Sunday evening’s debates began with a Republican insulting voters with his absence. It ended with another Republican insulting voters’ intelligence.
This runoff in Georgia has national consequences. The outcome of these two races will determine which party controls the Senate.
When the curtain went up on Democrat Jon Ossoff, he was standing alone onstage in the studio of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Sen. David Perdue “declined to participate in this debate and so is represented by an empty podium,” said moderator Russ Spencer after introducing the candidates. And so Ossoff spent nearly 30 minutes chit-chatting with a two-person debate panel about his concern for the environment and criminal justice reform and the need to rush financial relief to Americans suffering from the economic fallout of the pandemic.
Ossoff stood behind a blue lectern and punctuated his many monologues by gesturing to the empty red one to his right. He asked, “Where is David Perdue?”
“Where is Senator Perdue?”
“Where is Senator Perdue?
“Our senator has been absent. Is absent.”
The questions posed by the two-person panel of journalists weren’t for their own personal benefit but for that of voters who are expected to choose between these two men — a choice that will resonate across the country. Perdue refused to give voters the benefit of his presence. He couldn’t even be bothered to turn up and bob and weave and dodge tough questions. His absence seemed lordly and dismissive, which is precisely what Ossoff accused Perdue of being.
Although Ossoff was the only candidate onstage, he had only 90 seconds to answer each question but made sure to exhort his supporters to vote — making a direct plea to what he called “the TikTok family.” He had a smoothly polished pronouncement about immigration policy: “Border security does not mean border brutality.” Ossoff not-so-subtly reminded voters of his relationship with John Lewis, the late congressman, civil rights leader and son of Georgia.
“Congressman Lewis — when I worked for him — he taught me about the power of the people to fight for justice. And now it’s time for all of us, we the people, to fight for justice. We can pass a new Civil Rights Act to advance criminal justice reform.”
The standard debate format includes a brief section when the candidates are allowed to ask each other a question. And even with only one candidate onstage, the panelists pressed on, asking Ossoff to pose the question he would have asked Perdue and then to, well, answer it himself. Mostly, it was an opportunity for Ossoff to point out that he would always show up for his constituents for matters big and small — and it was impossible for Perdue to argue with that.
Loeffler was not emotionally present. She spoke in flat notes and seemed to have a handful of set responses that she mixed and matched with every question that arose. Her face framed by her thick blond hair, Loeffler spoke directly into the camera, but she might as well have been speaking from behind a brick wall.
When Warnock, who grew up in public housing, pointed out that she was the wealthiest person in the U.S. Senate and that such privilege is a hindrance to understanding the plight of clock-punching Americans, she described her own beginnings as humble, noting that she was raised on a farm and waitressed when she was a teenager.
When she was asked how she would connect with Black Americans after deriding the Black Lives Matter movement, she pointed to her humble beginnings growing up on a farm.
When accused of being more supportive of the wealthy than ordinary Americans, she brought up her humble youth on a farm.
The only words mentioned more often than her growing up on a farm was her description of her opponent: radical liberal Raphael Warnock. She used that tongue twister of a moniker most every time she referred to him, occasionally stumbling over her own words. It was her fail-safe mantra. Her talisman of victory. After uttering them, Loeffler would unleash her warnings of socialism, open borders, emptied out prisons, mayhem on the streets. All that was missing were locusts swarming the sky. And then she’d end her dire predictions with a crooked smile.
Warnock was focused on Loeffler’s wealth and the stock sales made on her behalf and to her benefit during the early days of the pandemic. He stood onstage in his well-cut suit and his bookish spectacles with the full arsenal of preacherly communication skills: the voice as instrument, the expressive face, the disarming gesture.
“She’s continued to misrepresent my record. She’s lied not only on me but on Jesus,” Warnock said. “I intend to center the concerns of ordinary people I’ve been running into all across this state particularly in rural Georgia.”
Warnock did not reveal himself anew. But he showed up — physically and emotionally. And sometimes, that’s really all that voters want.