And one more. The Democrats completed the midterm election cycle on Tuesday evening by retaining the Georgia senator seat occupied by Raphael Warnock, after a closely watched second round of voting across the country. This African-American pastor crossed swords with the former American football star and candidate supported by Donald Trump Herschel Walker.
With this victory, Joe Biden’s party has just secured an absolute majority in the Senate – 51 seats, against 49 for the Republicans – and this, after losing the one they held in the House of Representatives on 8 last November. Just one more vote, but one that will have a significant effect on the president’s next two years in office. Decryption.
Greater room for maneuver
Until then, Democrats had to contend in Washington with a theoretical majority, with a Senate split 50-50, relying on the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker of the Upper House, to push through their bills. . A framework permanently disturbed by two conservative Democratic senators, Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, who, for two years, have slowed down the legislative process or limited the scope of certain laws.
With one more seat, the balance of power of these two Democrats could therefore change and their influence diminish on legislation relating to the health system, the price of drugs, environmental protection, green energies. or on public transport – among other things – that the presidency of Joe Biden wishes to defend by the end of 2024.
“This is going to make all the difference in the world,” summed up Democratic Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, quoted by the New York Times.
Raphael Warnock’s victory also gives Democrats the chance to more easily thwart Republicans’ attempts to slow down the work of the Upper House, to be less subject to the political program that Republicans will try to define in the House of representatives, to have greater control over the commissions of inquiry and the summoning of witnesses…
A path charted for more progressive judges
The retention of the Democratic senator from Georgia is good news for the liberal majority in the American population. This seat will indeed make it easier and faster for Joe Biden to confirm the appointments of less conservative judges within the country’s judiciary.
It should be remembered that under the presidency of Donald Trump, the Republican majority in the Senate ensured without problem the appointment of three conservative judges in their fifties, to the Supreme Court, but also allowed the renewal of 245 Republican judges in the federal courts a almost everywhere in the country. Most of these magistrates, because of their age, will continue to mark the laws and political decisions of the country for the next 30 to 40 years.
Since Biden’s arrival in the White House, Democrats have sought to reverse this trend. They have already appointed 89 more liberal judges, though facing resistance from Joe Manchin. And they should be able to speed up the ongoing process with less influence coming from the conservative fringe within the party.
This majority could also help Joe Biden maintain the presence of liberal justices on the Supreme Court for the next few years, if however Justices Sonia Sotomayor, 68, and Elena Kagan, 62, decide to retire within two years. years to be replaced by slightly younger judges. The Democrats were indeed marked by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the presidency of Donald Trump, which allowed the Republicans with their majority in the Senate to strengthen the conservative weight of the highest court in the country. Weight that undermined, among other things, the freedom of choice of American women regarding abortion at the beginning of the year.
Another snub for Trump
Herschel Walker’s defeat to Raphael Warnock is also another defeat for former US President and populist Donald Trump, who once again failed to get one of his candidates into one of the strategic races of these midterm elections.
Yes, across the country, Trump has stood in the shadow of more than 200 elected Republican candidates, but all have been in corners of the country where they would have been, with or without the dubbing of the former reality star.
However, in the handful of states where the populist has tried to use its weight, its image and its money to overthrow Democratic candidates or to prevent the victory of Democrats, the ballot boxes have not delivered results commensurate with the self-esteem.
This was the case in Pennsylvania, where Trumpist Mehmet Oz was defeated in November by Democrat John Fetterman, giving Joe Biden’s party a Senate win.
Apart from the position of senator from Ohio, won in November by Republican JD Vance, the candidates supported by Trump, before Herschel Walker in Georgia during this second round, were defeated in Arizona for the position of governor and senator, at head to Michigan, Nevada and now Georgia.
Raphael Warnock’s victory is also doubly significant since it confirms the presence of the first African-American elected senator in this southern state in 2020 and now reappointed to this position for the next six years.