"As Georgia goes, so goes the nation"

Can you imagine any political pundit writing that headline until, say, 2016? Yet last night's victory for Raphael Warnock in the run-off election for the Georgia Senate seat suggests that the Peach State is now a metaphor for the Disunited States of America.

In times past, bellwether states -- the ones that usually voted for the party of the man who would be President -- included: Pennsylvania – one miss from 1800 to 1880 (in 1824); Indiana – one miss from 1852 to 1912 (in 1876); Wisconsin – one miss from 1860 to 1912 (in 1884); and New York – one miss from 1880 to 1944 (in 1916).

But that was one or two centuries ago, in the days when Georgia was reliably Republican -- during Reconstruction -- or Democrat [or Dixiecrat! Ed.] in the mid-20th century -- or Republican again, after the disaster that was Jimmy Carter until the turmoil of the last decade or so.

With 99% of the vote counted, Senator Warnock was re-elected with 51.4% of the vote as against 48.6% for Herschel Walker. A look at the map tells you all ye need to know.

Mr Walker carried the rural areas, but lost the big(ish) cities, including the university town of Athens, and Savannah, the last bastion of the genteel old south.

And he lost Fulton County. As of the 2020 census, its population was just over a million, making it the state's most-populous county. Its county seat is Atlanta.

Today's Atlanta, which also happens to be Georgia's capital, is much differt from the city where, in the 1960s, Governor Lester Maddox sold pick and axe handles to bar "coloured people" -- the phrase seems so quaint now -- from entering his Pickrick Chicken House restaurant.

A stroll [for the brave, only! Ed.] through today's Atlanta, a microcosm of the "New South", reminds one of nowhere more than Philthydelphia. Atlants, like every other Democrat-run city, is seedy and rundown. "Persons experiencing homelessness" squat (and you can take that two ways) on sidewalks and in parks and abandoned buildings. The city is a mess -- a Democratic mess, especially on polling day. Hence the result

But that's the way it is in America as a hole. [Please check your spelling. Ed.] Demented Joe Biden accused President Trump of dividing the nation, and there was some truth in that. He promised to unite America and heal the wounds of the past four years. He failed. In fact he made things worse by upping his game of identity politics to the point where we have 50% of Americans opposing the other 50%, just as Georgians did yesterday.

Just like Georgia... The state of the disunion is such that Americans who live in cities despise rural people, and vice versa. The elites, especially those in the ivory towers of academia (Hello, Athens!) look down on those who never got brainwashed in college. And the great unwashed rightly distrust the elites and their bought-and-paid for media.

It is somewhat heartening to note that Americ is not hopelessly divided along racial lines. That one black man should be pitted against another, blacker man is telling. Lots of white folks, even in rural Georgia, voted for Senator Warnock, whereas many black folks voted for Herschel Walker because they rejected the old Baptist pastor, Uncle Tom stereotype of the "house nigger". Given a white candidate who actually had some qualifications to be a lawmaker, black people might have voted for him/her, rather than a barely literate football player.

Walt hopes that the Republicans will learn one more lesson from the mid-term elections of 2022. The US of A remains deeply divided over President Donald J. Trump. Half of America loves him. The other half hates him. And those percentages don't look like changing any time soon. 

The Republicans should learn that just because President Trump endorses a candidate doesn't make him/her a sure winner unless he/she can campaign and win on his/her own merit. [You can just say "he"; this "he/she" thing is getting tiresome. Ed.] The Republicans should have been able to win in a walk over John "Lurch" Fetterman, had they not chosen a candidate who is a Muslim and a dual citizen because he's a celebrity and The Donald likes him. 

I don't believe that many Americans are aching for a rematch of Trump vs Biden. Both Presidents have had their time, and by 2024 the nation will be in even worse shape than it is now. (Lifetime pct .990.) The time for vengeance has passed. The time has come for the GOP to let President Trump sit quietly [Is that possible? Ed.] by the pool at Mar-a-Lago, and unite behind a leader who can move the party and the country forward into economic and political recovery.

"Like who?", I hear you ask. The names Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence spring to mind. So does that of Senator J.D.Vance. Who would the Democrats put up against a ticket headed by any of those three? An 81-year-old who is already so far over the hill that he can't see it in his rearview mirror? And if not him, then who? 

How an election was stolen

The events in this true story took place not in the Excited States of America, but in the Land of Bambazonke, aka Zimbabwe, a southern Afican shithole where I lived and worked in the 1990s. I left Zimbabwe on the Flying Dutchman in 2001, but kept in touch with an ever-decreasing number of colleagues and friends, until they too left... or died.

The People's Republic of Zimbabwe had been ruled since its independence in 1980 by Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, a neo-Marxist anti-colonialist dictator who tolerated the presence of an opposition party so he could say his country wasn't a one-party state, although in fact it was.

Having an opposition means you have to have an election every now and then, just for show, and Uncle Bob decreed that his people should vote for him again in March 2008. Because of Zimbabwe's dire economic situation, the elections were expected to provide the incumbent and his ZANU-PF party with their toughest electoral challenge to date. 

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, accused the government of planning to rig the election. Human Rights Watch said that the election was likely to be "deeply flawed", and so it was. As election night, March 29th, wore on, unofficial counts showed MDC-T building up big leads in the cities of Harare and Bulawayo, but the more populous rural areas were slow to report. In the wee hours of the morning of March 30th, counting was halted, with no explanation.

No official results were announced for more than a month thereafter. The failure to release results was strongly criticized by the MDC, which unsuccessfully sought a court order to force their release. After a recount and "verification" of the results, the government-controlled Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced on May 2nd that Mr Tsvangirai won 47.9% of the vote and President Mugabe 43.2%, necessitating a run-off, to be held on 27 June 2008.

Political violence ensued, for which  ZANU-PF and MDC each blamed the other's supporters. On June 22nd, Mr Tsvangirai announced that he was withdrawing from the run-off, describing it as a "violent sham" and saying that his supporters risked being killed if they voted for him. The second round of elections went ahead with President Mugabe as the only actively participating candidate, although Mr Tsvangirai's name remained on the ballot. 

Comrade Bob won the second round by an overwhelming margin -- 85.3% to 9.3% -- and was sworn in for another term on 29 June 2008. He remained President until November of 2017, when, at the age of 93, he was ousted by his own party in a bloodless coup.

Any similarity between the events described above and last night's goings-on in Philthydelphia and Allegheny County PA and Atlants and Fulton County GA is purely coincidental.