The Georgia Runoff

There's a lot at stake in the runoff election for two U.S. Senate seats being held January 5th in Georgia. Both of Georgia's Senate seats are being contested, and if the Democrats win both they'll have control of the Senate. The Republicans need to win one of the races in order to keep their majority.

If the Democrats control the Senate they'll have mastery of both Houses of Congress as well as the White House and there'll be very little standing in their way of implementing the most radical political and economic agenda in the history of the country.

So what do we know about the Democrat candidates running for those two seats? Jim Geraghty at National Review offers us a partial glimpse of what candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock stand for.

He first presents some personal info on Ossof and then lists some of his policy positions. He opines that "Ossoff is not a sensible centrist Democrat aiming to win a state that, up until very recently, had been a Republican lock. As the Democratic Party veered to the left in the Trump years, Ossoff followed."

Geraghty then goes on to support that claim by listing the following examples of Ossof's positions on current issues. He provides links for these, but you'll have to go to his column to get them:

• When asked about defunding the police, Ossoff offered a qualified endorsement, “You have to have national standards for the use of force, and yeah, you’ve got to be able to hold individual officers and entire departments accountable, and there also has to be funding for those departments on the line.”
• He supports statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
• He says he “maybe” supports eliminating the filibuster in the Senate.
• He wants to ban “semiautomatic rifles” — including the AR-15, the best-selling rifle in the country — and also insists he will “defend the Second Amendment.”
• He wants a “rapidly phased-in ban on single-use plastics,” which would include bottles, wrappers, straws, and bags.
• On judges, Ossoff says he will only vote to confirm federal judges who pledge to uphold Roe v. Wade.
• On the coronavirus pandemic, Ossoff wants to “implement widespread temperature checks.” (Temperature checks are not a terribly effective way to stop the spread of the virus, as roughly 40 percent of people who catch SARS-CoV-2 will be asymptomatic.)
• He supports “a generous forgiveness program for those struggling to pay off their student loans.”
• He wants the upcoming Congress to investigate the Trump administration’s immigration policy, comparing it to war crimes.
• He believes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials should not deport illegal immigrants, but instead ensure they’re being paid the minimum wage.
• He supports sanctuary cities.

Warnock, an African-American pastor, may be even further to the left than Ossof. Writes Geraghty:

Warnock supports the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. The church where Warnock was a pastor “roared its approval” when Fidel Castro came to visit in 1995. He dismissed the New York City “workfare” program as a “hoax.”

Demonizing police officers in the name of criminal-justice reform is almost pro forma in Democratic circles in 2020, but Warnock was well ahead of the curve. In a 2015 sermon, Ossoff argued that the police represented a threat to children:

“Our children are in trouble, and it’s often those who are sworn to protect who cause more trouble . . . our children are in danger.” In another sermon that year, he declared, “we shouldn’t be surprised when we see police officers act like bullies on the street . . . You don’t get to be the incarceration capital of the world by playing nice on the streets. You have to work for that distinction.”

Warnock is a fan of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and is hostile to the state of Israel:

Warnock said the Nation of Islam’s “voice has been important for the development of Black theology.”

What’s more, the pastor really has an axe to grind against Israel. Warnock has compared Israeli control of West Bank to Apartheid South Africa, called Israeli government forces “birds of prey,” called Israel “a land of violence and bloodshed and occupation” run by “clever politicians” who are “racist and vicious,” and compared Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to segregationist George Wallace.

He's also sympathetic to Marxism. Geraghty quotes him:

To be sure, the Marxist critique has much to teach the black church. Indeed, it has played an important role in the maturation of black theology as an intellectual discipline, deepened black theology’s apprehension of the interconnectivity of racial and class oppression and provided critical tools for a black church that has yet to awaken to a substantive third world consciousness.

Geraghty concludes with this note:

Finally, Warnock’s wife accused him of running over her foot with his car during a heated argument days before he filed paperwork to officially seek the office, according to a police report obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Warnock insists it did not happen, and police did not press charges. Warnock and his wife are divorcing.

The policy stances these candidates represent may sound extreme, but I think it's fair to say that they're mainstream in their party. If Ossof and Warnock are elected to the Senate by the citizens of Georgia the United States will look very much different in two years than it does today.