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  • In February 2009, President Obama gave his first address to Congress.

  • Behind him was the Speaker of the House, a Democrat.

  • And in the audience was the Senate majority leaderalso a Democrat.

  • Which meant that when Obama said this:

  • Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait

  • and it will not wait another year.

  • He wasn't kidding.

  • The next year, his health care bill was passed in both Houses of Congress and became law,

  • even though every single Republican voted against it.

  • But later that year, Republicans won back the majority in the House.

  • For the rest of his presidency, Obama never again passed a major piece of legislation.

  • Then, Donald Trump became president,

  • with a Republican House and a Republican Senate.

  • They passed his tax bill.

  • No Democrats voted for it.

  • But in the next election, Democrats won control of the House.

  • And that was the end of Trump's legislative agenda.

  • Now, Joe Biden is about to start his presidency,

  • with a House controlled by Democrats--

  • But we still don't know who will control the Senate.

  • Of the Senate's 100 seats, we know Republicans will have 50 and Democrats will have 48.

  • But thesewe don't know yet.

  • These are the last two races of the 2020 election.

  • And they'll decide if the new president's agenda will be ambitious, or compromised.

  • And they're both happening in the same place:

  • "Georgia, Georgia, Georgia."

  • "At stake: control of the US Senate."

  • "Two Senate runoff races that are now the center of the political world."

  • In nearly every US state, elections are won by the candidate with the most votes.

  • But in the state of Georgia, most candidates need to reach at least 50% of votes to win:

  • A true majority.

  • When that doesn't happen in Georgia, the top two candidates move on to a second election:

  • a "runoff." And everyone votes all over again.

  • That's what happened in November.

  • Republican Senator David Perdue got the most votes in his reelection race.

  • But he missed that 50% mark by just a few thousand votes.

  • So he and the Democrat, Jon Ossoff, will compete in a runoff election on January 5th.

  • What's extremely unusual, though, is that there were two Senate races in the same state

  • in the same year.

  • The other was a special election, to fill the seat of a senator who retired early

  • due to bad health.

  • In this race, several Republicans and several Democrats ran.

  • And no one got close to 50%.

  • So the top two candidatesRepublican Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock

  • now go to the runoff.

  • In the US, runoff elections are most common in the South,

  • an area with a long history of white politicians suppressing the votes of Black Americans.

  • And during the Civil Rights movement, runoff elections became one of the tools to do that.

  • In 1963, a white Georgia politician named Denmark Groover proposed the runoff system

  • after he lost an election to what he calledNegro bloc voting.”

  • He argued that when a Black candidate runs against many white candidates,

  • the Black candidate would get a “blocof Black voter support,

  • while white support would be spread out.

  • But if you made the Black candidate run against just one white candidate,

  • knowing that lots of white voters wouldn't vote for a Black candidate,

  • the white candidate would have a better chance at winning.

  • Years later, Groover was open about the fact that his plan was racially motivated.

  • But Georgia adopted it.

  • In 1990, the federal Justice Department sued Georgia over their runoff system.

  • They argued it had a “demonstrably chilling effect on the ability of Blacks to become candidates."

  • But the suit failed. And Georgia still does it this way.

  • This year's special Senate race features exactly the kind of matchup

  • the system was designed to produce: A Black candidate vs a white candidate.

  • But Georgia, once a reliably Republican state, is changing.

  • Organizers are getting Black voters registered in record numbers,

  • more of its white residents are voting Democratic,

  • and in the 2020 presidential election, a Democrat won Georgia for the first time in 28 years.

  • If both Democrats win their runoffs, making it 50-50, the Democratic vice president would

  • serve as the tie-breaking vote.

  • So Democrats would take majority control.

  • And that would mean Biden could likely pass much of his progressive agenda.

  • But if Republicans win either seat, they win control.

  • And the Republican who'll be in charge of that Senate, Mitch McConnell,

  • has vowed not to let any of Biden's legislation pass,

  • sayingthink of me as the Grim Reaper.”

  • "I need two senators from this state.

  • I want to get something done."

  • "The voters of Georgia will determine which party runs every committee,

  • writes every piece of legislation,

  • and that really means control of this country."

  • This is a study showing how often members of Congress have voted with the other party.

  • You can see this used to happen fairly often, but less and less over time.

  • Today, there's no longer any expectation that the parties will be able

  • to work together on most issues.

  • That's why who holds the majority is more important than it's ever been.

  • "I will fight to expand affordable health care."

  • "A 100% Trump voting record."

  • "David Perdue had his chance."

  • "We win Georgia, we save America."

  • The 2020 election is almost over.

  • And we know who will be president.

  • But, until the state of Georgia weighs in,

  • we won't know what he'll actually be able to do.

In February 2009, President Obama gave his first address to Congress.

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