Today I have already heard two AM shock-jocks proclaim that Trump’s visit to Georgia this weekend will tip both Senate races towards the GOP because Trump is the first sitting President to get more than 70 million votes in a national vote.

              Big friggin’ deal. Joe Biden happens to be the first Presidential candidate who ever polled 80 million votes. This part of the narrative about the 2020 election always seems to get drowned out.

              Before I send some dough down to Georgia to help Ossoff and Warnock pad what appear to be slight leads, I thought I would do a little research on what the increased 2020 turnout really means for both sides.

              In 2016, Trump and Hillary together pulled 3,967,067 Georgia residents to the polls, with Trump getting 50.4% of the votes (2,089,104) and Hillary getting 45.3% (1,877,973). Last month, the total vote for the blue and red teams was 4,936,344, with Joe getting 2,474,507 and Trump scoring 2,461,837 votes.

              Now watch. The total vote in Georgia from 2016 to 2020 increased by 24.4%.  Trump’s vote went up by 17.8%, slightly lower than the increase in his national vote which was 19.6%. Ready? Joe’s Georgia total in 2020 was 31.1% higher than what Hillary got in 2016; his national vote increased by 27% over the same four years.

              Comparing red to blue in these two elections, the red team had a slightly smaller percentage increase in Georgia than in the overall vote, Joe’s Georgia increase was proportionately higher than the increase in his national vote. No wonder Trump is claiming ‘fraud.’  

              One more comparison between what Hillary did in 2016 and what Joe did in Georgia this year. Georgia went red in 2012, with Romney getting 53.3% versus Barack’s 45.4%.  In 2008, McCain pulled 52.2% of the Georgia tally, Barack got 46.9% of the statewide vote. For the previous three Presidential elections, the blue candidate ran consistently at 45% – 46%. How did Joe push this number up to a shade under 50%?

              Here’s how. In the 6 counties which comprise Atlanta metro, Joe got 1,301,796 votes, an increase in 29.7% over what Hillary received in 2016. Both of them pulled slightly less than half their statewide votes from Gwinnett, Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, and Henry Counties. But while Hillary pulled 67% of the Fulton vote, 47% of the vote in Cobb, 50% in Henry and Gwinnett Counties, Joe got 72% in Fulton, 56% from Cobb, 58% and 60% respectively from Henry and Gwinnett.

              Per usual, Trump got 70% or more in most of the rural counties. But nobody lives in the swamps. He got 72% of the votes in Atkinson County, i.e., 2,300 votes. Clinch County gave him 74% of their votes, which was a whole, big 2,105. Without doing any kind of their usual street-level canvassing in urban neighborhoods, Joe got the vote he needed to swing Georgia out of the red. 

              I won’t bore you with the details but suffice it to say that the increase in urban, traditionally blue counties is exactly what happened not only in Georgia, but as well in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. For all the talk about how Trump created an entirely new wave of GOP voters in 2016 and embellished it this year, the truth is that we had to put up with his racism, his cronyism, his laziness, his disgusting language and his ineptitude because Hillary’s team didn’t get out the vote.

              The Georgia numbers make it clear that Trump was an accidental President in every respect. Luckily, the same accident didn’t happen twice.

              Now it’s time for the spiel.

Go to https://warnockforgeorgia.com/ and send Reverend Warnock a hundred bucks. Then go to https://electjon.com/ and send Jon Ossoff a Franklin too. And don’t tell me you can’t afford it. You can afford to go out tonight and pick up Chinese? You can afford to help these guys out.

Let’s get it done, okay? Get it done.