A Celebration Deferred

One year ago today the unthinkable happened.

One year ago today, Stacey Abrams and the state of Georgia elected not one but two Democratic Senators to the United States Senate.

Two months prior, Georgia had shocked the world by providing Joe Biden with an 11,779 vote victory, a number that would go on to cause Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, and the entire Republican Party a Karl Rove-esque type meltdown where they simply refused to believe the result. Both Trump and Graham were so incredulous that both likely engaged in criminal interference to try and overturn the election result. Georgia was, quite simply, the latest example of a stinging rebuke of Donald Trump's presidency as it was the 5th state to flip to Joe Biden during the 2020 general election. Even with its history of slavery, Jim Crow, and anti-voting rights, Georgia's White Republicans were outnumbered, outworked, and outhustled by Georgia Democrats. The fact that it was none other than the late Congressman John Lewis' district that put Georgia into the blue column in the wee hours of the morning the Wednesday after the election was simply icing on the cake. Despite being unwilling to personally accept the result, Donald Trump had officially lost the state of Georgia.

But more than that, Donald Trump's top-of-the-ballot stank also caused down-ballot repercussions. Specifically, Trump's underperformance caused sitting United States Senator David Perdue to fall under the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff election. Perdue clocked in at 49.7%, giving challenger Jon Ossoff one more chance to take on Perdue in two months' time. In addition to the Ossoff runoff against Purdue, Reverend Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, was also scheduled for a runoff election against incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, meaning that both Democratic candidates would be facing well-financed Republican incumbents with name recognition. In the days after the election, it became apparent that the makeup of the Senate would be a 50-48 advantage for Republicans, meaning that two seemingly improbable Senate wins in Georgia would be the only thing keeping Joe Biden's and Kamala Harris' domestic agenda alive for their first two years in office. Not only that, but Stacey Abrams and her team had done so much organizing ahead of the general election that there was no way that voters would turn out in record numbers again in two months' time. For the pessimists among us, it seemed like Democrats would come up just short in their hopes of retaking the House and Senate and granting Joe Biden with a workable agenda for the American people.

But Stacey Yvonne Abrams is no pessimist.

She and her team got right back out there in the days after the election. Her voting rights organization, Fair Fight, brought in thousands of leaders and community activists to engage both on the ground but also on the phones and through text messages. Abrams was blunt about the work and she openly shared that Georgia voters did not want out-of-state volunteers flooding their neighborhoods, advice that was ignored by ignoramus and human tire fire Andrew Yang. But Despite Yang's "you're not helping!" appearance, Georgia voters were receptive to the outreach that was being done. Both Reverend Warnock and Jon Ossoff traversed the state, working in tandem. Thanks to an unforced error by Donald Trump, their message was simple: elect us and receive immediate relief with the passage of a new round of stimulus checks. This bit of kismet came in after Trump expressed his own support for a new round of stimulus forcing both Loeffler and Perdue to abandon their previous opposition to the stimulus and announce newfound support for the additional funding. Warnock and Ossoff jumped on this and with Joe Biden's endorsement claiming that their election would end the gridlock in Washington, Georgia voters had a simple, effective closing argument ahead of the January 5th runoff elections.

On the day of the election, the political punditry was in agreement: this election would come down to turnout. If Democrats were able to defy the odds and have roughly 85-90% of the turnout that they had on Election Day, they had a chance to win both seats. If turnout was lower, then Republicans would likely hold at least one seat, thereby denying Democrats their chance of flipping the United States Senate.

For many of us, the Georgia runoff election night results were a blur. Steve "khaki" Kornacki was back in action having finally shaved and showered after his November election coverage. Like all elections, the county by county distribution came in, starting with the smaller, traditionally Republican counties. This time, the results were looking at not one, but two elections as another critical analysis would be whether there was any difference in the running vote totals of both Warnock and Ossoff. As the night progressed, Democratic turnout was holding steady at roughly 90% what it had been in November while Republican turnout was slipping. Warnock was running slightly ahead of Ossoff but both seemed on pace to potentially pull monumental upsets. At roughly 2 AM on Wednesday, January 6th, Reverend Raphael Warnock was announced as the winner of his race against Kelly Loeffler, making history as the first Black Democratic Senator from Georgia. Roughly 11 hours later, Jon Ossoff was also announced as the winner of his race against David Perdue, becoming the first millennial senator and giving Democrats a historic victory on the evening of January 6th and one that was destined to immediately go down in the annals of history.

Then the insurrection happened.

And unfortunately, the eyes of the country, and the world for that matter, shifted away from Georgia about 570 miles northeast to the Capitol building where thousands of Trump supporters attempted to overthrow the United States government.

Lost in all of this was the time needed to sit back and celebrate. Celebrate Stacey Abrams. Celebrate fellow organizer LaTosha Brown. Celebrate Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Celebrate Fair Fight. Celebrate the multigenerational coalition that came together and turned Georgia from red to blue in less than a decade. Celebrate the young organizers who relocated from out of state for a two-month campaign blitz. Celebrate those who heeded Abrams' advice and worked to support the on-the-ground work through texting and financial contributions. Celebrate an America where the descendants of slaves can shape the fate of a nation. Celebrate a United States Senate that would now work for, rather than against, the American people.

We were denied that celebration one year ago. So let us acknowledge today how January 5th, 2021 was a historic day in American history. It's a day when a pastor from Martin Luther King's congregation and a Jewish thirtysomething walked hand-in-hand along the streets of Georgia where a half-century prior they may very well have been run out of town. It was a day when Georgia Democrats showed up and showed out for their candidates. It was a day when the power of community organizing came to fruition. It was a day when one woman, who worked tirelessly throughout the entire election cycle, who lost her gubernatorial race in 2018 but stayed in the fight, who was told that there was no way Georgia would ever turn blue, showed the entire country what is possible when you stay the course for a second time. What happened on January 5th was an earth-shattering political moment and it is one that deserves its rightful place as a moment that shows what is possible when the goodness of America shines bright and shines through.

And no insurrection can ever take that away from us.