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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. I think I know why many of you are tuning in right now. Here's the answer the best we can give it to you. We cannot say yet that Democrats have won control of the Senate, but we can say that's looking like the most likely outcome. The network decision desks, including Fox, I'll mention, have projected Raphael Warnock, the winner over Kelly Loeffler. Democrat Jon Ossoff is leading in his race, but it's still too close to call. Here is Warnock in a victory statement, referring to his mother.

Raphael Warnock: 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator. I come before you tonight as a man who knows that the improbable journey that led me to this place in this historic moment in America could only happen here."

Brian: The now projected senator-elect Raphael Warnock. Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler, we should say has not conceded, however, and said she still has a path to victory. If that's true, though, it's not much of a path, Warnock's lead is 53,000 votes. Now, Biden won the State by only 11,000, and that margin barely changed at all after two recounts, so 53,000 votes is relatively a lot in this context.

Ossoff has now also claimed victory in his race, but the networks are not yet calling that one, his margin is smaller. According to a Fox News data analysis, and I'm citing Fox because their website does a good clear data dive on this. It's the same data as everyone has, just a good analysis article. According to the way they write it up, the Democrats were helped by strong showings among Black voters, young voters, and suburban voters.

One important stat, the share of voters in the runoffs who were Black increased from 29% of all voters in November to 32% for the runoff, and they voted for Democrats by an 88-point margin in yesterday's election. That was two points more than the rate at which Black voters went for Biden in November, which was an 86-point margin over Trump. That's a lot of numbers, but in some, Black voters were a little more of the electorate this time and they voted even a little more Democrat this time. That number, 32% of the electorate is really interesting to me, by the way, because the stats as I know them are that Black people in Georgia are 33% of the total population. If they've now reached 32%, or about the same of the electorate, voting in their actual percentage in the population is an incredible historic victory over voter suppression.

Also, voters who described themselves as moderates went heavily for the Democrats. Moderates chose the Democrats in the runoffs by a 34 percentage point margin, according to that Fox analysis. At the same time, Republicans Perdue and Loeffler won white voters by 46 and 44 percentage points respectively, better than Trump's margin of victory among whites, which was 40%, but the share of white voters in the pool went down. In other words, in a polarized turnout election, it was even more polarized by race than the presidential but more democrats turned out.

In some interesting results from the exit poll survey of voters, Georgia runoff voters had positive views of Biden, 51% favorable versus 47% unfavorable. Trump's marks were the reverse, 47% favorable, 51% unfavorable according to Fox, so heads up Republican candidates in elections to come, it looks like Trump's participation in these runoff races was a net negative for his party.

Similarly, more people describe the Democratic runoff candidates as honest and trustworthy, 50% for Ossoff and 52% for Warnock, then said the same about Republicans, 46% said Perdue is trustworthy, 44% said Loeffler is, according to the Fox News exit poll, which for the record had a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points, so a small margin of error, those stats seem to be meaningful.

One more stat for now comparing the two Democrats to each other at last report. This is so interesting, Warnock did just a little better than Ossoff, about four-tenths of a percentage point better. Warnock at 50.6% of the vote, Ossoff 50.2%. That's just enough of a difference to have the network data crunchers call the Warnock race as they did, but not the one between Ossoff and Perdue, still counting. Warnock would be the first Black senator from Georgia, Ossoff would be the State's first Jewish senator.

Even as the counting goes on for who will be in the Senate, the Senate and House are beginning the process this morning of certifying the electoral college vote in the presidential race. Even in apparent defeat, Kelly Loeffler says she will be among the senators who will object to the election results. It looks like they are in for many hours of Florida debate today over about six swing states that some Republicans will object to, but they do not have the votes to successfully deny any results even if the law allowed which is very questionable.

With me now, Washington Post national political correspondent Dave Weigel. Dave, thanks for joining us on a strange and historic morning. Welcome back to WNYC.

David Weigel: No, it's very good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Brian: Let's talk first about the Warnock-Loeffler race. What would you add or change from the data that I've been citing to explain the results as they stand right now?

David: I think that was a very good setup for what happened the election. One way I was looking at it in the final days, and I was in Georgia is that you basically had a version of the Trump campaign versus a version of the Biden campaign being run without Donald Trump on the ballot with Donald Trump that are going to be discussed today trying to undermine the election results.

You had Republicans run the pure base campaign. Kelly Loeffler was appointed to seat in part because she was a successful businesswoman and there was an idea that she would offer a different face the Republican Party to the suburban voters who've been trending the other way. She was in a primary, she ran harder the right and then she stayed pretty hard right in this runoff and ran a mostly negative campaign against Warnock, similar to what Donald Trump was doing against Joe Biden.

Down to how, there wasn't one theme, really about the dangers of electing Warnock. Now, she'd call him a radical liberal that would appear in the heads, but every few days, there was a new piece of opposition research and there'd be a new focus on that, to the point where the final recount now when I've seen her on the trail, she was talking about how he got a-- He didn't get donations from David Boies, who, among other people has a lawyer for Harvey Weinstein, but said that Harvey Weinstein's lawyer gave him money, that's not a coincidence.

She was going after every character point she could, whereas Warnock like Joe Biden and Ossoff, who I think we can maybe discuss separately, they just ran a very clear campaign saying, "We're nice guys. First of all, I'm going to do a lot of repackaging rebranding, and very specifically elect us, you're going to get COVID relief, you're going to get student debt relief, you're going to have healthcare expanded or protected, and then towards the end, and we're going to try to pass a $2,000 relief check for everybody."

Like the presidential campaign, the Democratic message was fairly coherent, fairly positive with negativity when they needed negativity. The Republican's campaign was much more base-centric. It's really not surprising to see the moderate numbers that you cited because I can't think of a thing that the Republicans did to win moderates.

Brian: Really interesting. Listeners, your reactions to or questions about the Georgia runoff, or the coming electoral vote floor debate in Congress today. 646-435-7280. For Dave Weigel from The Washington Post, 646-435-7280. Some of our Georgia listeners who've called in the past, anything you want to say to debrief these results, or talk about what's still going on in the count or anything else. People in Georgia or anyone else anywhere else, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or you can always tweet @brianlehrer, we'll keep our eye on Twitter.

Before we change races and get to Ossoff-Perdue, Dave, there are a thousands of overseas and military ballots yet to be counted, some of which have not even been delivered yet by the post office, but I gather there are fewer of those than the margin of victory at this point which is 53,000, which is why they can call the race. Is that your understanding?

David: That's exactly it and that's a reason why the Ossoff race has not been called yet but the Democrats were anticipating this. You'll notice that Republicans held the victory party or a election night party last night with Senator Loeffler speaking. Democrats didn't have any events in-person. They didn't even have a car rally because they were telling people, "This is going to be close to our polling and our turnout model says we'll be close, we'll know by the end of the week who won," and that is how they operated.

In the Ossoff case, he benefits, I think, in terms of the perception of whether he's going to win from people having gone through this Biden recount experience. We now know that the Biden margin of 0.2%, it was a little bit less than 12,000 votes seems very narrow but that was barely changed at all by two recounts, and so when people look at numbers like Ossoff's getting in, get your expectation is that the final absentee ballots, the final vouch being counseled to DeKalb County, maybe push him over 20,000 vote lead.

We've seen that's just not a lead that gets obviated by recounts or by late votes. Now, technically, if the margin is within a 0.5%, Senator Perdue can request a recount. I don't think there's much a risk that he wouldn't that could come up things for a little while, but we see the writing on the wall. That's not a margin that gets undone by recount, but that is the reason why we're not just as an unassailable lead and is going to be in the Senate without much of a question.

Brian: If Warnock has an unassailable lead based on that data, as you just described it, do you know on what basis Kelly Loeffler is refusing to concede and saying she has a path to victory?

David: It's a fashion right now. [chuckles] You could just not concede defeat if you are a supporter of the president. You've seen this in a number of races. There are house in to be fair. There are two house races that are still tied up in court or in a challenge with Democrats or behind, but trying to find the votes, not find them, trying to prove that there are votes that should be counted legally, that puts them at the top.

This isn't Republican-only thing, but this level of denial where candidates are clearly mathematically eliminated and refused to concede. Now, Loeffler has not talked about fraud in this race yet and I wouldn't rule it out but I think it's more of that. Some of this perception too, if you think about it, Loeffler who has not been elected to anything is still a Senator and she's going to vote today to protest the Joe Biden victory in Georgia after voters rejected her so it's not a very good look.

I think maybe some projection that she is still maybe going to be a Senator when this is over that there's a path to victory. I think some of that is massaging the way this looks when she votes in a few hours, but some it's just Republican, if they don't have to concede just yet in this election has just not been conceding and the results get certified without them doing so.

Brian: What's the latest you're saying in the Ossoff-Perdue race? About an hour ago, Ossoff declared victory, but without the network data desks, calling the race, do you know on what basis he did that?

David: Yes. I was starting to describe some of it before, but this is very similar to what happens with Joe Biden, except Ossoff's in a slightly stronger position than Joe Biden was. You mentioned the overseas military ballots. It's important that they're overseas and military to be, because not only have Republicans done a bit worse, the president especially is a little bit less for the down-ballot Republicans, a little bit worse than they did four years ago with military voters. Overseas ballots, that's expats, that's diplomats, that's an electorate that was very strongly democratic this year.

Let's say there are 17,000 or so of those, let's say 15,000 of them were actually cast. Republicans would need to win well, at this point, maybe 120% of those votes, but even 100% is unrealistic and the rest of the votes that we're expecting and if you follow the secretary of state's office in Georgia, which is under duress and famously been providing regular updates on the race, they're telling everybody, "Here's what's still out there." There's just those into DeKalb County, which is a very liberal part of the Atlanta Metro area. There's a little bit left in Savannah because absentee ballots.

Really tens of thousands of ballot left and if they break towards Ossoff, let's say even by 10, 15 points, that would probably put him over the runoff threshold. This is why you have heard the Perdue campaign say that they think that when the vote votes are counted, they have not laid out a legal strategy. Look, because of the very litigious Trump campaign, we've seen what kind of arguments courts will put up with, what kind of votes don't count and what kinds they don't. If Republicans were inclined to run this Trump playbook in Georgia, again, they could, but we've seen it doesn't succeed when you have the president of United States putting his weight on it, so why would it succeed now?

Brian: By the way, listeners, one pronunciation note, if you were seeing the Election County by County maps on TV last night and hearing Dave just mentioned one of the key counties, DeKalb and it looked to you like DeKalb-

David: [chuckles]

Brian: -it's Dekalb Avenue in Brooklyn, it's DeKalb County in Georgia. It's Houston Street in Manhattan and its Houston County in Georgia. Yes, it is, and of course-

David: They got that one right.

Brian: They got that one right and it's Houston, Texas. Curtis in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi, Curtis.

Curtis: Hey, Brian. Good morning. It's a beautiful morning in New York. Who would have guessed that Georgia would turn every single round? What I'm struck by is that Joe Biden and Reverend Warnock basically ran on George H. W. Bush's kinder and gentler [unintelligible 00:16:17]. Who would have known?

Brian: That's interesting. What do you think about that historical analogy after eight years of Ronald Reagan who was popular, but divisive and seen as hardcore, his vice president, George H. W. Bush, ran for his election and won of course, on moving to a kinder, gentler America. He's saying that's how Biden and Warnock won. What do you think about that historical analogy?

David: I think that ran through the entire democratic campaign this year, that's true. I'd add something in Georgia, which is that any analysis of how I feel we're not, one, is going to have a lot of mention of what people probably call the puppy ads. Warnock reintroduced themselves once the runoff was called, once it started, he had the first in a series of ads where he warned that the negative ads were coming his way, actually I think the first one [chuckles] was, "Get ready, Georgia," and he warned that negative ads would say he hated puppies among other things so he stepped on a crack.

Throughout the campaign, he was running these ads where he'd walk with puppies, have a dog in his lap when he was talking. There was this very specific effort to brand him as a relatable and kind pastor because Democrats knew what was coming, which was this Republican campaign based on quotes from his sermons, protests he'd joined, civil disobedience he'd been involved in that was going to portray him in Loeffler's words, a radical liberal, but it got more intense as it went on and Marxist anti-police et cetera, et cetera. There was a real effort to say, look, this is a guy who grew up in poverty and the projects, I think the 11th of 12 kids. A lot of campaign, if any, especially when you have hundreds of millions of dollars that you had in this race. A lot of that is about selling this package.

I think that that was effective, obviously in counteracting this Republican campaign. It also was a much better sales pitch than the one Loeffler in that race, especially it was using, this is somebody who was fairly unknown to political, I would not say to voters in Georgia, she a very successful businesswoman, owner of the WNBA team, but the first thing people knew about her was that she might've made money off of stock trade after the coronavirus briefing and she ran as this blue jeans, a Patagonia vest, a cap with a Blue Lives Matter flag on it. She rebranded herself as a Trump conservative, which to a lot of people struck very, very phony.

I think a clip that's going to be played a lot, maybe by Democrats looking for [unintelligible 00:19:08], maybe for people explaining what's happening this week is her walking up on the stage with the president and saying, "I'm going to have the electoral college vote. We're going to get this done." [inaudible 00:19:18] They're gone to the crowd, pointing at the crowd. That's one thing I found with voters, just even with democratic voters who were organizing for Ossoff that they're really motivated, not just by their like of Warnock, they're like of Jon Ossoff, by Loeffler and what they would call her phoniness.

The final thing I'd say is for Black voters, you mentioned how much the turnout increased Black voters. Warnock was benefiting from the fact that Black voters felt the attacks on him were racist. They were trying to take rhetoric from the Black church out of context to make it look dangerous and radical and violent and at the same time to white suburbanites, he was branding himself as, "Look, you really believe I'm a radical. Here I am with this puppy. Here I am in the suburb. Here I am with my sweater vest." It was a very successful effort to make him likable to voters because the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist church is a figure in Georgia, but not one that-- He started the race. I think it was about 5 or 6% of the votes-- [crosstalk]

Brian: That's the position for people who don't know there's history. That's the position that Martin Luther King himself held.

David: Yes. That's why I think it was resonant when Black voters began to think, "Are Republicans attacking the Black church of attacking the Martin Luther King's church for political gain?" I think look at the vote outside of Atlanta, even where it was expectedly huge for Democrats, smaller cities with Black majorities in rural Black belt, turnout was increased massively from November for a runoff because the old rule of politics in Georgia was if there was a runoff after a presidential election, Black voters weren't motivated to turn out. Loeffler, I think by accident created this turnout machine for Black voters and then Democrats did most of the work I'm saying, but they had something to run on and something to run again.

Brian: We'll continue with Dave Weigel, national political correspondent for The Washington Post in a minute. We'll talk about why Warnock seems to have done a little better than Ossoff. We'll talk about how the role of Trump in this race seems to set up Trump for better or for worse after he leaves office. We'll talk a little bit about what's going on in Congress right now and we'll take more of your calls. Stay with us, Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with the breaking news that Raphael Warnock has been declared the winner of that Senate runoff in Georgia. Jon Ossoff the other Democrat is leading in his race, but by a little bit less, just enough less that the networks haven't been able to call that one yet. The counting is continuing in that. We're talking about that and the drama starting to take place in Congress this morning having to do with the seating of the electors in the presidential race with Dave Weigel, national political correspondent for The Washington Post. Robert in Atlanta, you're on WNYC. Hi, Robert, thank you for calling in.

Robert: Okay. Thank you for having me. I'm a seventh generation Atlanta, Georgian, and that I'm proud of the fact that Georgia has done this. I just hope the country can honor even those people that voted for Trump because they've been dissatisfied for some reason. I think Warnock summed it up beautifully when he said that this is the country only America is similar to Mr. Obama, President Obama statement that in this country where his mother who is now 82 picked cotton for someone else, a white man, most likely was able to vote for her youngest son to be United States senator.

I was writing a friend of mine that lives in DC and as I was writing that, goosebumps came up on my arms that I can after, especially this autocrat has been in office. I can still feel goosebumps that hit that motion that oh, my God, [unintelligible 00:23:30]

Brian: Go ahead.

Robert: -for a way that we can bring people together. Hopefully this is the beginning of that and somebody can come up. I pray for a man like a King or someone with the ability to have rhetoric to keep that message in front of us that this is a place that one of the only places in the world that can try to include people that aren't included. Thank you for inviting me to your program.

Brian: Robert, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for your emotion. Dave Weigel, have you been hearing that kind of emotion in your Georgia reporting?

David: Yes. I went to DC for the other thing we're talking about today based before the race was called. I haven't been in Georgia getting people's reactions there, but I was getting it on the trail. I was talking before about why Warnock's personal appeal and why the sense that he was being really done unfairly by these negative ads, why that help motivate voters. You would see that when you'd see people here from Warnock, he was a fairly powerful order. He was more careful in his single debate with Loeffler, but you did see that emotional connection to him.

I think that is a reason why Ossoff is favored, he's ahead, but there were two factors there. I think one that Loeffler was just viewed much more negatively than Perdue. Perdue had a reputation now, he's only been a one term, but reputation is more of a outsider businessmen who earned his way into the Senate as opposed to being appointed. It was just both less alienating people than Loeffler and Ossoff's story was not as inspiring as Warnock's and that explains a little bit of a discrepancy, but it's really not much. I think they're going to end up running maybe 30,000 votes apart in a race with a 4.7 million votes, maybe a bit less.

Brian: Right. Or 50.6% for Warnock in his victory compared to 50.2%. Overwhelmingly, people voted for both Democrats or for both Republicans, but it could wind up that Warnock won and Ossoff lost even though Ossoff is leading. You just gave us some of the basis on which that slim difference might have occurred. What about misogyny? We don't talk about it much when it comes to Republican women, but there are hurdles to being a Black candidate as Warnock was, there are hurdles to being a woman candidate as Kelly Loeffler was.

David: Right. While there's a lot of focus on the history of Raphael Warnock becoming the state's first Black Senator, the state has now not ever elected a female Senator. She was appointed. The previous female senator from Georgia who was on a search for, I think, a day or a couple of days just in a vacancy that was being filled, also appointed. Add to that the one of the casualties in the first person that Jon Ossoff ran against, the casualties of the last few years was Karen Handel, who was a female Republican politician who came very close to winning a primary for governor, ran for Senate. I think that bit around the edges, but Loeffler, her approach to the race and her branding is this rooting tooting conservative whose ads-- remember what I'm saying?

Maybe not everyone watching these ads as accessibly as I do, but she was running ads in the final days of the primary, calling her more conservative than a tilt of the hunt. She was not leaning in on any of the qualities that I think some of the more successful female Republican politicians, which includes a lot of winners in the house races this year. I think the majority of Democrats who lost reelection lost to female candidates.

Brian: That's true.

David: They lost to female Republican. There wasn't much of a misogyny backlash in those races in fact, but Republicans emphasize that. That's why I was saying this earlier. There was some hope in January, 2020 when Loeffler was appointed, she might run a race like that instead of the way she ran. I think running is this hard-right candidate who was mostly speaking negative things about her opponent as opposed to talking about her own agenda. I think that's a bigger factor than any in misogyny.

Brian: Ellen in Stanford, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ellen. Thank you for calling in. Ellen, are you there? Ellen in Stanford, once. Ellen in Stanford, twice. Ari in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ari. Maybe we're having a phone fault.

Ari: Hey, no this is Ari in Brooklyn. Thanks for taking my call. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the role of progressive organizations on the ground in Georgia and how they work to really provide some of the margins, so groups like the New Georgia Project or national groups like [unintelligible 00:28:37] or third, groups that really have plenty of policy differences of Ossoff and Warnock from the left, but who nonetheless, I think really delivered this margin and worked on the doors and maybe millions of phone calls and how that maybe not only is the reason we're having this conversation this morning, but also what that mean for the--

Will that gives the democratic establishment any pause as they have really quite a history of punching left, when they win or when they win, and then those this a day we can say, "Oh, look, actually the left wing of the Democratic party, whatever you think about us politically, strategically, we're essential." In strategically, Black women, immigrants, queers, that's the reason why Warnock and Ossoff are going to the Senate.

Brian: Dave.

David: I think he makes a good point. The expression is, "Victory has a thousand fathers and defeats and orphans," and they're felt like they were about a thousand groups that poured into Georgia on behalf of the Democrats to help out with this. He mentioned a couple. I went out canvassing with new South pack. I noted in one of my articles that some of the doors that this new South pack canvassers for going to a black pack had just been there. It was another group that was founded a few years ago to target Black voters with a more substantive policy messaging about what could be done if Democrats win, as opposed to just coming back and ask them to vote because they're Democrats.

The Working Families Party, the Sunrise Movement, if you can think of a liberal group, it probably got involved in Georgia and Republicans did the same. They brought in some groups, but it was far less effective. They had a lot of rallies that didn't seem to do a whole lot. A lot of special guests who came in, but no, there's very effective progressive organizing, but to his point that Democrats tend to punch left if they win or they lose.

It's not complicated in Georgia, but it's worth noting what happens is also often Warnock did not run as left-wing candidates actually when Ossoff was running for the house in 2017, Bernie Sanders pointedly said that he wasn't sure of Ossoff as a progressive. I actually [chuckles] think I might've been the first person who asked him about that because he was campaigning around the country with Tom Perez and need to get involved in that race.

We're not too. He was very pointed whenever being accused of wanting to defund the police or do something radical, said he didn't want to. Ossoff also started the runoff actually with this interview with Axios where he almost when they were going over the bullet point liberal issues, because those are very big in people's minds right after Trump lost the election, but did it better than expected. He was very happy to do so. He ran through and said he wasn't record packing. The jury was out on the filibuster. He was against defunding the police, he was against getting rid of private health insurance. I think this does matter.

Now, one thing that the Trump campaign wasted a lot of time on with Joe Biden is just accusing him holding positions no one believes he holds and Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were not as well-known when this campaign began and that's Joe Biden. Usually, campaigns have a chance to brand a candidate you've never heard of. The introduction they'll make is here's some radical beliefs that hopefully, but Democrats had enough money to contradict that and they did not run as progressive in the style of Bernie Sanders, they ran as Joe Biden Democrats with Joe Biden ran a more liberal campaign than Hillary Clinton did four years ago, or frankly that Barack Obama did in 2008, just because of the way politics has moved.

Yes, they relied on a lot of this progressive organizing to turn votes out, which was very effective, but they also massage the messaging. I don't think anyone could go look at this race and say this is a mandate for the entire Bernie Sanders agenda, but they can look at it and say, "Look, the consultants were telling everybody that we're going to lose if [inaudible 00:32:36] the magic word, defund the police." They need to calm down. There's actually a way to work around these issues and come up with something positive.

Brian: I think based on seniority, Bernie Sanders stands to be the chairman of the budget committee if Ossoff also wins his race. That ought to be interesting. What do you make of the impact of--?

David: Then that was the point-- Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Brian: Go ahead. No, that was a talking point for the Republicans.

David: It was a talking point for Republicans to their voters that if we lose this, Bernie Sanders is going to run the budget committee. I pointed that out because a lot of their talking points were a little bit misleading. That one's not wrong in there Democrats will have the ability to confirm judges pretty easily. If they want to raise taxes, they can do that without a filibuster. Yes, the committee chairmanships, you're going to have Bernie Sanders running the budget committee if this all holds. That was true.

Brian: We're [unintelligible 00:33:24] talk like this very much anymore. What do you make of the impact of Trump in this race, including his insertion of the $2,000 stimulus checks issue at the last minute, which the Democrats had endorsed, but the Republicans then had a scramble to change their positions on to line up with him. Also, his rally Monday night was much more focused on the fourth claims that he won his election rather than on the senators.

David: He had a disastrous impact on these campaigns. I think Republicans with him on the way out are happy to throw him under the bus. He can't really shake it like the final political rally of his career as president. This term was the sending off to people who lost the reelection. On paper, starting married didn't even go very well, but he had a really dilatory impact on these campaigns again and again.

I remember I was in the state the first week of the runoff Republicans started to bring in surrogates and bring in resources. I talked to Rick Scott who's going to be the chairman of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, the NRSC. One of the questions, natural question to ask because on November 13th or 14th was do you think that the president telling people that he still could win is that going to complicate this race? Because if the president was winning, if he'd won the election and Democrats won these races, will Republicans still control the Senate because Joe Biden, one, Kamala Harris will break the tie.

Everyone knows those rules now, but I was laying out to Scott and he said, "Well, the election is on January 5th and the presidential race will be over by then," and you let that hang in the air. The Republicans were optimistically saying, "We're going to indulge the president for a while, but surely, he will stop doing this by the time people are voting and he didn't." You mentioned the checks. I would add to that the Republicans call for the resignation of the secretary of state without saying anything that he'd done wrong. They just were siding with Trump on that. That was a divisive and that backfired on them.

Brian: The Georgia secretary of state Republican Raffensperger. What happens now in that respect, one or the races close enough that there will be recounts, delaying a final call because there may be a lot of democratic triumphalism around this morning, but these races are not official yet. Are there any temps emerging to discredit these elections as fraudulent, as of course Trump is doing with the presidential race in Georgia?

David: Well, I think I was saying before that, because we saw how Biden won the state unless, and it's not even worth being hypothetical. Republicans don't expect their final votes to break their way so Ossoff is going to end up with more votes with a bigger margin, I should say, than Biden. Warnock already is there. His margin is about five times as big as Biden. The Warnock race, it's not going to be, you can't recount it. They're just on the books, you cannot ask for the race to be recounted, if it was a one point margin, it needed to be under 0.5%. Ossoff's knocking on the door there and there's a chance that Republicans-- Purdue demands a recount and that Senate Republican who would have 50 seats in the Senate to 49 for Democrats until that race is resolved.

That may say they're going to wait for the recount to settle this. The timing of this is that the votes are being counted pretty quickly. We'll have the military ballots by Friday. The race is probably able to be certifiable. You can probably certify this race by the weekend or by next week. A recount will be requested but we're not getting into all the timeline details. We're not talking about a ton of time, unless there was some discrepancy. There is no recount process if all stuff is above 0.5%. A lot of what Republicans have been doing to delay this, to demand things, not be certified, that state legislators, uncertified elections [inaudible 00:37:32].

I'm not saying that there's not going to be a state legislator who tries or the president doesn't demand to be done, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who frankly is a reason that the Democrats won because in her district, she did nothing to turn out votes and turn out with fairly low in a Republican area. High but for this runoff, pretty low. They don't really have any tools in the toolbox that Trump hasn't used that were unsuccessful in reversing a much closer race. I think if Ossoff ends up with a lead of 0.5% plus anything, probably the race is over, purpose and shouting and the protests. They probably would not be seated during the Trump presidency. They probably would be seated maybe the first few days of the Biden-Harris presidency.

Brian: Right. You meant to say certified before you accidentally said certifiable and laughed it off.

David: [chuckles]

Brian: More people are seriously talking about whether the president is certifiable at this point with the things he's trying to pull, but one more call. Robin in Alpharetta, Georgia in the Atlanta area. You're on WNYC. Hi, Robin.

Robin: Hey, Brian. We talked like a week and a half ago, I think, before the election.

Brian: I remember you.

Robin: I was thinking. I just worked five days in a row at my hospital. We had another record setting days for COVID cases. Most of our hospitals are on diversion. We can't accept patients. That's how bad it is.

Brian: Bringing us back to reality.

Robin: I had a really grueling horrible day, but last night for the first time in a really long time, I went to bed with hope and I woke up to these numbers and it's going to mean, and I think that's what Georgia voters voted for is relief. The house has done the work and now the Senate can do the work and talk about tiebreaker Senator, now VP-elect Harris. It's going to be a real game changer, not only for the United States, but definitely for the people of Georgia. I think that's what we voted for and I'm so, so glad.

Brian: Robin, thank you for calling us again from Alpharetta. Again, we have to say that these are not final, final results but they do seem to be trending in that direction. Dave Weigel, national political correspondent for The Washington

Post. Before you go, let's just make this segue very briefly, as you did in your reporting. You've been covering Georgia and now you're in D.C. to cover this drama in Congress today, and I'm not going to go over for the umpteenth time on this show, what the Republicans get to do to object in the house and the Senate and the floor debate that we're likely to see today because we know how it's going to turn out.

The electoral vote is going to be certified by a majority of the house in the Senate, but there is some drama around the role of Vice President Pence, whose job was supposed to be ceremonial, officially accepting the electoral college results after Congress votes to defeat these challenges, but Trump, as you know, has been leaning on him heavily to declare a 10-day delay in pursuit of what they're calling an audit of selected states. I just want to play a clip of Al Gore in that same role in 2001, after he lost that heavily contested election to George W. Bush, when he stood up on the Senate floor playing the same role.

Speaker 8: The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for president of the United States is 538, of which a majority is 270. George W. Bush of the state of Texas has received for president of the United States 271 votes. Al Gore of the state of Tennessee has received 266 votes. This announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the person's elected president and vice president of the United States, each for the term beginning on the 20th day of January 2001, and shall be entered together with a list of the votes on the journals of the Senate and the house of representatives. May God bless our new president and our new vice president, and may God bless the United States of America.

[applause]

Brian: A little pro forma statement, dry as toast, but goosebumps, right folks? In hearing it right at this moment. Are we going to hear something like that from my pants today, Dave?

David: By the end of the process, I would expect that. Thank you for the warning. [chuckles] People don't need to, the schoolhouse rock lesson for the umpteenth time, but Republicans have already been tailoring their ambitions. There are reports are going to, even though there are seven states, Republicans tried to say we have alternate electors. Well, first, there's only five that bothered sending those electricity to the archives and because they didn't really have any legal authority, the archives of the United States only gave the electors that Biden won for debates.

The rule of this process don't let Pence do that now. I think the president has basically rerun the playbook that he ran around this, wait until we get to the Supreme Court hoax a couple of weeks ago, which is there's going to be something happening, there's the vice president's power doing. It's a great buildup followed by-- It's not succeeding because the options here really are Pence doing his job or a constitutional crisis that would wind up very quickly in court, and until it happens, you can't say what the final result is. I'm going to frankly, more comfortable saying Ossoff to win the election, it's like predicting what Pence will actually say.

Who knows if he thinks there's a compromise, where he can make some statement that cast out in the election while confirming it, because Republicans will refer to evidence that's going to be presented and we've seen what the evidence is. The president has made several videos and wasted most of his speech in Georgia, repeating facts that aren't true about the election. Let's take stock after the challenge to Arizona, where Republicans say a bunch of stuff that's not true and the boats are upheld for Joe Biden. How much, because even this process, basically there's going to be a loss there.

There'll be a loss when they challenged Georgia, how much further are they willing to go? We shall see, but Republicans are in a far worse mood about this stuff than they were yesterday and you saw the people who stuck their necks out first had been abandoned by, already most Republican senators have taken a position on this. But yes, the question of Pence, there is pressure on him to do something he can't do, just like there's pressure on John Roberts to do something he can't do, just like there's pressure on Brian Camp to do something he can't do. The president says a lot, but his word isn't really worth anything at this point.

Brian: Dave Weigel, national political correspondent for The Washington Post. I have a feeling you did this on very little sleep today and you gave us a lot of time and you gave us a lot of great analysis-

David: [chuckles]

Brian: -so we really, really appreciate it even more than usual.

David: I really appreciate talking about it. Thank you very much.

 

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