Georgia, oh Georgia
No, no, no, no, no peace I find …
So opens James Brown’s famous song — also an iconic hit for Ray Charles.*
As the rest of the country quiets down, post-election, that crooned-about lack of peace continues to echo in the Peach State as if in a deep, vast cavern. Two U.S. Senate seats now go to a January 5th runoff election, which will decide partisan control of Congress’s upper chamber.
Democrats control the House and — barring some Hail Mary effort likely to require Mary’s own participation — they will take the White House as well. In the Senate, Republicans currently hold a 50 – 48 lead, but if Democrats win both of these razor-close races in a state won narrowly by Democrat Biden, the Senate majority, too, will be theirs … by virtue of Vice-President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.
Whether held by Republicans or Democrats, unitary one-party control of the federal leviathan could prove extraordinarily consequential … in a frightening sort of way.
“[T]he federal government works better when divided, not unified,” argues the Cato Institute’s Steve H. Hanke, citing divided government as less likely to go to war, more likely to pass sustainable reforms and noting that “federal spending tends to be lower with divided governments.”**
Other reasons include existential threats to our little experiment with citizen-controlled government.
Having threatened to completely abolish the Senate filibuster rule, Democrats with a slim majority could then pack the Supreme Court — adding new justices to gain a majority, using one election to nullify elections going back decades. And forever partisanizing and politicizing our independent judiciary.
Just an old sweet song — and the future of America — Keeps Georgia on my mind.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* We made a terrible mistake. Hoagy Carmichael is the author of “Georgia on My Mind,” not James Brown. Here is a version of the song performed by Carmichael. PJ
** For these reasons, to keep divided government, third-place finishing Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel should endorse Republican David Perdue against Democrat Jon Osskoff. Hazel garnered 2.3 percent of the vote, while Perdue fell only 0.3% short of winning a majority and precluding the runoff.
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