With the Georgia Senate runoff elections looking like it will swing control of the Senate to Democrats, people online are celebrating that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will no longer be in charge of the upper chamber with a #ByeMitch hashtag and memes.
In Georgia, Raphael Warnock is the projected winner of one runoff, defeating Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.). Meanwhile, Jon Ossoff seems poised to defeat Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), although the race has not been as widely called as Warnock-Loeffler.
With the two wins, the Senate would be a 50-50 split, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vote, giving Democrats control of the Senate. The party also controls the House of Representatives and the presidency after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated.
It also means that McConnell will no longer be the Senate majority leader—a consequence of the Georgia runoffs that was not lost on people.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) tweeted on Tuesday night: “Just practicing: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. Sounding very, very good.”
Jayapal wasn’t alone, with hundreds of other people online reveling in the fact that McConnell—who became a liberal villain in the past decade—wouldn’t control the direction of the Senate anymore once Ossoff is officially declared the winner.
Meanwhile, other people celebrated the news by coalescing around a #ByeMitch hashtag.
