What Happened This Week In Washington — And Georgia

Pence just convened a joint session of Congress to certify the presidential election results, and Republicans in the House and Senate lodged formal challenges to the results in Arizona (this is one of three states that GOP senators and representatives are expected to object to, according to reporting from our colleagues at ABC News).

So, the way things will work is that after an objection is issued — as in Arizona — there are then two hours of debate and votes in the House and Senate on each challenge.

In other words, this could take a while, probably closer to three or four hours for each state where objections are lodged, given that the chambers have been staggering voting during the pandemic.

I want to add to my lengthy comments from earlier about elected Republicans breaking with Trump. The emphasis is on elected Republicans, and of course not all of them (they’re probably likelier to be senators than House members). I have no idea if voters will follow along. In fact, if I had to guess today, they won’t. There is a well-developed apparatus in radio, TV, online that can motivate the Trumpier parts of the party, especially once they are out of power. Remember the Tea Party? So this break may well be unsuccessful, but it will happen.

So far, this is going down pretty much how everybody expected it to go down.