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      Why congressman James Clyburn was the most important politician of 2020

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      Juan Williams, an author and analyst, calls James Clyburn the politician of the year. Jon Meacham, a presidential historian, says he was the most important person of 2020. “Without Jim Clyburn endorsing Joe Biden, Donald Trump would be president for real – not just in his own mind,” Meacham told Real Time with Bill Maher on the HBO channel.The Black congressman’s vote of confidence for Biden during the Democratic primary set the stage for a comeback worthy of Lazarus. It was a transformative moment in a transformative year in which the flame of American democracy looked as fragile as a candle at the altar of St John Baptist Church in Hopkins, South Carolina, which is where the story begins.It was around 11.30am on 21 February and Clyburn, a political giant in the Palmetto state, had arrived early at a funeral service for his longtime accountant, James White. “I went down the aisle of the church to pay my respects and, when I turned to walk away from the coffin, my eyes met the eyes of this lady sitting on the front row at the church and she beckoned me over to her,” the 80-year-old recalls by phone in an interview with the Guardian.“I went over and she said, ‘I need to ask you a question and, if you don’t want anybody to hear the answer, lean down and whisper it in my ear.’ Then she asked me, ‘Who are you going to vote for in this primary?’ I leaned down and told her I was going to vote for Joe Biden. She snapped her head back and looked at me and said, ‘I needed to hear that. And this community needs to hear from you.’”Biden’s going to have his detractors but I think he can do what the country needs doneThe woman concerned was Jannie Jones, a 76-year-old church usher who, like Clyburn, is African American. Her question made him realise that he could not stay silent. He says: “I continued my trip down to Charleston and I could not get her out of my head and what she was saying to me.”Another woman’s words were also whispering to him. Clyburn’s wife of 58 years, Emily, had died just five months earlier. “My wife had said to me before she passed away that she thought our best bet to defeat Donald Trump was Joe Biden.”Two days later, Clyburn met Biden and told him he intended to make a public endorsement that would “create a surge”. He did so a few days later and followed up with video ads, robocalls and messaging on Black radio stations. It worked. Written off by pundits after defeats in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Biden won South Carolina with 48.6% of the vote, well ahead of Bernie Sanders on 19.8%.It was the first state where African American voters had a significant voice and they spoke clearly. Three days later Biden went on to win 10 out of 14 states on Super Tuesday, becoming an unlikely “comeback kid” and effectively clinching the nomination.When the histories of 2020 are written, they may judge that he was the safe, wise, albeit unspectacular choice. Biden met the moment as a general election candidate, not only as a steady hand and empathetic figure during the coronavirus pandemic, but as a moderate immune to the kind of sexist and racist attacks and socialist scaremongering that his Democratic rivals would have suffered.The former vice-president proved his doubters wrong and beat Trump by more than 7m votes, a margin of almost 4.5% – bigger than all but one presidential election in the past 20 years. But none of this had seemed obvious back in February. “I felt vindicated after so many people on social media gave me such a hard time for having endorsed him,” Clyburn says.“There were people who thought I’d committed heresy or something and so, when he won, I felt good about the victory but when I started seeing all the pundits saying, looking back, Joe Biden was the only Democrat who could have defeated Donald Trump, that made me feel doubly good. Twenty-twenty hindsight.”After four tantalising days of vote tallying, Biden was declared the winner and, along with Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, delivered a victory speech in his home city of Wilmington, Delaware. He said: “Especially in those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”Clyburn, the number three Democrat in the House of Representatives, takes him at his word. “I think he will. I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.”The election result was also hailed as a near death experience for democracy, with many commentators suggesting that America’s institutions could not have survived a second term of Trump. Clyburn did more than most to sound the alarm.“He’s an autocrat. I’ve said before that I do not think he’s planning to give up the office. Two years ago I compared him to Mussolini and caught hell for it. However, when he came out of that hospital [following treatment for coronavirus] and walked up on the Truman balcony at the White House and stood, pulled off his mask and looked out, the next morning I saw people on television referring to that as a ‘Mussolini stance’.”Democracy prevailed, Clyburn believes, but Trump has done “tremendous damage” to America’s standing around the world. Can Biden repair it? “I think he can and I think he will.”But the election was bittersweet for Democrats. The party suffered disappointing losses in the House, prompting bitter recriminations between moderates and progressives, and now holds only a slender majority. Clyburn, the majority whip, suggests the setback had more to do with campaign strategy than ideology.“I think we did not invest enough again in what I call door to door canvassing. The Republicans had a very good ground operation. We did not have the ground operation that we should have had. We turn folks out now – Trump won Michigan by 10,000 votes four years ago but this time Biden won it by 150,000 votes – but there are areas where we would have done better in down ballot races if we had invested in those communities with canvassing.”Democrats suffered defeats in New York state, Clyburn argues, because the state was so safe for Biden in the presidential contest that too little investment was made for down ballot candidates. A similar problem may have occurred in California, a Biden stronghold where Republicans picked up seats. Conversely, investments in Georgia helped Democrats flip a district.Clyburn also believes that the phrase “defund the police”, popularised during this summer’s uprising against racial injustice, hurt candidates such as Jaime Harrison, who lost his bid to unseat Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham in a Senate election in Clyburn’s home state.The congressman, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, shares Barack Obama’s view that, though it does not mean abolishing police departments, the phrase risks scaring away voters that the party needs. “People have weaponised ‘defund the police’ against us,” he says.Does he believe the momentum of the protests can be sustained? “Yes, I think it can be and I think it will be. There is a tremendous amount of support all across the board for Black Lives Matter and it’s kind of interesting when I see articles written that tell me that all of the agenda of Black Lives Matter is being supported broadly, and then see in the next breath a case can’t be made for the dangers of a phrase like ‘Defund the police’.”Biden’s halo as the savior of democracy is likely to vanish within a few minutes of his inauguration as he faces multiple crises and becomes a target for both Republicans and the progressive left. “It won’t take long,” Clyburn admits, before adding some historical perspective that includes his late colleague John Lewis, whom he first met 60 years ago.“We’re lionising John Lewis today but he was not appreciated by everybody before. We have a whole holiday for Martin Luther King Jr but he was assassinated because everybody didn’t lionise him before. Joe Biden’s going to have his detractors but I think he can do what the country needs done.” More

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      Georgia Senate runoff elections: a guide for non-Americans on 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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      Democrats in Georgia’s runoff elections raise more than $200m in two months

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      Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both running for crucial US Senate seats in Georgia that will decide the fate of Joe Biden’s new administration, have raised over $100m each in just two months.The announcement of the recent record-breaking hauls – which considerably exceed that of their Republican opponents – comes with less than two weeks to go until the runoff races are decided in special elections on 5 January.Ossoff, who runs a media production company and is running against the incumbent Republican senator David Perdue, raised over $106m from 15 October to 16 December, according to his campaign’s latest finance report.Meanwhile, Warnock, who is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and is running against incumbent Kelly Loeffler, raised just over $103m.The Georgia races are the focus of intense national political interest as they will decide which party controls the Senate – currently held by the Republicans – and in turn the legislative power of President-elect Biden.If the Republicans win one race, they will narrowly maintain power and be a huge break on a wide range of Biden’s actions, including being able to appoint who he wants to his cabinet.But if the Democrats win both races, the Senate will be split 50-50, meaning Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris would decide tie-breaking votes, enabling the Democrats to deliver a more ambitious agenda.The two seats went to runoffs after Perdue and Loeffler, one of the Senate’s wealthiest members, got less than 50% of the vote on election day in November.The previous fundraising record was held by Democrat Jamie Harrison who raised $57m in a quarter in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina in November.Warnock’s campaign manager Jerid Kurtz said: “We’re humbled by the grassroots support and generosity that continues to power Reverend Warnock’s campaign to represent all Georgians in the US Senate.”Early voting in the state began on 14 December. As of Thursday, over 2m people – over a quarter of the state’s registered voters – had already cast ballots in the election, suggesting that overall turnout will be high.In November, when President-elect Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since 1992, about 4m Georgians voted early.FiveThirtyEight currently has Perdue and Warnock very narrowly ahead.For the Democrats, both President-elect Biden and Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris have campaigned in the state. While for the Republicans, President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka have both made campaign stops.The Democrats have tried to highlight the stock trades of their Republican opponents and their support of Trump, while the Republicans have focused on Warnock, repeatedly referring to him as a “radical liberal”.A group of Black pastors wrote an open letter to Loeffler in which they said her rhetoric against Warnock was “a broader attack against the Black church and faith traditions for which we stand”.Meanwhile, Trump has attacked Republicans in the state, calling Governor Brian Kemp a “clown” and a “fool” and branding Kemp and other prominent Georgia Republicans “Republicans in name only”.Campaigning in Columbus, Georgia on Monday, Harris told supporters at a drive-in rally, “2020 ain’t over til January 5”. She added: “That’s when 2020 will be over. That’s when we’ll get this thing done.”Michelle Obama is due to campaign virtually in the state in a drive-in concert put on by her organisation When We All Vote to mobilise voters. Celebrate Georgia! on 3 January will also feature performances by Rick Ross, Jack Harlow, Pastor Troy and Monica. More

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      The Republican heroes and villains of Trump's attempt to steal the election

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      [embedded content]
      In November, Donald Trump became the first president in American history to try to hold on to power that voters had given to someone else in the course of a national election.
      The plot did not unfold in one dramatic scene. Instead, Trump lured Republicans to commit a series of coercive acts on his behalf under a false banner of non-existent election “fraud” – the attempted steal masquerading as a security measure.
      It might have worked. Many Republicans went along actively or silently. These included well-known national figures such as Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Lindsey Graham and most other Republican senators.
      But to succeed, Trump’s plot depended not only on the top Republicans he dominates but also on the cooperation of hundreds of state and local officials. Over three crucial weeks in November, some of those officials made individual decisions that could have seen the plot through, while others thwarted it.
      Here is an incomplete list of some of the lesser-known Republican friends and foes of US democracy who emerged in the historic November 2020 battle over its fate.
      Foes
      To stay in power, Trump needed to prevent states from certifying the results of their 3 November votes, or to convince Republican legislators to try to throw out state results. Trump’s key targets included officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania. He found some ready accomplices.
      Norman Shinkle
      A former state senator in Michigan who refused to certify the state’s result despite independent certifications by all 83 Michigan counties and no evidence of fraud to cast doubt on Biden’s 154,000-vote win in the state. Shinkle said he thought the result in majority-Black Detroit “needs to be looked at”. One county clerk called Shinkle’s abstention “shocking and disgusting”.
      Monica Palmer and William Hartmann
      Republican canvassers in Wayne county, Michigan, who sought to reverse their certification of the election result after Trump made a phone call to Palmer. She demanded an audit of the Detroit vote before the certification of its result, in defiance of law. She later said she was unaware of the law.
      Mike Shirkey and Lee Chatfield
      Republican leaders of the Michigan state senate and house who accepted an invitation to visit Trump at the White House as the president tried to prevent the state from certifying Biden’s 82,000-vote win. In the Oval Office, Shirkey and Chatfield received a telephone briefing by Rudy Giuliani about fake election fraud. They later lied and said the meeting with Trump was about Covid-19 economic relief. They were photographed drinking Dom Pérignon at Trump’s hotel in Washington DC after their meeting.

      Grant Hermes
      (@GrantHermes)
      Shirkey, opts to sing a hymn to the press instead of answering questions here. When asked if he had anything to say to MI voters he responded, “I love Michigan” @Local4News pic.twitter.com/YFycvj9tRp

      November 21, 2020

      Joe Gale
      A Republican board of elections member in the Philadelphia suburbs who refused to certify a 27-point Biden win in his county. “I believe the US supreme court should review the travesty that has happened in Pennsylvania,” Gale said. Trump’s campaign never presented any evidence of voter fraud to Pennsylvania courts, which threw out almost every Trump case.
      Keith Gould and Joyce Dombroski-Gebhardt
      Republican members of the board of elections in Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, were so committed to Trump’s election fraud fairytale that they refused to certify the vote in a county Trump won by 14 points. Three Democrats on the board outvoted them to certify Trump’s win in the county.
      Kayleigh McEnany
      After an almost two-month absence from the White House briefing room, the press secretary appeared 17 days after the election to spread Trump’s lie about election fraud. “There are very real claims out there that the campaign is pursuing,” she said. Separately she lied about Trump’s meeting with Michigan legislators saying it was “not an advocacy meeting, there will be no one from the campaign there – he routinely meets with lawmakers from all across the country”.

      Josh Marshall
      (@joshtpm)
      .@PressSec says meeting with leaders of Michigan legislature today at the White House not “advocacy”, not about the election. pic.twitter.com/c5q6Ckgx2s

      November 20, 2020

      Ronna McDaniel
      The chair of the Republican national committee and Michigan native appeared at a news conference two days after the election and spread lies about “discrepancies” and “irregularities”, demanding an audit of the Michigan vote before certification in defiance of state election law. Under her leadership, the Republican national party spread wild and conspiratorial claims that Trump had actually won in a “landslide”. A majority of Republican voters now tell pollsters they believe the election was fraudulent.

      GOP
      (@GOP)
      “We will not be intimidated…We are going to clean this mess up now. President Trump won by a landslide. We are going to prove it. And we are going to reclaim the United States of America for the people who vote for freedom.”—Sidney Powell pic.twitter.com/8KCEOGuL7w

      November 19, 2020

      Friends
      Opposite those state and local officials who refused to certify election results were Republican officials who certified Biden’s win.
      Never in American history has such an action been interpreted as the stuff of heroism – with election results always routinely certified no matter who won, as the constitution would have it.
      But in 2020 these officials had to withstand a pressure campaign by Trump, who named many of them in tweets, leading to death threats against them and their families.
      Al Schmidt
      A Republican election commissioner in Philadelphia who stood up to Trump. The weekend after the election, Schmidt went on 60 Minutes and said Trump’s claims about fraud in Philadelphia were bogus.
      “At the end of the day, we are counting eligible votes cast by voters. The controversy surrounding it is something I don’t understand,” Schmidt said. “Counting votes cast on or before election day by eligible voters is not corruption. It is not cheating. It is democracy.
      “From the inside looking out, it all feels very deranged.”

      60 Minutes
      (@60Minutes)
      Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt says his office, which runs the vote count, has received death threats. https://t.co/LNXfXwJrbk pic.twitter.com/ouxX0xGhKX

      November 9, 2020

      Aaron Van Langevelde
      Republican vice-chair of a state canvassing board who voted to certify Biden’s win in Michigan. Langevelde broke what would have been a deadlock caused by Shinkle’s perfidy. “We have a duty to certify this election based on these returns, that is very clear,” he said.
      “We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have,” Langevelde continued. “As John Adams once said, ‘we are a government of laws, not men’. This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election.”

      The Recount
      (@therecount)
      After earlier stalling, here’s the moment Republican Aaron Van Langevelde of Michigan’s State Board of Canvassers said he will vote to certify Michigan’s election results.This is it: Michigan’s 16 electoral votes officially go to Joe Biden.pic.twitter.com/EZemjFxaSD

      November 23, 2020

      Christopher Krebs
      The former director of the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, fired by Trump for defying the president’s vote fraud lies. Nine days after the election, Krebs’s agency issued a statement beginning, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” Krebs was fired a week later, but he continued speaking out about election integrity. After a Trump campaign lawyer said Krebs should be “taken out at dawn and shot”, Krebs said he would sue.

      TODAY
      (@TODAYshow)
      .@SavannahGuthrie speaks with Christopher Krebs in his first live interview since being fired as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Krebs points to the record of paper ballots as proof that the 2020 election was secure. pic.twitter.com/R9tdsTNBgZ

      December 1, 2020

      Gabriel Sterling
      A Republican official who oversaw the implementation of the state of Georgia’s new voting system, Sterling delivered an impassioned speech warning about death threats against election workers and saying Trump is “inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence”.
      Addressing Trump, Sterling said:

      We’re investigating, there’s always a possibility, I get it. You have the rights to go to the courts. What you don’t have the ability to do – and you need to step up and say this – is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt, someone is going to get shot, someone is going to get killed, and it’s not right. It’s not right.

      Brad Raffensperger
      The Republican secretary of state in Georgia who stood up to Trump and insisted that Biden’s upset victory in the state was legit. “I’m a conservative Republican. Yes, I wanted President Trump to win. But as secretary of state we have to do our job,” Raffensperger said in an interview with the Guardian. “I’m gonna walk that fine, straight, line with integrity. I think that integrity still matters.”
      In reply, Trump said of Raffensperger: “He’s an enemy of the people.” More

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      'Voting is a celebration': the groups mobilizing voters ahead of Georgia’s runoffs

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      The state of Georgia made history this past November during the 2020 presidential election, when it turned from a red state to a blue state, the first time in over 20 years.After Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by more than 12,000 votes in the state, many took a closer look at the groundswell of activists who had helped engage and educate Georgia voters. Multiple profiles of Stacey Abrams, the gubernatorial candidate who has mobilized voters to combat voter suppression, and Black Voters Matter, splashed across media headlines. But behind the scenes, other groups have been operating on all cylinders, too. Now, with a heated Senate runoff on 5 January — one that will determine which party takes control of Congress – many are wondering if the ground game will remain strong.These groups are working hard to make sure it does:The Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda (People’s Agenda)Founded by the late Ccivil rights leader Joseph E Lowery, the organization performs year-round voter registration, education and mobilization in Black communities throughout Georgia and works to support and establish state coalitions in south-eastern states. Headquartered in Atlanta, the People’s Agenda has offices throughout the state of Georgia and covers more than 53 Georgia counties statewide.“We work 365 days a year registering people to vote and educating them on the candidates running for office. We hold forums and town hall meetings and have been doing phone and text banks to inform Georgia citizens about voter registration and the voting process. We want people to know that the voting process is easy and transparent,” said Butler.Like most other outreach organizations, much of the group’s work is being done remotely due to Covid-19. Organizing, registering people to vote and even requesting absentee ballots is done online.But some outreach continues in person. Members have been working with churches and community leaders in each of the cities where offices are located. Volunteers are canvassing door to door, following social distancing guidelines, handing out free literature and getting people registered. The group is also giving citizens rides to the polls and making sure that there are no indications of voter suppression through their Election Protection Program. There are monitors at polling locations to speak on problems and issues in real time, according to Butler.“Decisions about unemployment, healthcare, the economic stimulus, and utilities in rural areas is determined by these two Senate seats,” explained Butler. “Currently the Senate is held up and has not acted on the George Floyd Criminal Justice Reform Act, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, or the Cares Act.“We don’t tell people who to vote for and we’re not endorsing any candidates, but we tell them why it’s important,” Butler said. “The election is not over. We are alerting people to vote again.Clayton county’s Black Women’s RoundtableThe Black Women’s Roundtable works in states with large Black populations, building leaders and encouraging them to run for office in their communities and is an extension of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. The organization is an intergenerational coalition of Black women who are civil rights leaders, corporate leaders and elected officials. They organize around issues of concerns for Black women, including healthcare, racism and injustice.Felicia Davis, head of the roundtable in Georgia’s Clayton county, said she is working hard to get people registered to vote. Her group is mobilizing and educating voters through door to door canvassing, hoping to get people to early vote and to keep people motivated throughout Covid-19 and the holiday season, to ensure they vote in the January run-off.“This year we lost Dr Lowery, Rev CT Vivian and Congressman John Lewis, three civil rights heroes whose sacrifices played a key role in the passing of the Voting Rights Act. Their memory fuels our resolve,” said Davis. “Our part right now is to vote. When we show up, we always win.”Transformative Justice CoalitionThe Transformative Justice Coalition, a non-partisan group, fights for solutions that address racial injustice and result in systemic change and dismantling structures of white supremacy. Most of the work is in voting rights, not just during elections, but year-round.Barbara Arnwine, the founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, is based in Washington DC but works closely with the People’s Agenda to mobilize, educate and register voters.Voting isn’t just about elections, but political accountability“Georgia has an ugly history of purging voters,” said Arnwine. “Voting isn’t just about elections, but political accountability. We have built up good relationships, working together to battle southern suppression in Georgia and other states in the south and have trained over 100 people to be voting rights activists.”Starting 14 December, the first day of early voting, the Transformative Justice Coalition will organize what they call Votercades, car caravans/marches getting people excited about voting. The Votercade is a three- to five-block caravan of cars with voting signs, 14ft banners and loud speakers and megaphones, making people aware that it is time to vote. There is music, dance, food and also a moment of silence where participants take a knee to remember those killed by police. There will be 15 Votercades throughout Georgia, including the week of 14-19 December.“The Votercades are attention grabbing, joyous, infectious marches to the polls. We are doing these marches to encourage people to vote early,” said Arnwine. “We believe voting is a celebration, not something people endure. We are giving people support and are committed to going everywhere there are voters.”Georgia Black Youth VoteThe Rev Jared Sawyer, co-coordinator of the Georgia Black Youth Vote, is also doing his part to mobilize young Georgia voters by engaging and training community advocates and young professionals aged 18-30, getting them fully involved in the voting process. This includes a statewide media campaign and online services that focus on voter registration.“The right to vote is sacred,” said Sawyer. We are preparing voters for the run-off and getting people excited about the election.”This group is touring throughout the state of Georgia and also hosting Votercade caravans and are canvassing to prepare young voters for the runoff election. The goal is to educate young people about voting and public policy. Sawyer was called to train a new generation of civic leaders and political activists and is calling on others to serve their communities. The group is phone banking and text banking to inform people about the runoff election, encouraging them to vote early.“As long as we are as proactive as we’re being, people will get out and vote. The Black youth vote helped push Georgia blue,” said Sawyer. “It inspired people and they realized that it’s possible. Young people believed their voices count, not just in the streets, but at the ballot box. We are encouraging people to vote early. I believe there will be a strong voter turnout.” More

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      in US Politics

      QAnon and the 'Trump coup' have more in common than you might think | Dan Brooks

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      I have a friend who’s the stepmother to a young boy and this boy’s birth mother has gotten deeply into QAnon. How deep? She recently told him that the world is flat, and anyone who tells him otherwise is a paedophile. She is determined to take him out of school in order to shield him from cannibals, satanists and Democrats. Every time my friend updates me on the project of raising a child in joint custody with this person, I experience a kind of vertigo. How would you even do it?Now imagine that, instead of raising a child, you and this person had to set emissions standards and develop a sustainable healthcare system. This is not far from the condition of US democracy in 2020: two centre-right corporate parties, one socially progressive and the other socially reactionary; a left divided between the internet and the academy; and an indeterminate number of maniacs.The maniacs are QAnon. It’s complicated, but QAnon is essentially an online conspiracy theory based on interpreting the gnomic posts of an unidentified person (or group of people) known as Q, who purports to be a high-ranking official in the US government. Q’s message to the faithful is that this government is secretly controlled by a cabal of satanic paedophiles whom Donald Trump will one day round up and execute, in a mass cleansing called the Storm.This Storm is not going to happen, of course. If it ever does, I will freely admit that I was wrong from whatever gibbet I am on while Facebook groups remake society – but it will also never be cancelled, because anticipating this Storm is what makes QAnon a compelling fantasy. It’s impossible to know how many people actually believe in QAnon as an accurate description of how the world works, relative to how many just enjoy talking about it as a kind of online game. For both groups, though, the appeal is world building. Q is a collaborative work of speculative fiction that replaces this world with one that it both more exciting and more legible. The essence of that world is the Storm: the fantasy that those who disagree with your politics are not just wrong but evil, in a way that justifies finally smashing them.In this central fantasy, QAnon resembles another form of fantasy politics from 2020 – one that gained traction not among the desperate underclass of disenfranchised internet addicts, but among the broad professional centre of US politics. I am referring to the speculation that President Trump would refuse to leave office if he lost the election.People seem to have politely forgotten this theory, but in September and October, it was trafficked by several of the most respectable news and commentary outlets in the US. The Washington Post published an article by the co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project that gamed out scenarios in which “players”, including former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, took on the roles of factions determined to install their candidate by any means necessary. In October, the New Yorker published a piece headlined “What can you do if Trump stages a coup?” These grandes dames of political analysis were joined by less impressive imitators in what became, during the months before the election, a micro-genre of news speculation.The coup scenario has not come to pass, unless you count the series of unsuccessful lawsuits Trump’s campaign has filed in an attempt to overturn various state election results – which I do not. The president’s motives remain inscrutable, but if you are going to risk it all on a bid to overthrow US democracy, you do not put Rudolph Giuliani in charge.The Trump coup theory attracted a more sophisticated audience than QAnon, and from an epistemological standpoint it was far stronger. I would never say the two scenarios were similar in their premises or their reasoning. But they had one thing in common: they were both animated by the fantasy of being done with democracy. The Storm and the Trump coup both imagined worlds in which their audiences would have to stop trying to win over their political opponents.If we understand fantasy not as worlds we want to come to pass but rather worlds that offer outlets for feelings we have to repress in this one, the popularity of QAnon and the Trump coup scenarios makes sense. They are symptomatic of a democracy that has become frustrated with democratic means. Like QAnon, a Trump putsch held out the possibility of a righteous cleansing of Republican extremists that would reduce the hard problems of representative governance to the comparatively simple logistics of civil war. Civil war is bad, obviously, but it rewards the winners with one-party rule. Both QAnon and the Trump coup were dark fantasies that came with the same happy ending: a situation in which decent Americans no longer had to argue with the ignorant and evil, because we were finally justified in simply overpowering them. That we cannot do so under ordinary conditions is what makes US democracy such a pain in the ass.At this point, the possibility of a coup seems consigned to the realm of past fantasy, fading as we move on from the zeitgeist that made it compelling. I don’t know what will happen to QAnon once Trump leaves office. Probably, my friend’s stepson’s mother will keep coming up with reasons why the various antagonists in her life are evil. The hard work of democracy will return to bringing people like her back in. It would probably be easier to round them up. A lot of things would be easier, if more of us were monsters. More

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      in Elections

      Senior Republican says party’s final election challenge will ‘go down like a shot dog’

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      Donald Trump has reportedly acknowledged in private that his attempt to overturn the election result will fail, while a senior Republican in the Senate said on Monday a challenge coming in the House of Representatives will “go down like a shot dog”.But amid reports of a president unhinged – one report said: “We cannot stress enough how unnerved Trump officials are” – and while Trump continued to stoke a Republican civil war by attacking Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, a group of GOP representatives visited the White House to plan one final push to reverse the will of the American people.Congress meets to validate the electoral college result, a 306-232 win for Joe Biden, on 6 January. On Monday, Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama led a delegation of about 12 Republicans to the White House, where they discussed how their challenge to that result will proceed.“It was a back and forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th,” Brooks told Politico, adding: “More and more congressmen and senators are being persuaded that the election was stolen.”There is no evidence that this is the case, and Brooks notably declined to identify any of the supposed doubters. By all the evidence, challenges to the result in the House and the Senate will not have the votes to be sustained.On Monday, No 2 Republican senator John Thune told CNN the move was “going down like a shot dog” and added: “I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.”Nonetheless, Trump continues to make baseless accusations of mass electoral fraud and reportedly to rage against aides he deems insufficiently zealous in his defence. According to the news site Axios, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and chief of staff Mark Meadows are prominent among such hapless targets.So is McConnell, whom Trump claims to have saved in his re-election fight this year, the president sending a slide to Republicans in Congress which purported to show the restorative effect of a presidential tweet and robocall.“Sadly, Mitch forgot,” the slide said. “He was the first one off the ship!”The wisdom or otherwise of attacking the Republican Senate leader two weeks before run-off elections in Georgia that will decide control of the chamber, and with it much of Biden’s chances of legislative success, seems lost on the president for now.Meadows was once a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus in the House, and his former allies were among those visiting the White House on Monday. Mike Pence, who will preside over the joint session of Congress on 6 January, also attended the meeting.Trump is even reported to have soured on the vice-president, his loyal lieutenant since joining the ticket in 2016. The president is reported to believe Pence is “backing away” from him – notably, a claim advanced in a recent ad by the Lincoln Project, a group of dissident Republicans.“When Mike Pence is running away from you,” the ad says, “you know it’s over.”Among representatives reported to have been at the conspiratorial huddle at the White House was Jim Jordan of Ohio, a renowned attack dog so loyal to Trump that he has claimed never to have heard the president lie. (The Washington Post’s count of Trump’s lies in office stands at 26,000.) Also there was Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, an open supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory preparing to take a seat in Congress.Brooks said the Republicans were “trying to make sure that we understand what [Pence’s] view of the procedural requirements are, so we can comply with them. Pence will have a tremendous amount of discretion, though I think the rulings he will make will be pretty cut and dry.“It’s still somewhat fluid, since this does not happen very often.”Trump remains actively engaged in the fundamentally anti-democratic campaign. He is said to have spent an hour poring over the details of the 6 January session with the group from Congress.The closer the president gets to removal from office, the more volatile he becomes, and the more wild his invective grows. According to Olivia Nuzzi of New York magazine, since election day White House aides have been “outright avoiding the president out of concern he might end up using any nearby staffer as a human stress ball”.In a meeting at the White House last Friday, Trump is reported to have floated the idea of the arch-conspiracy theorist and lawyer Sidney Powell being appointed a special counsel to investigate voter fraud during the election.According to the New York Times, Trump asked advisers at that gathering about whether the military could be mobilised to “rerun” the election. The idea was the brainchild of Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser pardoned by Trump for lying to the FBI, who was present at the Friday meeting.As Trump digs himself ever further into his “stolen election” rabbit hole, other key figures in his administration are gently but firmly moving in the other direction. William Barr, the US attorney general who has been willing to accommodate many of Trump’s whims, has distanced himself.On Monday Barr bluntly squashed the idea of a special counsel.“If I thought a special counsel at this stage was the right tool, I would name one, but I haven’t and I’m not going to,” he said. More