Georgia general assembly.
      The son of Korean immigrants, Park got his start in politics working for Abrams when she was minority leader of the Georgia House. When he decided to run for office himself, he said targeting Asian American voters was not a sophisticated campaign strategy but simply made “common sense”.
      It worked – and since then Park has helped Georgia Democrats engage the state’s AAPI voters. In 2020, he was the Georgia chair of Young Asian Americans for Biden.
      In recent weeks, Georgia has attracted some of the biggest names in American politics, including the president, the former president and the president-elect.
      Kamala Harris, whose late mother immigrated to California from India, will campaign again in Georgia on Sunday and Andrew Yang, who is Taiwanese American and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, spent time in the state mobilizing Asian Americans ahead of the elections next month.
      But Democrats aren’t the only ones courting Georgia’s Asian American voters.
      Congresswomen-elect Young Kim and Michelle Steel of California visited Georgia this month to rally Asian American voters in support of the Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Kim and Steel, who became two of the first three Korean Americans elected to Congress, both defeated incumbent Democrats to reclaim pieces of Orange county that Republicans lost in the “blue wave” of 2018.
      Advocacy groups say they are redoubling their efforts in the final days before polls close, knocking on doors, circulating polling information and providing language assistance.
      “It’s really important to make sure that people understand what’s at stake,” Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood, the executive director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund, which works to elect progressive candidates. “Not just in the political dynamics of flipping the US Senate, because I don’t necessarily think that resonates as a message – but what we could achieve if we help elect two Democratic senators from Georgia.”
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      Congressman-elect Kai Kahele represents an 'awakened generation' of Native Hawaiians

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      Kai Kahele had one ambition growing up in Hawaii, and that was to fly airplanes. He achieved that goal by the age of 19, and was happy working as a military and commercial pilot when a family tragedy propelled him into the world of politics.Kahele, an indigenous Hawaiian, was appointed to the state senate in 2016 after the sudden death of his father senator Gil Kahele, 73, a progressive stalwart in the Democrat party for over 40 years. Two day before he died, Kahele’s father had asked him to consider following in his footsteps.“Five years ago I was a working dad, living my dream as a pilot and raising my young family when things changed overnight. I grew up immersed in the progressive values of the Democrat party, but this is not something I planned to do,” Kahele told the Guardian. “I think my dad knew that if there was someone who was going to continue his legacy, and be a leader in the Native Hawaiian community and for the indigenous peoples in our country, that his son was ready. And here I am.”On Sunday, Kahele, 46, will be sworn into Congress as part of the most diverse Democrat freshman classes in US history, with newly elected women outnumbering men two to one. He’ll also be among a record-breaking five Native Americans – three Democrats and two Republicans – in Congress. It was going to be six, until New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, was appointed as secretary to the interior by Joe Biden.[Representation] … sends a message to indigenous peoples around the world that their voices matter“I’m elated because congresswoman Haaland brings to a very important cabinet level position a cultural and historical perspective that’s been missing. Indigenous peoples in this country share a similar history, a history of colonization, oppression and marginalization, and whose economic benefit and social fabric is unfortunately directly dependent on the federal government. I feel like we’re going to be able to do great things for our indigenous communities.”They will have their work cut out, but for the first time many in Indian country are hopeful of meaningful change or at the very least, the end to decades of treaty violations by the US government which has had devastating consequences for life expectancy, political participation and economic opportunities for Native Americans.Currently there are 574 federally recognised sovereign tribal nations located across 35 states, and according to the 2010 census, 5.2 million people or about 2% of the US population identifies as American Indian or Alaskan Native – descendants of those who survived US government policies to kill, remove or assimilate indigenous peoples.In Hawaii, historical land grabs, cultural violations and economic abuses perpetrated by the US government in cahoots with western businessmen are at the root of some of the most difficult and polarizing issues today, according to Kahele. This includes the contested decision to construct a huge telescope on Mauna Kea, the most sacred mountain to Native Hawaiians, as well as water rights amid growing shortages linked to overdevelopment. Native Hawaiians are not currently recognised by the US government as sovereign indigenous people.“We have an awakened generation of Native Hawaiians that know their past, they understand and speak their language and they’re not turning back… People are split about how to right the wrongs, whether it’s through sovereignty or federal recognition, and part of my role is trying to figure out what the future path looks like. Having a voice in Congress and representation at the table is important.”Representation is also important symbolically, argues Kahele. “It sends a message to indigenous peoples around the world that their voices matter, that their history, language and culture matter, and that you’ll have people fighting for that in the United States of America’s Congress. We can be an example for other countries dealing with these same issues.”VillageKahele was born in 1974 in Miloli’i, an off-the-grid fishing community on the southern tip of the island of Hawaii where households generate electricity through solar panels and collect rain for water. It’s one of the last surviving villages where pre-western migrants from China and Taiwan are believed to have settled.Before politics Kahele’s father Gil was a marine who met his future wife, a flight attendant, on a Hawaiian beach. Kahele and his two siblings grew up with three cousins who were orphaned by a drunk driver.“My dad conveyed to me the experiences he had in the military as a Native Hawaiian travelling through the south in the 1960s seeing segregation and racism through his own eyes. My mum took us on random trips all over the world, made sure we knew there was a bigger world than Hawaii, and would often take me into the cockpit which piqued my interest at a very early age.”He’ll join Congress as a lieutenant colonel with the Hawaii air national guard and will continue to fly part time with Hawaiian Airlines. (His wife Maria is a flight attendant, and they have three daughters, aged four, six and 16.)Kahele served as the state senate majority leader and chaired the committee on land and water amid growing demands from Native communities for environmental justice. The climate crisis is also omnipresent in Hawaii, and islands across the world, as rising sea levels and temperatures are devastating coral reefs and fish stocks, as well as threatening the existence of coastal communities.“A few metres of sea could wipe out Waikiki, the economic engine of Hawaii. On islands across the Pacific, most of the population lives near the ocean, around the shoreline you have the roads and homes on the verge of collapsing. We need to reimagine and rethink how our communities will look like in the future… when you need to use natural resources to feed your families, you need to understand the changes in climate and environment to survive. That’s where I come from.”He’s hopeful that America will start to take concrete steps forwards after four years of backtracking. “Joe Biden’s climate plan is definitely 100% better than the Trump plan. Just the fact that we’ll re-enter Paris is huge, so is having climate change champion Deb Haaland at the cabinet level and leading an agency that will make critical decisions.”The geographical isolation of Hawaii, which is situated 2,500 miles from the mainland, has somewhat protected islanders from the worst of the Covid health crisis. But, the economic fallout has been devastating, and has renewed questions about the over-reliance on tourism – especially as natural resources like beaches and clean water are under threat from the climate crisis, over development and environmental degradation.Amid mass layoffs, the pandemic has increased food insecurity by 50% in Hawaii, with a quarter of people currently struggling with hunger; Native Hawaiians are disproportionately affected.“Covid has been devastating to our economy which lives and breathes almost exclusively from tourism, and it’s been detrimental to the social fabric of our community, exposing many of the deep known issues in Hawaii. We need to diversify, we need to be more sustainable.“A lot of people are hurting and face great uncertainty and fear about the future. I see a migration of people leaving Hawaii for the mainland [for work], the brain drain of teachers, doctors, firefighters doesn’t help our economy or social structure.”Kahele is firmly on the party’s left, an advocate for the Green New Deal, Medicare for all and universal preschool education – policies dismissed as radical by many on the right. He’s been assigned to the congressional transportation and infrastructure committee and hopes that they will pass a transformational green package advocated by lawmakers like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“Why do we have to label these changes as radical, this is where we need to go as a country, in order to invest in every young child, and to rebuild and strengthen our country … I can’t wait to say a hui hou – which in Hawaii means see you later – to President Trump on January 20th. It’s time to move on.” More

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      Pelosi rebukes McConnell for saying 'no realistic path' for $2,000 relief stimulus bill – video

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      The Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, says the bill that would direct $2,000 coronavirus relief payments to Americans has ‘no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate’. After Donald Trump and Democrats pushed for larger relief cheques, McConnell said he would not be ‘bullied’ by Democrats into quickly approving the measure. House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, criticised McConnell for adding a delay to the payments.’These Republicans in the Senate seem to have an endless tolerance for other people’s sadness,’ she said
      Mitch McConnell says ‘no realistic path’ for $2,000 relief checks bill More

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      Mitch McConnell says 'no realistic path' for $2,000 relief checks bill

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      Donald Trump’s demand for $2,000 relief checks to Americans struggling financially with the pandemic was all but dead after Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday that a proposal from Democrats had “no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate”.Declaring that he would not be “bullied” by Democrats into quickly approving the measure, McConnell effectively denied a final request for legislative action by the president in the waning days of his administration.“We just approved almost a trillion dollars in aid a few days ago,” McConnell said, referring to the passage of a massive $900bn stimulus package that included $600 direct payments to most American adults. “It struck a balance between broad support for all kinds of households and a lot more targeted relief for those who need help most.”Trump, who remained mostly on the sidelines during the negotiations, nearly derailed the agreement when he demanded Congress more than triple the size of the direct payments from $600 to $2,000. He ultimately relented and signed the bill into law on Sunday. But he has continued to press Congress to act, writing on Twitter that “$600 IS NOT ENOUGH”. He has also called Republicans “pathetic” for failing to act, and suggested their inaction amounted to a political “death wish”.“$2000 ASAP!” Trump demanded again on Wednesday before McConnell appeared to extinguish the possibility.Democrats have eagerly embraced Trump’s call to bolster the payments and on Monday, the House approved a bill that would send $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans. But on Tuesday, McConnell prevented Democrats from bringing the House bill to the floor for consideration, instead offering a vague assurance that Senate would “begin the process” of discussing the $2,000 checks.He said the measure would be considered alongside with unrelated items that would almost certainly doom the legislation, including an investigation of election security to root out voter fraud, which Trump has baselessly claimed tainted the presidential vote count, and the removal of legal protections for social media platforms.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday called McConnell’s plan to tie the checks to the election security and social media provisions a “way to kill the bill”.“There is no other game in town but the House bill,” Schumer said in a floor speech, imploring McConnell to allow a vote on the House bill. “The only way, the only way, to get the American people the $2,000 checks they need is to pass the House bill and to pass it now.”When he finished, Schumer again attempted to bring the House bill to the floor for a vote on Wednesday, but McConnell again objected, dismissing it as a Democratic proposal led by the House.But the effort is not only backed by Democrats. Weeks ago, progressive senator Bernie Sanders joined forces with conservative senator Josh Hawley to demand Congress include direct payments as part of any bipartisan stimulus agreement. After the checks were adopted, they continued to push Congress to dramatically increase the size of the checks.Trump’s support has further shifted the calculus among Republicans, who previously demanded that Democrats pare back their coronavirus relief proposal to keep costs under $1tn. Loath to defy the president, many Republican senators are now dropping their initial concerns about the cost of the package and embracing his call for bigger payments.Georgia senators Davide Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are running in competitive re-election races next week that will determine control of the Senate, said they support increasing the size of the checks. And 44 Republicans joined the vast majority of the Democratic caucus to approve the House bill on Monday.As lawmakers continued to spar over the payments, the treasury department said Americans should begin to receive $600 deposits in their bank accounts as early as Tuesday evening, while paper checks would be mailed out starting Wednesday. More

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      Biden and Harris to campaign in Georgia as Trump calls on its governor to quit

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      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will travel to Georgia to campaign for next week’s high-stakes Senate runoff elections, it was announced on Wednesday, as Donald Trump called on the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, to resign.
      For weeks, Trump has been attacking Kemp for his refusal to overturn the results of Georgia’s presidential election, a state he won in 2016 and narrowly lost to Biden in 2020, and on Wednesday went as far as to call on his fellow Republican to resign.
      “@BrianKempGA should resign from office,” Trump wrote in a tweet that encouraged supporters to watch a broadcast of a hearing on purported election irregularities. “He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG! Also won the other Swing States.”
      Kemp, long considered a staunch ally of the president, has refused to embrace Trump’s meritless accusations that the state’s vote count was tainted. Earlier this month, Kemp recertified Georgia’s 16 electoral votes for Biden after multiple recounts affirmed Biden’s victory in the state.
      Despite dozens of lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign, they produced no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in Georgia or any other state. Yet Trump’s insistence that the presidential vote was fraudulent has rattled some Republicans in the state who fear his unfounded claims may depress turnout among his supporters ahead of runoff elections, scheduled for 5 January.
      The runoffs will determine which party controls the Senate.
      “I love the Great State of Georgia, but the people who run it, from the Governor, @BrianKempGA, to the Secretary of State, are a complete disaster and don’t have a clue, or worse,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets on Tuesday night. “Nobody can be this stupid. Just allow us to find the crime, and turn the state Republican….”
      He also made reference to a conspiracy theory that claims the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has a brother named Ron who works for a Chinese tech firm, which purportedly explains his refusal to accept Trump’s unfounded claims about voter fraud in the state. The man is not related to Raffensperger.
      Trump will hold a rally with Georgia’s Republican senators in Dalton on Monday, setting up a split screen with Biden, who will campaign for the Democratic challengers, the Rev Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, in Atlanta on the same day. On Sunday, Harris will appear with the Democrats in Savannah, while Vice-President Mike Pence has made frequent visits to the state on behalf of the Republican candidates. More

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      Georgia Senate runoff elections: how they work and why they matter

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      On 5 January the US state of Georgia will vote, again, on who to send to the Senate.The control of the Senate is up for grabs, and thus the prospects for the Biden administration – at least for the next two years. As millions of dollars and hundreds of campaigners descend on the state, here is an explainer about what is happening.What is at stake?Two seats are up for grabs. Republicans hold 50 of the 100 seats, and Democrats hold 48. There are 46 formally party-aligned and two independents – Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont – who caucus with the Democrats. When there is a 50-50 tie, the deciding vote is cast by the vice president. That will be Democrat Kamala Harris after the Biden administration is sworn in on 20 January.If Democrats can win both seats they will control the Senate.A Senate majority is crucial in deciding a range of legislative changes, cabinet appointments, potential presidential impeachments and nominations to the supreme court. Republicans have controlled the Senate since 2014.The Democrats have a majority in the House, so a Democratic Senate majority would make Joe Biden’s next two years much easier. Conversely a Republican-controlled Senate under majority leader Mitch McConnell would be able to block much of his agenda, just as it did with former president Barack Obama’s. Biden has a history of attempting compromise across the aisle and could try to entice one or more Republicans on individual votes, but given McConnell’s history of obstructionism that seems a distant prospect. With so much hanging on the result, money has been pouring in to the state to support both sides. More than US$400m was spent on political ads by the middle of December, most going to the two Republicans.Today in FocusThe Georgia Senate runoffSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:00:00Who are the candidates?Both Georgia seats are contested between one Democratic candidate and one Republican.One race pitches Republican David Perdue, incumbent senator since 2015, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former journalist, who is only 33.Their battle has been vitriolic at times, Ossoff repeatedly calling Perdue a crook and referring to investigations into Perdue’s alleged insider trading.But Perdue has mostly not risen to the bait, and he declined to meet Ossoff in their scheduled TV debate earlier this month, leaving Ossoff to make his points on an empty podium.The other, much more colourful, race is between Republican Kelly Loeffler, a seriously wealthy former businesswoman, and Democrat Rev Raphael Warnock.Warnock, bidding to become Georgia’s first black senator, is a pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King held the same position. A long-time civil rights campaigner, he is a powerful orator in the tradition of King, and a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.As a result he has been denounced as a “radical liberal” by his opponent, Loeffler, at every possible opportunity, but has responded in disarming campaign ads by accusing Loeffler of having nothing positive to say about herself and stressing how much he loves puppies.Loeffler ran into controversy when she criticised players from the WNBA team she owns – the Atlanta Dream – over their support for Black Lives Matter, saying BLM had “Marxist foundations”.Loeffler is also technically an incumbent – she was appointed an interim senator on 6 January after former Republican senator Johnny Isakson resigned due to ill health.Why are they runoffs?Georgia state law requires runoffs in both elections because no candidate in either seat reached 50% in the November election.For the Loeffler-Warnock seat, the vacancy was created by the resignation of a sitting senator.This meant the November vote was contested by 20 people, in what is known as a “blanket” or “jungle” primary, which is to say it was almost always going to a runoff, with the top two from the first round going through. In that blanket primary, Loeffler also faced strong competition from moderate Republican congressman Doug Collins, and Warnock competed against a range of Democrats.Warnock topped the blanket primary with 32.9%, Loeffler came second with 25.9% and Collins came third with 19.95%. The top two – Warnock and Loeffler – then advanced to the runoff.In the other seat, contested by Perdue and Ossoff, the 2.32% of the vote won by Libertarian party candidate Shane T Hazel was enough to ensure that neither main party candidate reached 50% in a tight race: Perdue received 49.73% and Ossoff 47.95%.Who is likely to win?A Democrat has not won a Senate race in Georgia in 20 years, so the odds of winning two at the same time do not look great.However, Biden won the state in the November presidential election, the first time in 30 years a Democratic candidate had done so.How the outcome of the presidential race will affect the runoffs is the great unknown. Will traditionally Republican voters who rejected Donald Trump return to the party to ensure the Biden agenda is tempered by Republican control of the Senate? Or will Trump’s insistence on continuing to campaign in Georgia on the basis that the election was a fraud – and tying the Senate candidates to that cause – again motivate Democratic voters to turn out in high numbers?As in the presidential election, voting is not compulsory – so turnout will be a huge concern for both camps.A few more younger voters will be eligible to vote in January. Anyone who turns 18 on or before 5 January is eligible to vote, according to the Georgia Voter Guide. Registration to vote closed on 7 December.What do the polls say?By 24 December the poll average compiled by FiveThirtyEight had Perdue ahead of Ossoff by 0.5%, but Warnock leading Loeffler by 0.6%. Real Clear Politics on 22 December gave the Republicans slightly better figures, with Perdue up by 1% and Loeffler by 0.2%, but the numbers for the Democrats were improving over the past week or so with both agencies.Both polling outfits came under sustained criticism over the presidential election when they drastically underestimated Republican support in some states.When will we know the result?It depends how close the races are. The first Ossoff-Perdue race from November was so close that the result was not known for three days, but under most circumstances the result should be apparent on the night. More

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      in US Politics

      Democrats battle for soul of party as Biden win masks alarming failures

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      The sense of relief Democrats felt with Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election was not the same as a feeling of victory.
      The party’s loss of congressional seats and failure to take control of state legislatures, not to mention the US Senate, indicated an alarming slippage for a party that had thought it was growing as Trump was supposedly torching the Republican brand.
      After the election, a fierce internal Democratic debate broke out, with centrists arguing that slogans such as “Defund the police” and “Medicare for All” had hurt the party with moderate voters and exposed candidates to wild accusations from Republicans equating universal healthcare with Pol Pot.
      The progressives said that on the contrary, the party had not staked out its program on behalf of working people proudly enough, instead trying to play it safe behind an innocuous presidential candidate whose main pitch was a return to normalcy.
      The problem, said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was that the party lacked “core competencies” to reach voters with decisive rebuttals to wild charges from Republicans.
      The political strategist David Axelrod said the problem was that the party needed to learn how not to talk down to working-class voters, noting that while Democrats dominated in and around big cities in the 2020 election, Republicans had won in 80% of US counties.
      “If Democrats continue to cede 80% of the country, if they can’t break through, they’re kind of screwed, in my view, at least in the short run,” Axelrod said on his podcast.
      The debate is not academic. Two years from now, with Joe Biden in the White House and the Senate up for grabs, the Democrats could create their first opportunity in more than a decade to do something big: deliver major legislation to expand healthcare, protect voting rights, defend the environment, or implement humane immigration policy.
      Democratic political analysts, organizers and operatives interviewed by the Guardian agreed that opportunity lay ahead, but emphasized that to capitalize on it, the party must renew its efforts to connect with voters all year long, at a local level, and not be afraid of progressive messaging especially on economic issues.
      One key insight: local politics is not the same as national politics, and opportunities to reach even diehard Trump supporters abound when there is no Super Bowl presidential race inflaming partisan passions.
      “Locally, you can do more,” said David Pepper, the outgoing state chair of the Democratic party in Ohio. “You can win and make progress despite the national conversation. It’s a different type of politics.
      “It’s what the Koch brothers did for decades before we caught up.”
      The entire Democratic party sensed opportunity in 2020. With Trump having alienated a significant share of moderate voters, and Democrats running high-single-digits ahead of Republicans on the generic ballot, control of both Congress and the White House seemed tantalizingly close. The party spent $50m in an effort to flip state legislatures in advance of the redistricting process.
      But when the dust had settled, none of the eight statehouses targeted by Democrats produced a win, and control of the US Senate hung on thin hopes of winning two runoff races next month in Georgia. Most damagingly, Democrats had lost at least 11 seats in Congress, with candidates swamped by Trump voters but also not helped by Biden at the top of the ticket.
      Democratic primary voters picked Biden in part on the theory that he was most capable of beating Trump. But Democrats disagree on whether Biden’s success in districts where other Democrats lost meant that the party seemed too far left – or insufficiently bold in its progressive prescriptions.
      “In general, instead of blaming the progressives for the down-ballot failures, we should listen to them more,” said Brad Bannon, a Washington-based Democratic strategist. “Because I think the progressives in the party do a better job of talking basic economics, and talking about it in a way that people relate to.”
      There were bright spots. In Ohio, Democrats flipped a state supreme court seat by 10 points – in the single race in the entire country in which Democrats flipped a statewide seat from red to blue in a state Trump won.
      Pepper, the outgoing party chair, said the party had made local gains by encouraging voters to vote their entire ballots – instead of skipping down-ballot races – and by seeking to contest every election, no matter how local, in every year, not just in presidential races and during midterms.
      “We’ve done that for five years and it totally works,” Pepper said. “We have in Ohio now our biggest city footprint in recent history at least. We have mayors in almost every big city, winning by more, and bigger council footprints in these big cities.”
      Fighting to win local elections in 2019, Ohio Democrats unseated Republican mayors in three cities – Irontown, Coshocton and Norwalk – in counties that Trump won just one year later by an average of 45 points.
      But the swell of partisan politics in 2020 overwhelmed the ability of scrappy campaigning to make a difference statewide, with Trump taking Ohio by eight points.
      To fight in a noisy election year, Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times last month, Democrats need to beef up their ability to go on TV and target ads on the internet for an entire election cycle instead of right before elections.
      But it’s not clear what level of messaging would be required to bring around Republican-leaning voters, when a majority of Republicans are prepared to believe, absent any evidence, in a multi-state conspiracy to steal the presidential election – in short, to believe anything that Trump, a historic liar, says.
      One of Trump’s strengths is his zeal at playing into the empirically proven politics of anger and resentment, of racist fears and xenophobic scapegoating. Democrats are aware that one challenge they face is to offer an alternative to voters who might be susceptible to, or at least not repelled by, that kind of pitch.
      “It’s not just about having deliverables and tangibles to offer,” said Axelrod on the Hacks on Tap podcast. “It’s about changing an attitude that basically thinks of these folks as something less.
      “The Democratic party envisions itself as the party of working people but it doesn’t feel that way to a lot of working people. And the Democratic party needs to figure that out.” More

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      in US Politics

      Judge orders Georgia counties to halt voter purge ahead of Senate runoff

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      Two Georgia counties must reverse their decision to purge thousands from voter rolls in advance of the state’s 5 January runoff elections that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the US Senate.Georgia federal judge Leslie Abrams Gardner said in an order filed late on Monday that these two counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address information to invalidate voter registrations, Reuters reported.“Defendants are enjoined from removing any challenged voters in Ben Hill and Muscogee Counties from the registration lists on the basis of National Change of Address data,” she said in the court order. This judge is the sister of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic activist who lost a race for Georgia governor in 2018.Of the more than 4,000 registrations that officials tried to rescind, the vast majority were in Muscogee County. President-elect Joe Biden won this county during the November election. Another 150 were in Ben Hill county, which Donald Trump won with a sizable margin.Almost 2.1 million people – more than 25% of Georgia’s registered voters – have voted in the Senate runoff election that started on 14 December. This race will decide whether Democrats control both houses of Congress.In turn, the result will also influence the fate of Biden’s policy initiatives as a Republican-controlled Senate – even if held by a slim majority – would probably block his agenda. This also includes Biden’s ability to secure his desired cabinet appointees.Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are facing off against GOP incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively. Recent data from FiveThirtyEight places Warnock and Perdue slightly ahead of their opponents.Warnock and Ossoff victories would mean that the Senate is divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. In situations where votes on legislation are evenly split, the tie-breaking vote would be cast by Kamala Harris, as vice-president.The deeply significant runoff has prompted record-breaking fundraising. Ossoff and Warnock each raised more than $100m in a mere two months–surpassing their conservative opponents. Ossoff, who runs a media production business, raised more than $106m from 15 October to 16 December, per his campaign’s most recent financial report. Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, took in slightly more than $103m.Leaders of both parties have made campaign stops. Biden – the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia since 1992 – and Harris have campaigned in the state. Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, have also campaigned.Reuters contributed to this report More