First day

Joe Biden is President and Democrats control Congress. Things are as good as I wanted you to hope for on that horrible November 2016 night when I became your Optimism Guy.

With the Georgia Senators seated, Mitch McConnell can't block Biden's nominees, and I like what I'm seeing. Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken wants to pull the Saudis back from their war in Yemen "immediately". CIA Director nominee William Burns negotiated the Iran peace deal, sneaking around spy-style so other countries wouldn't find out and disrupt it.

On the domestic front, Bernie Sanders is the first democratic socialist to chair the Senate Budget Committee. Elizabeth Warren has gotten her staffer into the NEC deputy directorship, her protege running the CFPB, and an ally as SEC chair. The first Native American Interior Secretary will control the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Rahm Emanuel doesn't have a job.

Thanks to everyone who voted or donated or worked to get us here. A special high-five to anyone who joined my donations to the Merkley Leadership PAC, Stacey Abrams and the Georgia Senators, or those 2018 state Secretary of State campaigns. 

I think especially of our donations to Arizona SoS Katie Hobbs, whose Republican opponent in 2018 wanted to eliminate Spanish-language voting materials. The race was called for him on Election Night, but she won on late ballots. In 2020, Arizona went for Biden by 0.3%, and she withstood violent threats from Trump's hordes in seeing the election through. Where would Arizona be without her, and where would we be without Arizona? If you don't like imagining such things, you're free to focus on this happier reality.

Warnock and Ossoff win!

It's a winning night in Georgia, and it feels like winning all over the world.

With 99% of precincts reporting, Raphael Warnock leads by 1.2%. Jon Ossoff leads by 0.4%, and with a fair share of the remaining ballots in deep-blue Atlanta counties, his lead will likely hold up too. Republican attack ads could darken the black preacher's skin and lengthen the Jewish filmmaker's nose, but they couldn't stop Georgia from making them its new Senators.

This gives Joe Biden a 50-50 Senate majority. With Kamala Harris breaking ties, Mitch McConnell can't block the budget. The filibuster still threatens to hold up any larger business by requiring 60 votes to close debate, and some centrist Democrats like Joe Manchin want to keep it. Our best hope is that McConnell obstructs Democrats enough to change their minds.

The House is organized to pass whatever can get through the Senate. Nancy Pelosi just won another term as Speaker, with votes from young left-wing Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Katie Porter, Cori Bush, and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Pelosi just assigned all four of them to the powerful Oversight and Reform Committee, as I learned from a happy AOC tweet.

A new DNC Chair will be chosen soon. I don't know if Stacey Abrams wants the position -- she may be focused on running for Governor of Georgia in 2022. But after developing a voter turnout operation that saved the first two years of Biden's presidency and gave Georgia its first black Senator, she would be a spectacular person for that job.