The numbers of American COVID-19 dead and infected would not raise an eyebrow if posted below the word McDonald’s. If the U.S. ever expects to emerge from this disastrous plague, it will need a plan. A national one. Not the PR-driven, market-based, half-assed, reality-TV hash offered by Donald Trump, either.
Now, President-elect Joe Biden ran for office and won big on providing one. You know, to keep hundreds of thousands more Americans from dying. (Uncle Joe is patriotic that way.)
One might think flag-waving, U-S-A-chanting Americans might be on board with keeping breathing. But E.J. Dionne reminds us their “leaders” in Congress are just not that into them. Not enough to support fixing the disaster Donald Trump made of the COVID-19 response.
So, ending the plague will hinge on what happens in the Senate runoff elections in Georgia on January 5th. Winning both Georgia Senate seats means Biden will at least have a chance bringing down the curtain on this tragedy:
What is at stake: whether President-elect Joe Biden will have a chance to end the scourge of the covid-19 pandemic, get the economy moving again, and enact some bread-and-butter programs to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure and shore up our health-care system.
And voters must understand that as long as Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is the Senate majority leader and the base of the Republican Party is dominated by the far right — including “Stop the Steal” Trumpists — a divided government is not a recipe for compromise. Instead, it’s a ticket to obstruction and the very sort of partisan brawling that moderate voters can’t stand.
If the myth that the country works best under divided government ever had substance, Dionne argues, the times in which it did are long gone. Republicans if left in control of the Senate will simply throw sand in the gears. Less tantrum-y than Trump, perhaps, but no less malicious.
What the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrats running for the Senate, need to tell their voters is that Democratic control is the only hope for a robust and widely shared economic recovery.
And they can assure moderate voters that radicalism won’t be on the table since progressives would have to negotiate with middle-of-the-roaders such as Manchin, Warner and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to get anything passed. But unlike McConnell, all three members of this moderate trio want to get things done — and want the new president to succeed.
Warnock and Ossoff can also remind those who worry about “defunding the police” that the surest way to guarantee cutbacks in police, firefighting and other basic services is for Congress to go along with the Republican right’s refusal to provide financial assistance to state and local governments.
Winning two Senate seats in Georgia is a long shot. But Biden may get an assist from the infighting among Republicans there. At a #StopTheSteal rally in Alpharetta Wednesday featuring ostensible attorneys Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, the pair told Trump’s MAGA supporters to stay home Jan. 5 if they don’t get the reversal of presidential election results they demand. A third recount is underway now with no indication results will change.