U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff, one of two Democrats who will face Republican incumbents in runoff elections in Georgia on January 5, predicted in an interview with Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union on November 29 that there would be dire consequences if Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler win reelection — thus maintaining GOP control of the Senate during its next session. If both Republicans hold on to their seats (giving the GOP 52 senators) Ossoff asserted that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “will try to do to Biden and Harris just like he tried to do to President Obama. It will be paralysis, partisan trench warfare, obstructionism as far as the eye can see, at a moment of crisis, when we need strong action.”
The other Senate runoff race in Georgia will pit Reverend Raphael Warnock against Loeffler.
Ossoff has been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an independent who caucuses with Democrats and describes himself as a democratic socialist.
Bash reminded Ossoff that with Joe Biden on the ballot, “Democrats lost almost a dozen seats nationwide in the House,” and “didn’t win majorities in about a dozen state legislative chambers that they were really targeting.” In view of that, Bash asked Ossoff, “What makes you so sure that Republicans who voted for Biden won’t use this, your race, as an opportunity to have a check on him?”
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Ossoff did not answer the question directly, but said: “Well, what we need is the capacity for this incoming administration to govern in the midst of a crisis. I mean, so many families here in Georgia and across the country can’t feed themselves right now. Businesses are on the brink. Folks are looking at eviction and foreclosure.”
If Ossoff’s statement indicates that he plans to use the lack of progress in Congress to pass a coronavirus stimulus package as a campaign issue against Purdue, that issue may become irrelevant following a December 1 announcement by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both houses of Congress that unveiled a $908 billion coronavirus stimulus package proposal that includes $288 billion in small business aid such as Paycheck Protection Program loans, $160 billion in state and local government relief and $180 billion to fund a $300 per week supplemental unemployment benefit through March. Should Purdue join in the bipartisan consensus to back this proposal, it would deprive Ossoff of a key campaign talking point.
While Ossoff predicts devastating consequences if Republicans maintain control of the Senate, Loeffler, the other GOP incumbent trying to hold on to her seat, called Georgia’s Senate seats — essential to maintain the Republican majority in the upper house — a “firewall” against socialism. Loeffler predicts that if Democrats reverse the balance of power, they would usher in “radical” change to the United States.
“Everything’s at stake in this election,” said Loeffler during a November 29 interview on Fox News. “The future of our country is on the ballot on January 5 right here in Georgia…. We know that if [Senate Democratic Leader] Chuck Schumer gets his way and says, ‘Now we take Georgia then we change America,’ they would fundamentally and radically change America for the worse.”
Loeffler continued, “We are not going to let that happen. We are the firewall to stopping socialism in America, right here in Georgia.”
The political phenomenon in which one party controls the White House and the other party controls one or both houses of Congress is often described as “gridlock.” But while Ossoff categorizes such an outcome in negative terms — “paralysis, partisan trench warfare, obstructionism” — a careful look at the intentions of the framers who crafted our Constitution indicates that such a situation was considered a safeguard against unbridled power. As The New American observed back in 2016, “Gridlock in government has become a watchword for inefficiency. But at the time of the founding of the American republic, gridlock was known by another term: checks and balances.”
The Founders employed three strategies to limit the power of government. First among these was to divide the powers of the government — executive, judicial, and legislative — into three separate branches. This is called the separation of powers.
Obviously, a federal government in which the branches of government hold each other in check is a better guarantor of freedom than one in which all three branches march in lockstep.
As we noted, “Gridlock is our most important bulwark against repressive government — which is why our leaders revile it and why citizens should welcome it.”
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