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As of Saturday morning, there is no clear winner in the two Senate races in Georgia, meaning both races could advance to a runoff election on January 5. This could leave the Senate in limbo when it reconvenes early next year, with neither party having a clear majority. “A Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate would be the biggest difference maker to help President-elect Biden deliver for working families across the country and in Georgia where, for too long, they have been denied the help they need by President Trump, Mitch McConnell and a Republican-led Senate,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement on Saturday, urging Americans to turn their attention to the next big political fight. The National Republican Senatorial Committee also alluded to Biden’s victory in a tweet, linking to a site to donate to Senate Republicans’ campaign arm and saying, “the Senate is the last line of defense.” With Democrats in the White House and the House, Republicans believe that the Senate is their only venue to block Biden’s legislative priorities. Georgia had two Senate elections this year, thanks to a special election to determine who would replace former Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired last year. Senator Kelly Loeffler was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp to replace Isakson, but faced challenges from 20 other candidates in the special election. Under state law, a race must advance to a runoff election if no candidate receives over 50% of the vote. Loeffler, who received around 26% of the vote, will advance to the runoff alongside Democrat Raphael Warnock, who received around 32% of the vote on Tuesday. The second Senate race in the state was more straightforward, as Republican Senator David Perdue was up for reelection this year. He was challenged by Democrat Jon Ossoff, who unsuccessfully ran for the House in 2017. Although it looked like Perdue may have scraped enough votes to win the race outright with a majority earlier in the week, by Friday morning his vote share dipped to just under 50%. In a statement released on Thursday, Perdue’s campaign expressed confidence he would ultimately win reelection, saying Ossoff had a history of losing in the state. Ossoff was defeated by former Congresswoman Karen Handel in a runoff election in 2017 in what was then the most expensive House race in history. “Perdue will finish this election in first place with substantially more votes than his Democrat opponent,” the statement said. “If overtime is required when all of the votes have been counted, we’re ready, and we will win.” The NRSC also said in a statement earlier this week Perdue “won this race in regular time and will do the same in overtime.” “Georgians have rejected Jon Ossoff’s liberal, socialist agenda not once, not twice, but three times. And the fourth time will not be the charm, but instead, a perfectly miserable experience for Jon Ossoff, national Democrats and their shared dream of a socialist America,” NRSC executive director Kevin McLaughlin, referring to Ossoff’s losses in the previous congressional election and his lower vote share this year. However, the Ossoff campaign was also bullish about its chances in a runoff election. “The votes are still being counted, but we are confident that Jon Ossoff’s historic performance in Georgia has forced Senator David Perdue to continue defending his indefensible record of unemployment, disease, and corruption. When a runoff is called and held in January, Georgians are going to send Jon to the Senate to defend their health care and put the interests of working families and small businesses ahead of corporate lobbyists,” Ossoff campaign manager Ellen Foster said in a statement. The runoff elections are expected to be incredibly expensive. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Ossoff and Perdue’s campaigns spent almost $45 million combined ahead of the November election. Warnock and Loeffler’s campaign spent nearly $40 million combined. With the fate of the Senate in the balance, it is likely that national Republican and Democratic organizations could spend heavily money in the races ahead of the runoff in an attempt to push their candidates to victory. The balance of the next Senate is currently 48 to 48. There are two other races that have not yet been called. In Alaska, Republican Dan Sullivan has a substantial lead over Democrat Al Gross with 56% of the vote in, and that race leans Republican. North Carolina’s Senate race between incumbent Republican Thom Tillis and Democrat Cal Cunningham was still a toss-up on Friday, but Tillis was leading by 1.8 points. If both of those races are won by Republicans, Democrats would need to win both the Georgia races to reach a 50-50 split. The vice president breaks any tie. Nick Note: Reality is the Republicans are very close to lose control of the senate. The dreaded blue wave. If this outcome is realized the Democrats will control the presidency, the house and the senate. And the most socialist goveremnt in US history will have their way. And the markets will be devastated…. again!

President Donald Trump has struggled to convince the country he already won the election. So he’s just going to do the next best thing: Act like he’s starting his second term early. Trump and his aides have settled on a plan for him to take full advantage of his existing perch at the White House to look as presidential as possible, according to three people briefed on the strategy. He may fire a few Cabinet members and top aides, including FBI Director Christopher Wray and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. He could sign a slew of base-pleasing executive orders. He might even resume his travel schedule. Meanwhile, Trump’s team is planning to mount even more legal challenges and cast evidence-deficient aspersions on the integrity of ballots. The president is frustrated by what he views as unfair election results in states like Arizona, and is steaming at the possibility of losing to a candidate he considers “weak,” Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The irritation is compounded by Biden’s moves to launch his presidential transition operation and signal confidence about ultimate victory in key states such as Arizona and Nevada, which have him close to clinching the presidential race. Trump’s team “will flatly say they are wrong if the AP calls the race for Biden,” said former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a longtime Trump ally. “We were at the White House until 3 a.m. on election night,” he added. “I was punchy physically, but I also could not get my head around what is going on until today. The president is going through something similar.” Yet after two days of staying out of the public’s view, stewing over media coverage and feeling irritated with a handful of top advisers, Trump and his team have settled on the approach of barreling toward a second term — even if, during the final months of his campaign, Trump repeatedly failed to lay out any agenda for another four years.Joe Biden is closing in on a victory. But he’s staring at a deeply divided nation — and an opponent who’s refusing to accept the results. POLITICO’s Natasha Korecki breaks down how Biden is preparing for a rocky transition. Thursday night, Trump made his first public appearance since election night, expanding on the baseless claims of election fraud he has been spouting on Twitter. He made no mention of any governing moves, but did vow to fight the election results in court all the way to the Supreme Court — a proposition seen by most legal experts as unlikely and detached from the realities of a state-by-state electoral system. “It’s going to end up perhaps at the highest court in the land, we’ll see,” Trump said, before leaving without taking questions. In the coming days, Trump’s post-election governing agenda may kick off with firings of key aides who have long rankled the president, especially those within the intelligence and national security community. Those firings could happen within the next week, even if the results of the election favor Biden or remain unclear. “The first thing is going to be: Who’s left, who’s been loyal and who’s been competent?” said one Republican close to the White House. “That’s going to be the first criteria. Who’s been loyal and who’s competent.” Along with potential firings, Trump is also expected to spend the next week signing a flurry of executive orders on everything from trade to manufacturing to China as a way to show he is staying busy. He may also tackle a few executive orders on his favored cultural and social issues, according to two Republicans close to the White House. “Just as he promised the American people, President Trump is fighting hard for a free and fair election while at the same time running the country and carrying out his duties to put America First,” White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement. The Trump campaign is separately dispatching surrogates like David Bossie, Corey Lewandowski, Pam Bondi and Ric Grenell to battleground states like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada to raise doubts about state election results and elicit local media coverage for the campaign’s spate of ongoing legal challenges, which Trump aides and advisers anticipate will last for the next several weeks. “We are in this fight. We are going to stay in,” Trump deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, told reporters on a call on Thursday. In recent months, Trump has shrunk his circle of top advisers to longtime aides, family members and a few top campaign officials. Those aides, along with chief of staff Mark Meadows and top White House attorney Pat Cipollone, have been advising the president on his strategy and moves in the days after the election. Ever since the president delivered remarks at the White House in the early hours of Nov. 4, he has stayed out of view. Trump has tweeted but not given any public remarks about the election or his plans moving forward. Trump allies and advisers say he has passed the time watching media coverage and speaking by phone to friends and fellow politicians. One ally said once Trump reemerged, it would to resume his activities in a “big” way. Nick Note: Lets say at the very least Trump is a troubled soul. Imagine going from a landslide election night. To watching a slow drip of his big win eroding to a big loss. He has none to blame but himself. He told his voters to only vote in person. And many people that could not vote in person decided to not vote at all. It was his election to lose. By the way black lives sure as hell matter in the cities of America where they handed him a massive loss!

The polls had closed more than a full 24 hours before, and as several key states continued to update their ballot counts, the election increasingly felt like it was slipping away from him and toward Democratic nominee Joe Biden. He wanted to speak.

“STOP THE COUNT,” Trump bellowed on Twitter, a missive he quickly retweeted just over an hour later. “ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!” he added.

The only problem: If the vote-counting stopped at that moment, Trump would lose.Trump’s senior advisers intervened, explaining to the president that he needed to be more precise about just which vote counts he wanted halted. He did not want all of the states to stop counting votes, they added, because that would lead to a Biden victory. And so, shortly after noon Thursday, Trump blasted out the message he had workshopped with advisers: “STOP THE FRAUD!” There is no evidence of widespread voting fraud, and Twitter flagged his tweet as “misleading” about the election. But for the president’s purposes, the missive was more helpful to his electoral hopes.

“Trumpworld is going to go down swinging hard,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor.

Those in the president’s orbit had entered Election Day cautiously optimistic. During a midday visit Tuesday to rally staff at campaign headquarters, the president said he had not yet given much consideration to either a victory or concession speech. “Hopefully, we’ll be only doing one of those two,” he said. “And, you know, winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me, it’s not.” But by Tuesday night, it became increasingly clear that Trump would deliver neither speech. Huddled with family members and advisers — including Kellyanne Conway, campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, among others — first in the White House residence and then in the Map Room, Trump became increasingly agitated as the evening wore on. At one point, when Fox News — the cable channel most friendly to the president — called Arizona, which Trump had won in 2016, for Biden, the president implored his team to “get that result changed,” said one person familiar with his exhortations who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of internal discussions. Campaign adviser Jason Miller took to Twitter to complain — “WAY too soon to be calling Arizona,” he wrote — and he, along with Conway, former counselor to the president, Meadows and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, spent considerable time calling allies at Fox News, trying to get them to back off the Arizona decision. Trump and aides continued to privately rail against the network Thursday, officials said. Though aides had tried to prepare Trump that mail-in ballots would probably favor Biden, he was “genuinely taken aback,” in the words of one campaign adviser, as the votes rolled in for his rival, the former vice president. Instead of reflecting on whether his rhetoric throughout the campaign demonizing mail-in ballots could have helped cost him the election, the president has taken the results as a vindication on his views of it, advisers said. “The president’s position is, they are just going to keep finding the ballots until they have enough,” said one adviser who spoke to him Wednesday. Trump began complaining about voter fraud and the election being stolen, and by the time he appeared in the East Wing around 2 a.m. Wednesday to make remarks, he was determined to declare victory, even though his prepared notes did not say that. “Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said in comments that were roundly criticized, including by many allies. Some of those in the room, including Lewandowski and Meadows, did not clap along with others after the impromptu line. Vice President Pence, who struck a different tone early Wednesday onstage, made no appearances later Wednesday or Thursday, though Thursday night he did tweet, “I Stand With President @realDonaldTrump. We must count every LEGAL vote.” The mood among Trump allies remained both combative and hopeful for much of Wednesday, with advisers carefully monitoring several states — including Arizona and Georgia — that they thought could still break Trump’s way, and grasping at the notion that the president could “catch lightning in a bottle again,” a senior administration official said. Nick Note: Its is a blue wave in fact a Blue Tsunami. The polls will be proven right. What happened is Republicans votes at the poles so their vote was the first counted. Its a matter of days or a week before the mail in ballots are counted which are 80% democratic. When all the votes are in it will be a landslide and the republicans will lose the senate after the run off elections. Hence the slow motion blue Tsunami.

Continue reading “Trump turns angry and despondent as possible defeat looms”

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