Biden: Lives depend on Georgia Senate race outcome

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday thanked Georgians for delivering him the state in last month's election and urged them to follow up to deliver two Democratic Senate runoff victories in January.

Fresh off the Electoral College affirming his victory, Biden campaigned alongside Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock as they try to unseat Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Jan. 5 runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate.

The president-elect warned that Republican victories would leave him to face the kind of GOP obstruction that hampered former President Barack Obama for most of his two terms.

“You got to vote in record numbers again. Because, yes, the lives of every Georgian still depends on what you're doing," Biden said at a drive-in rally near downtown Atlanta.

"Yes, you still need to vote as if your life depends on it, because it does," he said.

Hours earlier in Washington, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged for the first time that Biden had defeated President Donald Trump after spending weeks muted about the president’s false claims that Biden stole the election through widespread voter fraud.

In fact, elections officials across the country, including some Georgia Republicans, vouched for the integrity of the voting process and tabulations.

Biden even won Georgia, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to achieve victory in the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.

Republicans need one of the two Georgia seats for McConnell to remain majority leader and set the Senate agenda. McConnell has repeatedly described himself as the barrier for Democrats’ agenda on health care, overhauling the nation's energy grid and reducing the carbon pollution that causes climate change, among other things.