(Headline USA) Would-be President Joe Biden told a sparse showing of Georgia voters on Tuesday they must deliver two Democrat Senate runoffs victories in January so his administration can forcefully confront the coronavirus pandemic and other national challenges.
Fresh off the Electoral College affirming his victory, Biden campaigned alongside radical leftists Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock as they try to unseat Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Jan. 5 runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate. Biden warned that Republican victories would leave him to face the kind of GOP obstruction that hampered former President Barack Obama for most of his two terms.
“We can get so much done, so much that can make the lives of the people of Georgia and the whole country so much better,” Biden said at a drive-in rally outside downtown Atlanta on the second day of early voting. “And we need senators who are willing to do it, for God’s sake.”
Biden criticized Perdue and Loeffler as “roadblocks” for not supporting an expansive new economic aid package loaded with Democrat agenda items to address the coronavirus. In contrast, he said Ossoff and Warnock would “fight for progress and not just get in the way.”
“Are you ready to vote for two United States senators who know how to say the word ‘yes’ and not just ‘no’?” Biden said as supporters gathered in the railroad yard honked their horns.
Biden mocked Perdue and Loeffler for publicly backing a lawsuit by Texas essentially asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election results in Georgia and other battlegrounds. The nation’s highest court rejected the request for an immediate injunction.
“They fully embraced nullifying nearly 5 million Georgia votes,” said Biden, lying about the substance of the Texas case and misrepresenting what the Lone Star State was asking of the court. “Maybe your senators were just confused. Maybe they think they represent Texas. Well, if you want to do the bidding of Texas, you should be running in Texas.”
Biden edged Trump in Georgia by about 12,000 votes out of the 5 million cast, with significant evidence of vote fraud in Fulton County.
Perdue, Loeffler and their allies have issued dire warnings that a Democratic Senate would ensure a leftward lurch in the federal government. Democrats would need to win both Georgia seats to force a 50-50 Senate, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the tiebreaking vote.
Republicans need one of the two Georgia seats for McConnell to remain majority leader and set the Senate agenda. McConnell has repeatedly described himself as the barrier for Democrats’ policy ideas on health care, overhauling the nation’s energy grid and reducing the carbon pollution that causes climate change, among other matters.
Speaking before Biden, Ossoff took on the matter most directly.
“If Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, they’re going to try to do to Joe and Kamala just like they tried to do President Obama,” he said, alluding to McConnell’s years of blocking legislation and Obama’s court appointments. “They will block the COVID relief that we need. They will block the $15 minimum wage. They will block the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act that we need. They will block affordable health care. We can’t let that happen, Georgia.”
Warnock declared the outcome a “a matter of life and death” because of COVID-19 relief and health care legislation, though he didn’t explicitly mention McConnell or Senate control.
Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.
