Today the curtain falls on the Midterm elections with the ballot for the Senate seat in Georgia. The outgoing Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is given by all opinion poll institutes ahead (between 3 and 5 points) over his rival, the Republican Herschel Walker, a former football star. The ballot was necessary because no candidate had managed to reach 50% of the vote on 8 November. Georgia – along with Louisiana – is the only state that provides for the runoff under a 1964 law intended to limit the impact of African Americans voting.
The Congress
Democrats will remain in control of the Senate whatever the outcome in Georgia. In fact, they already have 50 senators (out of 100). In the event of a defeat and therefore a tie, Vice President Kamala Harris would break the balance in the classroom – as already in the first two years of the Biden Administration – as required by the Constitution.
But a victory for Warnock, an African-American pastor for whom Barack Obama also mobilized during the electoral campaign, would allow Democrats to sleep more peacefully in the Senate and defuse internal opposition embodied by centrist Senator Joe Manchin whose vote and opposition to certain Biden social and climate laws have cost the majority dearly.
Nearly two million voters have already voted as of last Saturday by standing in line or by delivering their ballot papers to the mail.
Republican inquiries
The new Congress will take office in January. The Republicans will control the Chamber of Deputies and have already warned the White House on the line they intend to take on issues such as immigration and support for the conflict in Ukraine. They could also set up commissions of inquiry. Two are the most feared and awaited: the first is on the origin of Covid and Anthony Fauci would end up on the “bar” – who will leave his position as adviser to the president at the end of the month after working for 7 tenants of the White House – accused by the Republicans more pro-trumpian of having made political choices in favor of the democrats and of not having shed light on the origins of Covid. The second could be even more explosive since it concerns Hunter Biden and his ties to Ukraine and the taxman. The risk is that it could directly touch the president or tarnish his image.
Biden’s future
As for Joe Biden instead, yesterday his chief of staff, Ron Klain in a forum in Washington organized by the Wall Street Journal said that after the Christmas holidays the decision on a possible re-nomination will be communicated. And all the clues are in support of a Biden encore.