Come on, Jon, you can do it!Sue Dorfman/ZUMA

If Jon Ossoff holds on in Georgia and Democrats eke out control of the Senate, it will make life a lot easier for Joe Biden. It means Chuck Schumer will control the flow of legislation onto the Senate floor, not Mitch McConnell. It means confirmation of judges and executive branch officers will be a lot easier. It will mean that Democrats can use the Congressional Review Act to overturn Donald Trump’s last minute agency rules, just as Trump did to Barack Obama’s last-minute rules in 2017.

But legislation is another matter. Republicans will still have the filibuster available to block anything that can’t get 60 votes in the Senate—which is just about everything. And several Democrats have already said they oppose efforts to eliminate the filibuster, so it’s going to stay around. This means that unless Democrats can persuade a few Republicans to join them, all legislation will require literally unanimous support from the entire Democratic caucus in the Senate in order to pass. In practice, this means the deciding votes won’t be cast by Jon Ossoff or Raphael Warnock, but by the two or three most conservative Dems, folks like Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, and Kyrsten Sinema.

In other words, don’t count on those $2,000 checks quite yet. It’s possible that a few Republicans will support them. It’s possible that every single Democrat will support them. But it’s hardly a sure thing. In the 117th Congress, just about everything is going to be a heavy lift. That’s a whole lot better than it could have been, but it would still be wise to temper your expectations.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through January 5. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Stacey Abrams said she'd turn Georgia blue, and by God she did it. Congratulations, Stacey.Kevin Lowery/Biden via ZUMA

How about that? It looks like Democrats are going to win both the Senate races in Georgia. This will split the Senate 50-50, with Kamala Harris providing the tiebreaking vote. I wonder if Lisa Murkowski could be persuaded to become an independent who caucuses with the Democrats? That would make things easier.

I see a lot of chatter about how Democrats should now nuke the filibuster and start passing Medicare for All and everything else on the progressive wish list. Well, forget it. Democrats don’t have 51 votes to get rid of the filibuster, so that’s not going to happen. In terms of passing legislation, then, the big question is what Chuck Schumer will put into the annual reconciliation bill, which only needs 50 votes (plus Kamala) to pass. In practice, you get to choose only one thing, and obviously it needs to be something that every single Democrat will vote for. I would be happy with doubling Obamacare subsidies, which would be pretty good for the working class and pretty popular with the middle class too. Could it attract every single Dem vote? Maybe. Maybe.

Perhaps you have a better idea. Remember, you get one thing only. That’s how the rules work. And it needs to be something that has a plausible chance of winning the votes of even the most conservative Democrats. Feel free to toss out your favorites in comments.

Bitcoin continues its spectacular 3-month surge:

I don’t get it, but then, there are lots of things I don’t get. I suppose that old stamps and impressionist paintings don’t have any intrinsic value either, aside from the fact that lots of people want them, so why not bitcoin? But what I still want to know is something simple: if I own a bitcoin, can I sell it easily and pocket my $34,131? Has anyone become rich doing that? That is, selling a big stock of bitcoin for actual American dollars (not ether or tether or some other blockchain bullshit) and then retiring to the Bahamas? For some reason I never hear about that.

Here’s a sea turtle at the San Diego Zoo making its way directly toward the camera. This is, once again, an example of using my big rubber lens hood to eliminate reflections from the glass. It makes it much harder to take a picture, but without it the pictures are hopelessly ruined by glare. So the lens hood it is.

Andrew Milligan/PA Wire via ZUMA

The latest hot rumor is that Donald Trump is going to skip the inauguration and instead jet off to his golf club in Turnberry. But it turns out the Scots don’t want him:

On Tuesday, the leader of Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, was asked if Trump was headed her way, and what might be her message to him?

At her daily news briefing, Sturgeon said, “I have no idea what Donald Trump’s travel plans are, you’ll be glad to know.” Then she added, “I hope and expect that his immediate travel plan is to exit the White House, but beyond that I don’t know.”

Finally, Sturgeon warned Trump he might be breaking the law if he came: “We are not allowing people to come into Scotland now without an essential purpose, which would apply to him, just as it applies to everybody else. Coming to play golf is not what I would consider an essential purpose.”

Ha ha ha.

I did my part by purchasing a new car this year, but it wasn’t enough. Unsurprisingly, sales of cars and light trucks were down significantly in 2020, declining about 15 percent from 2019.

UPDATE: Wait! What kind of car did I get? Answer: a Subaru Forester. I’ve had it for a couple of months now.

Here’s a fascinating poll that I missed when it was released last month:

We tend to think of vaccine skepticism as a uniquely American affair due to our political polarization and the consequent politicization of the pandemic. But no. It turns out that we’re about average, ranking below the UK, Australia, and Canada, but above Germany, Spain, and Japan. And way above France, which is the global epicenter for vaccine skepticism.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but obviously there’s a lot more going on than just the American behavior that we usually attribute this to (conservative conspiracy theories, POC skepticism of the medical industry, etc.). I wonder what?

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through January 4. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Today brings us this headline in the New York Times:

Election Day Voting in 2020 Took Longer in America’s Poorest Neighborhoods

This is true—but just barely. In fact, I was struck by how the data actually indicates that we could be making real progress. First off, here’s a Times chart that I replotted to remove the bias of cutting off the y axis:

From the lowest to highest incomes, there’s surprisingly little variation in the percentage of people who have to wait more than an hour to vote. It basically ranges from 14 percent to 16 percent, which is barely noticeable.

Here’s another chart. It’s a little hard to figure out, so bear with me:

The gray curve represents white neighborhoods. There’s a 10-minute wait in about 4.5 percent of them, a 30-minute wait in 0.8 percent, etc. The black curve represents non-white neighborhoods. There’s a 10-minute wait in about 3.5 percent of them, a 30-minute wait in 1 percent of them, etc. As you can see, the curves are quite similar, showing only a small difference between white and non-white neighborhoods. And if you go out to the extreme, at a wait time of two hours or more, they’re identical.

I’ve drawn dashed red lines where the curves cross the 50-minute mark, which is a long-but-not-extreme wait time. In “overwhelmingly white” neighborhoods, where the red line crosses the gray curve, 0.4 percent of voters had to wait 50 minutes. In “overwhelmingly nonwhite” neighborhoods, where the red line crosses the black curve, the number was 0.5 percent. Again, these are tiny numbers and tiny differences even though the chart only includes “overwhelmingly” segregated neighborhoods.

If the Times analysis is correct—and I have my doubts—the real story here is that we have nearly eliminated the long wait times for both poor and POC neighborhoods. Anecdotal evidence makes me doubt this, but I’d sure like to see someone follow up on this using different methodology. Have we really made this much progress in polling place discrimination?