Why Democrats might win in Georgia Senate run-off elections

First and foremost, the answer is that Georgians have been organizing for a more democratic (small "d") state for at least a decade, and actually ever since ending the Jim Crow regime of the last century. The person most associated with the remarkable accomplishment of winning the state for Joe Biden this year is former state senate minority leader and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams; her organization FairFight is now organizing volunteer work in the Senate race. (There are others: if labor unions are more your style, join me on the UniteHERE national phone bank.)

But a little Georgia history can remind what an enormous change it is to see Georgia turn blue -- or at least purple. Democrats Reverend Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Democratic candidates both, do still have a chance to win Senate seats in the January 5 vote.

Emily Badger in the Upshot captured a central truth about the November election:

“One way you could characterize what happened a month ago is this was the first time — maybe the first time ever — where urban Georgia outvoted rural Georgia,” said Charles S. Bullock III, a political scientist at the University of Georgia.

I'm old enough to vaguely remember that Jim Crow elections in Georgia were governed by what was called the County Unit Rule. After Southern elites defeated Reconstruction and restored their pre-Civil War power over the Black and white working class population, Georgia like all the South became a one-party state (Democrats in those days.) In a one-party state, the only election that matters is the primary. The County Unit Rule, legally established in 1917, ensured that small rural countries where only whites were allowed to vote retained preponderant power in Democratic primaries, ensuring that cities and the Black population could never choose candidates who would win in general elections. This system was only ended by Supreme Court decision in 1963.

Moreover, as in most of the South, the ruling party felt no pressure to ensure that state legislative seats represented equal numbers of voters. The white rural areas were grossly over represented. The Supreme Court's One Person One Vote decision in 1964 finally curbed that practice.

As the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gradually enabled Blacks to become members of the electorate, white Georgians migrated to the GOP. The last Democratic U.S. Senator from Georgia and the last Democratic Governor are both defeated by Republicans in 2002. Thereafter, until November, Georgia was once again a one-party state, now Republican.

Atlanta suburbs grow and turn blue. Click to enlarge.

The Upshot article makes a pretty convincing case that increasing integration of the Atlanta suburbs, created by migrants of all colors, as well as Georgian Black citizens, is key to finally empowering Georgia's diverse urban and suburban core.

“It’s been this evolution of Cobb from a white-flight suburb to, now, I went to a Ramadan meal in a gated community in Cobb County that was multiracial,” said Andrea Young, the executive director of the Georgia A.C.L.U., and the daughter of the former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young. “This is the story,” she said, “of Atlanta spilling out into the metro area.”

Around the region, suburban communities that once defined themselves in opposition to Atlanta have increasingly come to resemble it: in demographics, in urban conveniences and challenges, and, finally, in politics. Rather than symbolizing a bulwark against Black political power, these places have become part of a coalition led by Black voters that is large enough to tip statewide races — and that could hand control of the Senate to Democrats next month.

Georgia has been a state structurally consigned to one-party rule -- white, rural rule-- for generations.  What might happen there in January is earthshaking.