The US elections are not over and Joe Biden may still lose

GUEST COMMENT: With a majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and Republicans can give Joe Biden a wall of compact opposition

All those who thought that Democrat Joe Biden won the US election on November 3, and that the count would take a few weeks in the worst case scenario, were wrong. The winner of the election is Mitch McConnell, and the last election day will be January 5 next year.

Well, the right thing should be the right thing. Joe Biden with his partner Kamala Harris won the presidential election with more than 78 million votes out of 73 million votes for President Trump. The 65 percent turnout was a new centennial record. Unlike 2016, when Trump won the Electoral College with fewer votes than his opponent Hillary Clinton, the electoral gods this time smiled at Biden and gave him a clear majority in the Electoral College.

Although voters have now fired Trump as president, Trump is showing his true undemocratic mindset. He is challenging the election results in the states with defiant and unfounded demands where his request for financial aid from his supporters should not go primarily to fund the demands, but to strengthen him politically. At the same time, he is hammering the wheels of the great state machine that will be recalibrated for the Biden administration when the new president takes office on January 20.

Will hold strong

But how could Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky win the election?

In November of last year, the strong US economy was a good messenger for the winner of the Trump election. But the crown pandemic and post-2020 economic woes weakened Trump’s chances of reelection. In the months leading up to the election, experts believed that Biden would win. That was correct. They also believed that Democrats could increase their majority in the House of Representatives in Congress. That was not correct. Democrats retain the majority, but lost several seats to Republicans. And the pundits also gave Democrats a good chance of winning a majority in the Senate, the second house of Congress. But now it’s going to last a long time.

Georgia on my mind

The state of Georgia has long been an excellent example of the historical traits that the sociologist John Shelton Reed found among the white population of the southern states of America: confined to one place, religious, and with a glorification of violence. In recent decades, the state has become more diverse and more urban. Georgia is no longer a conservative stronghold.

For governor two years ago Republican Brian Kemp won over Democrat Stacey Abrams with a margin of just over one percent of the annual vote. It was an embarrassingly narrow margin for a conservative white man over a liberal black woman. And we must not forget the shameful fact that Kemp had good control over the conduct of the elections: as State Secretary of State, he was responsible for the elections in which he himself participated.

Stacey Abrams wasted no time. Your mobilization of voters through Georgia’s new project it was one of the main reasons a Democratic presidential candidate won Georgia for the first time in 28 years. Along the way, she was among the finalists as a candidate for vice president of Biden.

But in Georgia, Biden’s margin of victory was so small that Brad Raffensperger, the state’s interior minister, decided that the five million votes should be reviewed by hand. Although the chance that the count will reverse the result is small, it does not yet matter. Biden becomes president without Georgia.

In Georgia, the requirement is that the winner of an election must have more than 50 percent of the vote. That did not happen in either of the two state Senate elections. Georgia has an additional election to replace the temporary seat after Senator Johnny Isakson, who resigned last year. Elections for the last two Senate seats will be held on January 5 of next year.

Here is the drama

Right now, Republicans have a 50-48 lead in the Senate. If Democrats win both Senate elections in Georgia, the Senate will be split 50-50 in half. Then it’s time for Kamala Harris: the constitution gives the vice president the role of director in the Senate and the casting vote in the event of a tie. A majority in the Senate may open the door to Biden’s priorities, and it also bodes well for approval by liberal federal judges.

If Republicans only win one of the two seats in Georgia, which is very likely, Republicans will retain the majority, and Mitch McConnell has won the election. McConnell has been a senator from Kentucky for 36 years and was reelected in November for a seventh six-year term. He will continue as the leader of a strong majority.

McConnell’s biggest political trophy was denying President Obama a nomination to the US Supreme Court in 2016. McConnell steadfastly refused to release Merrick Garland until Senate approval. With a majority still there, McConnell and the Republicans can give Biden a compact wall of resistance.

There is still hope for good solutions. History shows that cooperation is the key, and that compromises are possible through clear political contradictions, even in these polarized times. And we can also hope that the human factor can bring Biden and McConnell to the negotiating table. They know each other well after 24 years together in the Senate. And they have managed to agree on difficult issues in the past.

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