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There was no shortage of inspiring speeches during the first night of the Democratic National Convention, and Sen. Raphael Warnock's was one of the most rousing.
There were many moments in the Georgia Democrat's almost 14-minute speech that stuck out, but his warning about the Republican assault on voting rights resonated with me the most. It was a reminder, to anyone who needed it, that the GOP's election subversion efforts surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, never actually ceased — and that Georgians know this firsthand.
The day after my Jan. 5 election, [Donald Trump] instigated an insurrection. A violent assault on our nation’s capital and the peaceful transfer of power. All driven by the 'big lie.' But behind the 'big lie' was an even bigger lie. It is the lie that this increasingly diverse American electorate does not get to determine the future of this country. The lie and the logic of Jan. 6 is a sickness. It is a kind of cancer that then metastasized into dozens of voter suppression laws all across our country. And we must be vigilant tonight because these antidemocratic forces are at work right now in Georgia and all across our country, and the question is: who will heal the land?
Following Donald Trump’s 2020 loss in Georgia, and his failed pressure campaign seeking to overturn the results, Georgia Republicans have instituted some of the strictest voter suppression measures in the nation. Along with that, as my colleague Lisa Rubin wrote for MaddowBlog on Tuesday, Trump loyalists who make up the majority of the Georgia State Election Board have disturbingly altered the electoral process in ways that will make it easier for right-wing election officials to delay certifying local election results should Trump lose in November.
Warnock’s warning sounded similar to things I’ve heard and read from Georgia activists who have cautioned Democrats not to lose sight of the right-wing assault on voting rights and fair elections, even as the palpable vigor surrounding the Harris-Walz campaign and recent polling data have Democrats feeling better about their prospects for winning the state.
Georgia, after all, has become a testing ground for some of the Republican Party’s most illiberal experiments, as they try to grease the skids for Republican victories in November. It’s safe to assume their attacks on democracy will only grow more desperate if polling data continues to show Vice President Kamala Harris with more support than Trump has in the state. And several states have followed in Georgia’s footsteps, passing a host of revanchist voter suppression policies of their own.
So I appreciated the senator’s balanced tone in his speech. He energized listeners with talk about all the things a Harris presidency might be able to achieve, such as expanded health care access, improved child care, reproductive rights and peace for children in Israel and the Gaza Strip. But he reminded them of the obstacles — dubious, right-wing laws — they’ll need to overcome to give Harris a chance. The Harris-Walz campaign seems to understand this, given recent reports that it has been staffing up its legal team to combat any election chicanery Republicans may try. And that's good news. Because, as Warnock alluded, officers indeed quelled a violent insurrection Jan. 6, 2021. But the right-wing assault on democracy hasn’t died down since then.