Senate having tipped into Democratic camp, Joe Biden finds himself free

After Raphael Warnock on Tuesday, Jon Ossoff won the second and final remaining Senate seat in the US state of Georgia.

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The announcement went almost unnoticed in the chaos around the Capitol. But even on a day steeped in history, it is not without it. Suddenly, the sky lit up for Democrats. Two months after their disappointment of November 3 in Congress, they recorded an unexpected success: the Senate has fallen into their camp. Joe Biden now has free rein – or at least less hindered – to implement his program. “We didn’t take the most direct route to get here,” said Chuck Schumer, the next Senate Majority Leader. “But here we are. And it’s a new day.”

The miracle came from an impossible place, Georgia, a southern state, which a Democrat had never won since 1992. On November 3, 2020, Donald Trump had lost very little – 11,779 votes. The two Republican Senate candidates were ahead of their opponents but not enough to avoid a second round. On Tuesday, Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, won, becoming the first African-American Democratic senator from a southern state. On Wednesday January 6, Jon Ossoff was declared the winner, with a tiny margin but sufficient to avoid a recount. At 33, he would become the youngest senator in the institution behind a certain Joe Biden, elected in Delaware, at age 30 in 1972.

“People want help” h2 >

The Democratic General Staff attributes their victory to a message centered on the pandemic and the aid checks of 2,000 dollars (1,622 euros) offered by the Democrats – approved by Donald Trump – but rejected by the Republicans . “People want help,” said Chuck Schumer. Georgia Republicans blamed Donald Trump and the division he introduced into their camp by refusing to acknowledge his defeat. “100%”, criticized Gabriel Sterling, one of the leaders of the Grand Old Party (GOP) in Georgia.

The Georgia Senate was the last episode in the battle for the future of states -United – “the soul”, as repeated the ex-vice president during the campaign. Democrats now control all poles of power. Besides the White House, the House of Representatives, by 222 seats out of 435, and the Senate (50-50 but in the event of a tie, Vice President Kamala Harris, has the right to vote as ex officio president of the Senate).

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