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Senator Raphael Warnock on America’s “Moral and Spiritual Battle”
Episode 931

Senator Raphael Warnock on America’s “Moral and Spiritual Battle”

The Democratic senator and Baptist pastor, who preaches from the same pulpit in Atlanta as Martin Luther King, Jr., did, says that Trumpism has exacerbated a “spiritual crisis.”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

June 7, 202422m 38s

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Show Notes

When Raphael Warnock was elected to the Senate from Georgia in the 2020 election, he made history a couple of times over. He became the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate from the Deep South. At the same time, that victory—alongside Jon Ossoff’s—flipped both of Georgia’s Senate seats from Republican to Democrat. Once thought of as solidly red, Georgia has become a closely watched swing state that President Biden can’t afford to lose in November, and Warnock is a key ally. He dismisses polls that show younger Black voters are leaning toward Trump in higher numbers than older voters; Biden’s record as President, he thinks—including a reported sixty per cent increase in Black wealth since the pandemic—will motivate strong turnout. Warnock returns to Atlanta every Sunday to preach at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he remains senior pastor, and he thinks of the election as a “moral and spiritual battle.” “Are we a nation that can send from the South a Black man and a Jewish man to the Senate?” he asks. “Or are we that nation that rises up in violence as we witness the demographic changes in our country and the struggle for a more inclusive Republic?” 

Topics

georgiaelection 2024raphael warnockdemocratsprogressive2020blue statejoe bidenjon ossoffdonald trump