Senator Raphael Warnock on America’s “Moral and Spiritual Battle”
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
When Raphael Warnock was elected to the Senate from Georgia in the 2020 election, he made history a couple of times over. He became the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the Deep South. At the same time, that victory—alongside Jon Ossoff’s—flipped both of Georgia’s Senate seats from Republican to Democrat. Once thought of as solidly red, Georgia has become a closely watched swing state that President Biden can’t afford to lose in November, and Warnock is a key ally. He dismisses polls that show younger Black voters are leaning toward Trump in higher numbers than older voters; Biden’s record as President, he thinks—including a reported sixty per cent increase in Black wealth since the pandemic—will motivate strong turnout. Warnock returns to Atlanta every Sunday to preach at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he remains senior pastor, and he thinks of the election as a “moral and spiritual battle.” “Are we a nation that can send from the South a Black man and a Jewish man to the Senate?” he asks. “Or are we that nation that rises up in violence as we witness the demographic changes in our country and the struggle for a more inclusive Republic?”
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| 0:49.3 | This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. |
| 0:58.0 | Thank you. This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick. When Raphael Warnock was elected to the Senate from Georgia, he made history a couple of |
| 1:03.0 | times over. |
| 1:04.1 | He became the first black Democrat elected to the Senate from a southern state. |
| 1:09.7 | My mother, who as a teenager growing up in Wake Cross, Georgia, used to pick somebody else's |
| 1:15.9 | cotton. |
| 1:17.4 | But the other day, because this is America, the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody |
| 1:24.4 | else's cotton, went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator. |
| 1:34.8 | Warnock's victory in that election, alongside the young John Ossoff, |
| 1:39.0 | also flipped both of Georgia's Senate seats from the GOP to the Democratic Party, |
| 1:43.9 | a rare feat. Once a Republican |
| 1:46.4 | stronghold, Georgia has now become a swing state, one that Joe Biden can't afford to lose in |
| 1:52.7 | November. But from what the polls tell us, Biden faces a very uphill battle in Georgia. His support |
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