Today is the last day of early voting in Georgia for the run-off race between Republican Herschel Walker and Democrat incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock. Voter turnout is crucial in this race. By all accounts, the race is tight and no one is able to confidentially predict its outcome.

Both campaigns are bringing out the big guns. Walker is leaning on Governor Kemp as his best chance for garnering large crowds, as the governor is very popular in Georgia and just won an impressive re-election victory over now-two time loser Stacey Abrams. Other well-known Republicans are coming to Walker’s aid, too. Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Tim Scott, Rick Scott, as well as others like Nikki Haley, have shown up on the campaign trail with Walker. I think Senator Lindsey Graham is glued to Walker’s side these days.

Raphael Warnock brought Dave Matthews in for a concert to appeal to suburban voters. Both campaigns are competing for the 200,000 split ticket voters who chose to vote for Governor Kemp and for Warnock in the general election. They were mostly suburban voters and it is reported that hundreds came out to see Matthews. On Thursday, the most popular Democrat in the country came to Atlanta to campaign for Warnock – Barack Obama.

This is not just a statewide election to determine one state’s representation in the U.S. Senate. This is a national election, given its importance. That is why both campaigns are pulling out all the stops. Obama came to campaign for Warnock and Stacey Abrams during the general election, yet Abrams lost (again) to Governor Kemp and Warnock failed to secure 50% of the vote to avoid a run-off with Walker. Is Obama’s star power fading?

If nothing else, Obama’s campaign stump speech for Warnock reminded us just what a divisive politician he is. Obama launched into his best Southern cadence and went about trashing Walker, and Republicans in general, with great enjoyment. His audience lapped it up. When it came to referencing how the red wave everyone was expecting didn’t really happen across the country, he said, “It’s good to know folks would prefer normal to Looney Tunes.” His hot take on the general election results was that Americans care more about abortion access, gun violence, and climate than they do for the “conspiracy theorists and election deniers” who were on the ballot in key states.

Obama lectured the crowd about not being complacent and getting out to vote. He touched on the important difference between a 49/51 Senate and a 50/50 Senate.

“I’m here to tell you we can’t let up, I’m here to tell you we can’t tune out, we can’t be complacent, we have run through the tape,” Obama said.

“Some folks are asking, ‘why does this matter? What’s the difference between 50 and 51?’ The answer is a lot,” Obama said.

For starters, Democrats won’t have to rely on Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking floor vote which gives them added cushion when it comes to judicial nominations and other critical confirmations in the coming year.

Besides putting Democrats in a better position ahead of the 2024 Senate map, which favors the GOP, Obama alluded to how having a 51-seat majority means less leverage for moderate to more conservative-leaning Democrats.

The former president didn’t mention Sen. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, who has complicated President Joe Biden’s legislative goals, by name. But Warnock winning the runoff “gives Democrats more breathing room” next year, adding how it also “prevents one person from holding up everything.”

The importance in the difference can’t be overstated. Republicans need a 50/50 Senate and the leverage it gives both Republicans and Democrats who are sometimes more conservative than the leftists in their party. It can bring Biden’s extreme agenda to a screeching halt during the last two years of his term in office.

Obama ridiculed Walker for not being up to the task of being a senator and for some of his speeches, including one that included werewolves and vampires in horror movies, but then he included a reference to a “crazy Uncle Joe.”

He coulda said Uncle Frank, but tellingly, Uncle Joe. https://t.co/e1fDCpKIY0

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) December 2, 2022

Ouch. Hey, I wonder whatever happened to Cousin Pookie.

Anyway, it’s telling that even in a tight run-off race when everyone is doing all they can on both sides to help their candidate, Sleepy Joe is not invited to come to Warnock’s aid. He’s going to Massachusetts today, not Georgia. Biden isn’t popular in Georgia. So, the Warnock campaign is using the former president instead of the current one. We’ll see next week if Obama has better luck with Warnock in the run-off race than he did in the general election.