The official goal of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s trip to Georgia in the final days of 2020 was to rally support for two Democratic Senate candidates facing tight runoffs. But the visit felt an awful lot like a victory lap.
“I have to say it feels good,” Mr. Biden told a crowd in Atlanta, gloating about being the first Democrat to win Georgia in a presidential election in nearly 30 years. That moment — along with Democrats’ victory in both Senate seats a few weeks later, flipping control of the chamber — appeared to affirm the party’s resurgence in a state long dominated by Republicans.
This weekend, as Mr. Biden returns to Atlanta with ambitions of winning the state again in a rematch with former President Donald J. Trump, he faces a much different climate.
The optimism that rose among Georgia Democrats after his victory has been replaced by frustration and concern, not only about his campaign prospects, but also about the direction of the country.
At Morehouse College, the prestigious black institution where Mr. Biden is scheduled to deliver the commencement speech on Sunday, some students urged school officials to rescind the invitation, and some faculty members said they planned to skipping the event – a sign of dissatisfaction with the event. the president’s handling of the war in Gaza.
Beyond that, recent polls give Mr. Trump a lead in Georgia, while support for Mr. Biden has softened among groups that were instrumental in his success in 2020, including black voters , other people of color and younger people.
“It’s definitely a void,” said Erick Allen, a Democrat running for a seat on the Cobb County Board of Commissioners, just outside Atlanta, referring to the “deficit of energy and funds in Georgia”.
Without other critical statewide elections, or the turbulence of the start of the pandemic or the racial justice protests that energized part of the electorate in 2020, Mr. Allen said he was concerned about the level of interest and investment in Georgia.
“We don’t have a George Floyd, thank God,” Mr. Allen said. “We don’t have Covid, thank God. The last elections took place in a crisis. We were dying in the streets and we were dying in hospital beds. We won’t have that energy.
For Mr. Allen and other Mr. Biden supporters, those concerns have not turned into despair. Some noted that four years ago, Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia was anything but assured. And voting rights groups like the New Georgia Project, which raised huge sums last campaign, were also cash-strapped that spring.
In fact, many believe Georgia has the potential to once again play an outsized role in what will almost certainly be a close and contentious election. The announcement this week that Atlanta will host the first of two televised debates between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump only reinforced that idea.
“Georgia remains an important state,” said Yadira Sánchez, executive director of Poder Latinx, a progressive civic engagement organization active in Georgia and other states with growing Hispanic populations.
Mr. Biden’s speech at Morehouse and the state’s primary election next week mark the start of the general election season — an occasion that has prompted some to reexamine the roots of victories won by Democrats in recent years.
Democrats exploited demographic shifts as the state’s population grew and diversified, making significant gains among white, black, Asian American and Latino voters in Atlanta’s rapidly expanding suburbs. . There have also been years of groundwork to register and mobilize new voters, particularly young and poor voters of color who historically have been less likely to participate.
The shift was evident in the 2018 gubernatorial race, when Stacey Abrams, a Democratic state lawmaker, made a strong showing against Brian Kemp, then the Republican secretary of state. Ms. Abrams lost by about 55,000 votes.
Two years later, this slow transformation was met by a rapid sequence of tumultuous national and global events that played out in Georgia in particularly striking ways.
The coronavirus pandemic has amplified gaps in access to health care, and new political fissures have opened because of the government’s response. And protests against racism and policing after Mr. Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis have been particularly intense in Atlanta. The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, by white residents of a coastal Georgia suburb, and of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, by an Atlanta police officer, have exacerbated the anguish and fury. .
“We were witnessing the dawn of a new era of civil rights,” said the Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, a town of 60,000 just outside Atlanta where about 90 percent of the population is black. . With the Black Lives Matter movement, he said, young people were “finding their voice, their place and launching into a fight that they did not initiate but that they had inherited.”
In the final weeks before the election, television and radio broadcasts were filled with political ads from all sides, while candidates, parties and civic groups had volunteers knocking on doors, making phone calls and sending messages by SMS and on social networks.
All of this led to a sharp rise in turnout, and Mr. Biden beat Mr. Trump, who carried most Georgia counties, by just under 12,000 votes.
The tight margins led to further unrest: Mr. Trump and his allies tried to overturn his defeat in Georgia through means that prosecutors considered criminal, leading to racketeering charges against them.
But the result also sparked jubilation, because the outcome – not only the Democratic victories but also the level of turnout – was once difficult to imagine. “They chose to participate in making history,” said the Rev. Timothy McDonald III, pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta. “We saw hope like we had never seen it before.”
After the election, Republican state lawmakers passed sweeping legislation that added stricter requirements for mail-in voting, limited the number of boxes for ballots, and reduced the time between an election and a runoff .
Supporters, responding to Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 victory was stolen from him, said the measures would strengthen the integrity of the election. But critics have condemned the new restrictions, which they say will disproportionately impact voters of color.
Some in the Republican Party still refuse to admit that Mr. Biden won fairly. Others claim the result was just an aberration.
As November approaches, Trump is taking advantage of the “abject failure of the current administration” and backlash over criminal charges against him that “attempt to criminalize political disagreement,” said Joshua McKoon, chairman of the Republican Party of Georgia. told reporters Friday.
Democrats worry that voters won’t have the stamina to participate like they used to. “I think people understand the importance of the election, but there is some fatigue,” said state Rep. Sam Park, a Democrat representing Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta.
Activists and others said many 2020 Biden voters had become disillusioned. There is anger that Mr. Biden is not confronting Israel more forcefully over its actions in Gaza, and dissatisfaction with lingering problems like high housing costs and student debt.
Yet some of Mr. Biden’s supporters say the president’s problem lies not in a lack of accomplishments, but in his inability to effectively explain them to voters. They point to low levels of Black unemployment, the torrent of federal funds sent to communities for pandemic relief and infrastructure, and the administration’s efforts to cancel student debt.
“These things should not be kept secret,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, presiding prelate of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Georgia, which has hundreds of congregations in the state.
The Biden campaign plans to heed that advice, deploying high-profile Democrats — including Georgia Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — to drum up enthusiasm.
“I’m not saying it’s easy,” said Quentin Fulks, Mr. Biden’s senior deputy campaign manager and a Georgia native. “But I think we have a formula conducive to accepting this message.”
Mr. Biden made sure to tout his record when he called into an Atlanta radio station’s morning show on Wednesday. He mentioned creating new jobs, investing in historically black colleges and universities and capping the cost of insulin — an important issue in a state with high diabetes rates.
He also pushed back against Mr. Trump, who has made some inroads with black voters but lacks campaign infrastructure in the state. Mr Biden accused Mr Trump of stoking racial divisions, saying Mr Trump’s policies were “all about hatred and retribution”.
Leslie Palomino voted for Mr. Biden four years ago, the first time she had voted in a presidential election. At the time, she was also going door to door in Gwinnett County, on the streets not far from where she grew up. She even had the chance to introduce Kamala Harris during a campaign stop.
The energy was palpable. The issues too.
Something similar might be possible this time too, she said.
Poder Latinx, where she serves as the Georgia program coordinator, and similar organizations began to grow. And a lot can happen between May and November, as 2020 has proven.
“I’m counting down these days,” Ms. Palomino said, referring to the 24 weeks until Election Day. “I know our people, we are resilient, and that’s what sustains me.”
News Source : www.nytimes.com
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