The abandonment of planning for a move to Georgia was a convincing statement for the Democrats about their ability to take the two Senate seats held by the Republicans in the second round of elections on January 5.
PRESIDENT-ELECTED Joe Biden traveled to Georgia on Tuesday to campaign for two candidates for the US Senate. And the appearance alone was as much a statement as the words he spoke.
Georgia will elect two senators in the second round of elections on January 5, and if Democrats take both seats, the party - with 50 seats and elected Vice President Kamala Harris as the deciding factor - will have effective control of the House.
At one time this could have been considered unlikely. Georgia hasn't had a Democratic Senator since 2005, the last days of the term of Zell Miller, who had campaigned for George W. Bush at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
But following Biden's victory in Georgia in this year's presidential election, Peach State has become less like an impossible mission for Democrats, who are nominating John Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock for the seats now held by GOP Senators David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler.
Both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have traveled to Georgia to rally Republicans for a ticket, despite the fact that Senate party control won't have a direct impact on their working lives next year.
For Biden, however, the abandonment of planning a transition to Georgia was a powerful statement to the Georgian democrats: yes, Biden said. You did it for me, and you can do it again.
“I think I won Georgia three times,” Biden said at a rally in Atlanta, referring to the multiple recounts sought by the Trump campaign in an unsuccessful attempt to strip Biden of 16 state electoral college votes.
“All of you have just taught Donald Trump a lesson,” Biden added. “In this election, Georgia was not going to be bullied. Georgia was not going to be silenced. Georgia was not going to stand aside and let Donald Trump or Texas come here and toss your votes. "
The president-elect was referring to the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, joined by 17 other states in trying to reverse Biden's victories in Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan on groundless vote-rigging. The US Supreme Court dismissed the challenge, saying that Texas did not even have the right to question election procedures in other states.
Biden reminded the crowd that Purdue and Loeffler "stood by" while Trump tried to refute Georgia's results.
Stacey Abrams, a former Democratic legislative leader who is widely credited with getting her party's voters - especially black and Asian voters - to vote for Biden, said Democrats need to step up their game even further.
“The impossible dream of making Georgia blue and keeping it blue will come true if you show up,” Abrams told the crowd. She said that even with a record voter turnout last month, 1 million African American eligible voters failed to vote, and "that's 1 million more."
Early voting turnout is high: 168,000 people voted on the first day of early voting on Monday. By comparison, 136,000 people took part in the general election last month on the first day of early voting. The comparison, however, is constrained by the fact that Georgia experienced technical problems with voter verification in November, delaying the process by 15 minutes for each voter, Michael McDonald, director of a non-partisan US election project, said in a tweet.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 482,792 people had voted, according to McDonald's.
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