Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D) victory over Republican Herschel Walker in Georgia’s Senate runoff Tuesday night wrapped up the 2022 midterm election season and set the stage for the 2024 presidential election. 

The Democrat’s victory also gives his party more leverage with their majority in the Senate and signifies yet another midterm loss for a candidate endorsed by former President Trump. 

Here are five takeaways from Georgia’s Senate runoff.

Republicans on Wednesday blamed their loss in Georgia's U.S. Senate runoff election on several factors directly tied to former President Donald Trump, beginning with the scandal-plagued celebrity he chose as their candidate.

Herschel Walker, a former University of Georgia football star with no political experience, failed to unseat Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock after being plagued by questions about his fitness for office. Warnock's win gave Democrats a 51-49 majority in the 100-member chamber.

In the Georgia race for U.S. Senate, Raphael Warnock was a very good candidate, and Herschel Walker was a particularly awful one. We don’t need the results of Tuesday’s runoff election to reach that conclusion.

And in a state that Democrats almost never win, Warnock did, adding to Democrats' lead in the Senate in the process. Given Georgia’s history, any kind of a nail-biter should be seen as a positive for Democrats and a negative for Republicans.

Herschel Walker, the Heisman Trophy winner who led the Georgia Bulldogs to a national championship in 1982, just wrote Donald Trump’s political obituary. 

Walker lost his bid to replace Georgia’s incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock, handing Democrats in that chamber a critical majority. A majority which will enable Joe Biden to appoint more judges, enact more legislation and put in place more appointees willing and able to carry out his far-left agenda. Walker was endorsed by former President Trump. 

Just how historically anomalous was Herschel Walker's 2-point loss to incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in the runoff on Tuesday? Consider these facts in light of the reality that President Joe Biden expanded Democratic control of the upper congressional chamber to a 51-49 majority.

Since World War II, the president's party has gained Senate seats in only four of those 19 midterm elections.

Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D) victory over Republican Herschel Walker in Georgia’s Senate runoff Tuesday night wrapped up the 2022 midterm election season and set the stage for the 2024 presidential election. 

The Democrat’s victory also gives his party more leverage with their majority in the Senate and signifies yet another midterm loss for a candidate endorsed by former President Trump. 

Here are five takeaways from Georgia’s Senate runoff.

Dems get breathing room in the Senate

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., endured a politically rough day Tuesday.

First, a permitting reform bill that Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had agreed upon was excluded from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Manchin had pushed for energy-permit refoms, including speeding up environmental reviews, expediting priority fossil and renewable projects, beefing up transmission lines, and securing the approval of a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia.

There is a saying in the African American community that goes, “I am living my ancestor’s wildest dreams.”

After a bruising, long and historically expensive campaign season in Georgia, Sen. Raphael Warnock won reelection as one of Georgia’s two Democratic US Senators. He made history in 2021, when he was elected as the first African American US Senator from the Peach State, but it was only to complete the term for the recently deceased Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson.

The Democrats’ capstone re-election victory of Senator Raphael Warnock forced Republicans to reckon on Wednesday with the red wave that wasn’t, as they turned with trepidation to 2024 and the intensifying divisions in the party over former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Warnock’s two-and-a-half percentage point win over Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate runoff left Democrats with a 51-49 seat majority in the upper chamber, a one-seat gain. That came despite dire predictions for a blood bath for President Biden’s party.

Democrats exulted Wednesday in Sen. Raphael Warnock’s Georgia runoff victory over Republican Herschel Walker, as a divided GOP grappled with what went wrong in the Peach State. 

Warnock’s win gives Democrats a 51-49 majority in the Senate beginning in January. The slight advantage paves the way for Dems to take full control of committees, easing the approval process for President Biden’s judicial and administrative nominees.