How the Biden team is framing Georgia result — and the road ahead
As President-elect Joe Biden plans to speak about the economy today, he’ll point to the Georgia results as yet another clear mandate from the American people to act on the key challenges facing the country — Covid-19, the economy, climate and racial justice.
A Biden advisor cast the result as further evidence that Biden’s core argument in the campaign was validated by voters, both in the primary that he was the best Democrat to expand the playing field with a broad coalition anchored in African Americans and suburban voters, and in the general election that the country wants to see both parties work together.
The advisor noted Biden’s closing pitch in Atlanta on Monday was the same as the two Democratic candidates’: a vote for Democrats was a vote for $2,000 stimulus check and other urgently needed relief for the American people.
That argument stood in clear contrast to what Republicans have been doing since the general election: “chasing President Trump down a losing rabbit hole of election fraud in an effort to overturn the will of the people,” the adviser said.
Another Biden adviser summed it up this way: “Democrats were focused on Jan. 5 and Republicans were focused on Jan. 6.”
As some Democrats now want to see Biden push the envelope and use even narrow Democratic majorities to advance their agenda, the first Biden adviser stressed that the president-elect, even with the victories, “is just as committed to working across the aisle” now as he was before.
“You still need to build consensus, work across the aisle, govern for everyone. And that is what he’ll do,” the adviser said.
“Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff ran and won on the values of advancing equality and opportunity for working people across the state and the nation,” Pelosi said in a statement, adding that “a unified Democratic Party will advance extraordinary progress For The People.”
“We will pursue a science and values-based plan to crush the virus and deliver relief to struggling families, safeguard the right to quality affordable health care and launch a plan to Build Back Better powered by fair economic growth,” she said.
On a weekly call with House Democrats Wednesday morning, Pelosi also told her colleagues that she has already spoken to Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who, if Ossoff wins, will become the Senate majority leader, and said that Democrats must pass the Voting Rights Act, which would allow federal oversight of jurisdictions that pass laws suppressing the vote in communities of color, sources told NBC News.
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