Fifty One! 🌻🌻🌻 💙

Victory At Last:  A round of applause for Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock who will be returning to Washington DC as the crucial 51^st member of the Democratic caucus.  Another round of applause for Georgia’s Black voters, who understood that Republican candidate Herschel Walker’s nomination was all about luring just enough of them away from Warnock to secure a Republican victory.  They clearly understood the difference between a damaged, Texas residing, football guy/predator and a real mensch.  For a while last night, as the lead bounced back and forth, it looked like the election could go either way but that was just one of those election day mirages, a reflection of timing differentials between the inclusion of same day and early voting and the receipt of vote tallies from blue and red counties.  With almost all the vote counted Warnock’s win followed the projections made by the more reputable pollsters.  He prevailed, winning 51.4% of the votes to Walker’s 49.6%, a margin of victory of 97,597 votes.  That’s slightly more votes than Warnock’s margin of victory was in 2020 when he beat appointed fill-in Kelly Loeffler by 93,272 and almost twice as large as Senator Jon Ossoff’s margin over the more mainstream incumbent Republican David Perdue.  The bottom line is that Georgia still leans red but when the right Democratic candidate is put up against a weak Republican, Democrats can win, though not by a lot. Two more rounds of applause.  One for Stacey Abrams, who wasn’t able to come close to beating the increasingly popular Republican Governor Brian Kemp and will probably never be the state’s governor but whose herculean efforts at getting Democratic voters registered, all while pushing back at the impediments that Kemp and other Republicans put in place to suppress Democratic participation definitely contributed to Warnock’s victory.  And another round for Mark Elias, the Democrats amazing election lawyer who litigated to get more days of early voting, his efforts appear to have paid off bigly.  Though almost finished, the midterms aren’t over yet, a few recounts are in the works, including one for Colorado wingnut Lauren Boebert’s race and one for the extremely close Arizona Attorney General race. 

Law and Order:  Overall, Trump had a bad day.  Not only is he getting a lot of blame for his hand-picked candidate’s Georgia loss, but his company was convicted of tax fraud and other crimes yesterday.  In all a Manhattan jury found the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation guilty of 17 charges related to their practice of paying off-the-book perks involving items like luxury apartments, leased Mercedes-Benzes, private school tuitions and extra cash, to executives as part of a multi-year effort to avoid taxes.  That’s the good news, the not so good news is that the verdict carries a maximum penalty of less than $2 million though there could and should be wider repercussions as financial institutions don’t generally do business with fraudulent entities not that Trump still does much business with mainstream banks anymore.  Also, it’s not clear that Trump’s fan base, shrinking but still substantial, will give a hoot that their mango god’s company was all in on fraud, if anything they might find that a plus.  Trump and his family were not charged in the case though his ketchup dipped fingerprints were all over the place.  He announced that he was  “disappointed with the verdict,” and plans to appeal and then of course blamed CFO Allen Weisselberg for committing all that tax fraud behind his back. Then again also said that Warnock’s victory was proof that the country is going to pot, true but not in the way that he meant.  Elsewhere in the legal universe, NY District Attorney Alvin Bragg seems to be reinvigorating his thought to be dormant criminal case against Trump.  He announced the hiring of former Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo who before becoming a top official at Justice led the NY Attorney General’s civil inquiry into Trump’s fraudulent foundation, the one that used donations to purchase paintings of Trump but failed to disburse funds to needy organizations.  Also, Merrick Garland’s recently appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith, who at last check was still recuperating in the Netherlands, has sent grand jury subpoenas to local officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, three states at the center of Trump’s failed plan to overturn the results of the 2020 election.  Smith is specifically seeking “any and all communications with Trump, his campaign and a long list of his aides and allies.”  One of those allies, short term national security advisor, convicted then pardoned liar Mike Flynn was ordered by a Florida Court to stop stalling, to get his tush to Atlanta to testify in front of Fani Willis’ grand jury.  

And:  Texas/Cancun Senator Ted Cruz appears to have some serious problems on the home front that need his attention a whole lot more than all that Herschel Walker baby-sitting he was engaged in during the run up to the Georgia midterm.  Overnight it was reported that his 14-year-old daughter was taken to the hospital suffering from self-inflicted stab wounds, a possible suicide attempt. Truly disturbing news. Sending positive thoughts her way.