The next four years begin tonight in Georgia

If tonight’s Senate runoffs in Georgia hang in the balance then so too do the ambitions of the incoming Biden administration which, for the moment, remains more like a Schrödinger’s presidency in terms of its potential.

Like the cat of the famous thought experiment, Biden’s embryonic presidency appears both dead and alive at one and the same time; it is both a presidency that will be hampered from the very start and one that has the power to shape America’s destiny for at least two years. Tonight we get to open the box and examine the state of the cat for the very first time.

The two seats being contested will decide the balance of power in the Senate. If either of the two seats falls Republican – still the most likely scenario – then Congress will remain divided, with the Senate hostile to Democrats, who will then have to rely on Biden’s much-touted love for bipartisan deal-making. There has been some speculation that Biden would almost welcome this outcome, since it would frustrate the more radical wing of his own party, leaving him to make deals with moderate Republicans arguably closer to his worldview.

That does, however, feel like a rationalisation that continues to be made in the light of an election result that was far from the landslide that Democrats had hoped for down the ticket. It also sounds a little like a premature admission of defeat.

Make no mistake, both Georgia races are winnable for Democrats, especially given the weakness of the Republican candidates who are both incumbents with problematic backstories. Both face strong challenges from effective campaigners. In the first race, the incumbent is David Perdue, a Trumpian Republican plagued by months of bad press around alleged insider trading. Against him is the Democrat, Jon Ossoff, a politically adroit 33-year-old, whose attacks have pushed Perdue into something a corner, leaving the sitting Senator refusing to debate his rival.

The other race is between mega-wealthy Republican, Kelly Loeffler, and the Democrat Rev Raphael Warnock, a pastor who could become Georgia’s first black senator. Loeffler is herself accused of profiting from her position and has also aligned herself closely with Trump, appearing at his rally on Monday night where she confirmed her intention to join eleven other Senate Republicans in opposing the confirmation of the election result.

Neither Georgia race is easy to call. Momentum might yet favour Democrats – a continuation of the Biden “wave”, ongoing disgust towards Trump, a chance to win the Senate, and the “stop the steal” narrative paradoxically suppressing the Republican vote – but Republicans will also find motivations to vote. Chief among them is the President’s ongoing challenge to the election result, propelled back into the headlines on Sunday by The Washington Post’s release of a phone call between Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, in which the President is heard to ask Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the result.

Trump is clearly deluding himself about his chances of holding onto power beyond 20th January but many around him will be more clear-eyed despite their advocacy. As strange as it is hearing Senator Ted Cruz complaining about the result (in his biography he spends most of his time either boasting about either his academic brilliance or his love for the Constitution, both of which make his stance puzzling) this is a deeply cynical ground game that’s being played out. Cruz and others are trying to retain credibility with that sizable part of the electorate that continues to buy into the Trumpian myth. This is about conservative politics cast as victimhood, twisted patriotism, and a misguided notion of fairness in which an election is only fair when the result favours your chosen candidate. It’s an ugly business that exposes the hypocrisy of politicians operating from ego rather than conviction, though it should also be remembered that a few Democrats behaved similarly 2016. It fell to Joe Biden to declare “it’s over” when they objected to the certification of results that handed Trump victory.

This is what makes tonight’s result compelling. It’s not just a matter of who controls the Senate but how the two sides then modulate their responses in the ongoing culture war. If Republicans carry both seats, it will be seen as more justification for Trump’s challenge. How, he will ask, could he lose a state now carried by Republicans? If one or both Republicans lose, it will again feed the Brad Raffensperger narrative, whereby the Republican Secretary of State is seen to be continuing the “fraud”.

Either way, Trump will emerge as the victim and pressure will mount on Mike Pence to do the impossible and obstruct Biden’s confirmation when the Senate meets on Wednesday to ratify the election result. Either way, Trump as “the president cruelly robbed of power” will be able to translate that grievance into a large dollar amount as he moves back into his not-so-private private life. Countering that narrative will be a real challenge for Republican challengers moving forward.

Conversely, a victory for Democrats opens up quite different set of difficulties for the incoming president, not least in how he deals with his predecessor. It does indeed look possible that Trump broke both state and federal laws by involving himself in the Georgia election result (Democrats have already asked the FBI to investigate) but, like so many of Trump’s transgressions, some Democrats might fear empowering him by going on the offence. Might it not serve Biden better to allow Trump to slip into obscurity, peddling his conspiracy nonsense through right-wing networks and thereby continuing to splinter the Republican base? Or do Democrats lose both moral and political traction if they fail to prosecute the 45th president for his breaches of the law? Whilst there might be some political advantage in looking the other way, what precedents do they set for a future where Trump’s populism might be adopted by a politician with more talent than the current president?

It shouldn’t be expected that either side will resolve these complicated matters cleanly – there will be no absolute reaction that’s entirely litigious or entirely conciliatory. There will be a path forward that navigates the obstacles. Biden will no doubt distance himself from whatever actions might be taken by the Justice Department and, certainly, have no involvement in actions taken at the State level.

At the same time, Republicans will navigate around the obstacle that Trump will present as he settles himself in some profitable role in right-wing politics. The problem of Trumpism is yet to be resolved but like many things which seem intractable in the moment, that resolution will ultimately come and possibly sooner than anticipated.

Barring any last-minute war with Iran or some constitutionally questionable business in Congress, tonight’s results should mark the last significant moment of the Trump era, whilst also giving some big clues about the administration that’s about to begin. For all the talk of optimism and unity that Joe Biden preaches, we still have no clear indicator of what kind of administration will enter the White House on January 20th and what kind of power it will be afforded. By Tuesday night, we might have a few clues. The cat will be out of the bag or, to torture the Schrödinger analogy a little more, out of the box, and we might finally learn if it has sharp claws.