Raffensperger is Georgia's Secretary of State. As is true of others of his office in other states, he's in charge of running elections and, in the end, certifying the vote when it's all finished.
Dyed-in-the-wool Republicans are having a problem with him. Which is to say: They're having a problem with the statewide vote for president. Which is to say: It's turned against them.
Now it's more than 12,000 votes against them as of this morning. It will trigger an automatic recount because it's inside the percentage of difference required by state law. So they have to do everything all over again.
That gives the conspiracy theorists, who so far have been flailing at shadows, another chance to trash him and raise speculation that something fundamentally bad has taken place. Well, something has, if you're a Republican: Joe Biden won. And that's not going to change.
Unless something incredibly phony has happened, a recount almost never moves more than a couple of hundred votes. Jill Stein learned that in Wisconsin in 2016, when she asked for and got a recount, which moved a grand total of 131 votes. All that time and all that spending for so very little.
So there's nothing like the good old American habit of smearing when nothing else seems to be working. That's what Georgia's two U.S. Senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, have just done.
They've called on Raffensperger to resign. Making such a demand tries to shed doubt on his integrity, which is what the truly corrupt will do if they have nothing else to hang their hats on. (You know who put them up to it, don't you?)
The reason they're doing that is not only to demonstrate continued fealty to our horribly corrupt president, which is safe for them because that way they dodge negative tweets, but also to re-establish public support for their next campaign, which has started the other day because neither one of them gained 50% support. Now there must be a run-off. That's scheduled for January 5.
They think support will be buttressed if they shed doubt upon the count from the get-go. So they trash the guy in charge of it because the count that primarily matters didn't go their way.
Never mind that the Democrats, at first, attacked Raffensperger because he announced an investigation of potentially faulty practices--which, in fact, is his job--and found no substantial issues. Kind of like every single court (so far) in which 45's lawyers have so far tried to sue to substantially disrupt the vote counts of states in which they need electoral votes to turn the election around.
Never mind also that Stacey Abrams, who lost the governorship through a carefully manipulated screening of potential black voters in the campaign of 2018, decided to double down and sign up a whole bunch of black voters--which was clearly crucial in carrying the state for Joe Biden this time around. That this might inspire still more black voters to show up at the polls in January must not have occurred to Perdue and Loeffler. That, or they might be more confident that not as many black voters would go back and vote again.
Looks to me as if their Democratic opponents, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, get fresh ammunition with which to attack them. Perdue and Loeffler must think they're relatively immune to that.
Not that that matters anymore to the two of them, who interestingly made the accusation together. The next campaign looms, and smearing gets underway. Same game, same tactics. They didn't use the acronym RINO--Republican In Name Only--but I'm quite sure many of their ilk in Georgia could read between the lines.
Raffensperger came up with the perfect response, though. First of all, he said he wasn't going anywhere, so forget it.
Then he added that he was a Republican himself and supported their elections (which runs the risk of pissing off the Democrats again). Then he told them to be about their campaigns. The implication was obvious: I have my job, so let me do it. You have yours, and it seems to me that you have your hands full. Too.
Thus he declared his loyalty, his support, and his competence all in one message. Sounds like a guy who's organized, like a Secretary of State should be, because he's got a big organizing job.
And actually, he made Perdue and Loeffler look, well, not so smart as to attack a fellow Republican. We'll see if any of this backfires.
This run-off will be an incredible catfight, and prepare for more shenanigans. The control of the U.S. Senate, and the continuance of the shade-throwing of Mitch McConnell, is at stake. The Democrats must go 2-0 in these runoffs in order to bring the balance of Senators to 50-50, with the Democrats gaining control because the tie-breaking vote (according to the Constitution) will belong to incoming Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris.
That's a heavy lift, say nearly everyone who's observing the situation. It says here that the incumbents, Perdue and Loeffler, haven't done themselves much good so far in taking on Brad Raffensperger, a RINO with soul. We will see.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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