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Participants will get my latest news updates and analysis -- and then I will answer questions galore.
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As you know, so much about our collective futures – fighting the pandemic, fostering racial justice, reviving the economy, safeguarding our planet, fixing our schools – depends on the post-New Year’s Day will of the people of the Peach State.
So, yes, Joe Biden’s clever personnel finessing, Thanksgiving planning, and Pentagon and Justice Department deciding all matter.
As do, yes, Donald Trump’s pardon plans, potential Pennsylvania travel plans, and the New York Times extremely gossipy look at Ivanka’s and Jared’s future plans.
But the fate of the Republic will largely be determined by the voting citizens of the Empire State of the South over the next few weeks.
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TEN THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE GEORGIA U.S. SENATE RUNOFFS
1. There are thousands of voters who cast their original ballots for Joe Biden for president and David Perdue for Senate. How that group turns out for the runoff is super key, or, really as determinative as anything else.
2. Republicans now believe that their fate could well depend on the president’s willingness to shift from saying elections are fixed, phony, and rigged and towards saying it is vital that his supporters vote in Round Two.
3. GOP strategists see Don Jr. as the key to making that shift happen.
4. As this essential reading Washington Post story makes clear, both sides see the status in the minds and hearts of Georgians of Rev. Raphael Warnock as central to the outcome, more than the place of his Democratic partner Jon Ossoff, and Warnock has had as much potent opposition research dropped on his head this month as any other candidate in the whole 2020 cycle.
5. In the shadows of the relative lack of public polling, political, business, and other private groups continue to show both contests to be effectively tied.
6. The right has their message (Georgians need a check on PelosiSchumerBidenSandersAOC) down.
7. Many Republican strategists believe that the main reason the Democrats have a chance to defy history and win both races is that the two GOP incumbents – David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler – are not the world’s strongest candidates. If these were “normal” incumbents, the outcomes would not be in doubt.
8. Democrats and their allies have mightily stepped up their door-to-door, in-person canvassing compared to in the November contest, including church-based activities.
9. The entire right and center-right army is all-hands-on-deck engaged in this fight, including Karl C. Rove, who knows a thing or five about winning campaigns in the South.
10. What long defined statewide races in Georgia in favor of Republicans was that Democratic candidates universally had a ceiling of support well below 50% -- a ceiling that mathematically precluded their winning. Now the defining reality of these Senate contests is that the right Democratic candidates have floors of support high enough that such races are highly competitive.
Oh, and don’t discount the prospects of overtime if these runoffs, as most sources expect, are super close; we could see the requirement of some recount action, sending us right towards inauguration day, with Senate control still hanging in the balance.
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Check out
* The New York Times review of Joe Scarborough’s new book “Saving Freedom” about Harry Truman that the Paper of Record calls “earnest, engaging.”
* This Washington Post profile of super reporter Jennifer Jacobs, who owns any beat to which she is assigned.
