Stakes of this week’s Senate run-off go beyond Georgia’s borders

Sunday, Dec. 4, 2022 | 2 a.m.

With the Senate already in Democratic control, one reader recently emailed to ask why there is so much national media coverage of the Georgia run-off between incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

While we won’t pretend to speak for everyone in the national media landscape, we believe there are many reasons to pay attention to what’s happening in Georgia right now — including the future of the filibuster as a rule in the Senate and the fact that it is a referendum on the willingness of voters to embrace competent leadership over incoherent partisanship.

Despite having 50 votes and the vice presidential tiebreaker, neither party has real “control” of the Senate as we might think of it. Having a majority in the Senate does little without having a 60-vote supermajority to overcome the filibuster as it is currently recognized.

The filibuster is a procedural tool that prevents a bill from receiving a vote on the Senate floor. It is not in the Constitution and was rarely used until the aftermath of the Civil War, when Southern states desperately sought new tools to block legislation in hopes of preserving the institutions of slavery, Jim Crow and racial hierarchy. Even then, most efforts to filibuster failed after only a single day because it required a senator to hold the floor by continuously speaking.

The requirement to hold the floor in a “talking filibuster” was eliminated in 1972, allowing any group of 41 senators to prevent a vote on any bill simply by placing a “hold” on it. At present, the only way to defeat a filibuster “hold” is to have a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, which in today’s climate is almost inconceivable.

In a worst-case scenario, the filibuster allows senators representing less than 12% of the U.S. population to hold hostage the senators representing the other 88%. This means the minority — even a very tiny one — can block the will of the majority of Americans.

Republicans in the Senate have not represented a majority of the U.S. population since 1996 (they currently represent about 43.5%). Yet throughout that 25-year period, the filibuster has enabled them to paralyze the legislative branch of government. Because the current implementation of the filibuster doesn’t require politicians to voice their beliefs on the issues, the public is kept in the dark about where their elected officials stand on certain issues. Today’s filibuster rule has effectively created dark, untraceable and unaccountable minority rule in the United States. And it paralyzes the Senate from enacting legislation.

The Senate can change its own rules with a simple majority vote — a tool Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell has weaponized in the past to eliminate Democratic filibusters of Republican Supreme Court and federal judicial nominees. But despite several months of negotiations in the current legislative session, Democrats have not been able to gather unified support for overturning (or altering) the filibuster.

Gaining unified support is complicated because among the Democrats’ 50 votes, there are two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have well-established reputations for breaking from their party on big-ticket items — including attempts to overturn the filibuster.

A victory for Warnock would make constructive changes — or elimination — of the filibuster rule incrementally easier. Alternatively, even if the filibuster is unchanged, Democrats would need the support of only nine Republicans instead of 10.

Perhaps more important than procedure, however, is that this runoff feels like a referendum on competency in our government.

Save a few exceptions like Joe Lombardo here in Nevada and Ron DeSantis in Florida, voters mostly rejected extremism in the ranks of government and voted for candidates who demonstrated level-headed decision-making, deep knowledge of the issues and rationality.

Herschel Walker has none of those attributes — he says so himself.

In the leadup to the only debate between Georgia’s two candidates for Senate, Walker lowered expectations for his debate performance by voluntarily saying he’s “not that smart.”

“I’m a country boy,” he said. “I’m not that smart. He’s a preacher. (Warnock) is smart and wears these nice suits. So, he is going to show up and embarrass me at the debate Oct. 14, and I’m just waiting to show up and I will do my best.”

While that may sound like a simple and humble “country boy,” it hides a much darker reality. Walker is not just incompetent to hold public office, he’s a violent extremist who has been credibly accused by of everything from sexual assault and domestic violence to emotional abuse of his children. His accusers include his own son and multiple former friends and romantic partners.

He is also a compulsive liar who hid the existence of multiple children from his own campaign staff and appears to have paid for the abortion of two others. Lies like that go far beyond the typical slick political messaging that massages the truth and call into question Walker’s morality, values and judgment.

In this regard, the run-off between Warnock and Walker is about much more than just a single seat in the Senate.

It’s about who we are — our morals and values as a country and who we hold up as a role model to our children. It’s about who we want legislating on our behalf — creating laws that affect all of us, not just Georgians. And it’s about whether we finish delivering the message that the American people will not tolerate the type of hatred, violence, ignorance and incompetence that Donald Trump’s Republican Party is trying to sell.

So while the Warnock-Walker run-off in Georgia may not matter much to us as Nevadans, it is essential to who we are as Americans.

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