The Young Turks - Hour 1: TYT GEORGIA SENATE RUNOFF ELECTION COVERAGE

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Hour 1: Join Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, Michael Shure, and Dr. Rashad Richey as they cover the Georgia Senate Runoff Election between Rev. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker LIVE. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right, welcome the Young Turks election night coverage. We've got Jake Ugar, Dr. Rashad Richie, John Iderola, Michael Shore. So everybody's got something to contribute to this lineup. Number one, Rishad was the head of the Democratic Party in Georgia, so he's got excellent expertise here.

Number two, Michael was just in Georgia. I'm going to show you a number of his clips, which are amazing. In fact, I'm going to go to one of those very soon, where he talked to Republicans on the ground, and John's got the numbers for you guys. And of course, Rashad is the host of Indisputable. John is the host of Damage Report here on the TYT Network. But first, let me start with the main number. 45% reporting. We're right into it right away, because of course, the post closed a little while ago.

And Warnock with a big lead, 55.3% to Herschel Walker's 44.7%. Now, I normally go to Rashad here for expertise, but John's got some extra numbers that helps explain the context there. So John, why don't you go first? Yeah, so look, when you're waiting to find out what's going to happen and you're trying to predict it, probably needlessly, we're all going to know in an hour or so. but you're trying to get an idea. There's a lot of different ways that you can go about it. So what I started to do, which I seemed fairly reasonable to me, was to go to the results from November, start looking at the breakdown in the counties,

and then start comparing the initial results that we have at the individual county level. And it seemed like, regardless of whether this was a county that Warnock won in November or Walker won, it seemed as if the movement that was there. And it did look like there was movement in the vast majority of them was towards Warnock. Now, we'll see what some of those. Some of those are counties that don't have a very significant portion of the vote already in. I'm also looking at some of the initial analysis that's been being done on 538, and they're looking specifically only at the 22 counties where more than 95% of the vote is already in,

where we can roughly say this is what the result is going to be in that county. And they're showing that all of the results on average are within about a point of the November result. They say that in these counties, Walker's actually doing about 0.1 points better. Although there are big swings. So for instance, in Johnson County, it looks like Warnick's up about 9.7 points from where he was. Walker is still winning that by quite a bit, but that's a pretty big shift. We'll have to see if those early closing counties are actually representative of all of them

or if there's something that might be biasing those towards Walker. All right, guys, get video too ready because I want to go to an important news part of this too, but the main number just got updated. Now 46% reporting, and it's exactly a 10 point lead, 55 to 45. So it's hard not to get excited by the 10 point lead. Michael is excited about it. We want to get to that in a second as well. But at the same time, as John's explaining, it all depends on which counties are reporting first.

It also has the mail-in ballots. We'll talk about the timing of that as well, but a moment of levity here on Erection Day. Let's watch. That wasn't, yeah, okay, well, that wasn't it. All right, well, we'll do that Hershey Walker clip later. Okay, back to serious stuff. Rashad, give us context here. Is this a good enough lead to hold?

Are you worried? Are you happy? What do you think? You know, typically I do not make predictions, especially when people are still voting, that is not the case right here in the state of Georgia. I do predict that Wernock is going to inch this out based on aggregate polling data. Polls are not predictions, but based on aggregate polling data and also the historical performance of Wernock in these particular counties. Georgia is an interesting state. Georgia is a county happy state.

We have 159 counties. Those 159 counties, each of them, with the exception of probably two or three, they have an independent board of elections. Some of them have a circuit board of elections where they encompass more than one county. The new law that was passed a couple of years ago, this is what I'm more worried about than anything else, Jank. The new law that was passed in the state of Georgia, we called it the voter restriction law. Well, it did something else that was more diabolical than even the restriction

element which took days away from early vote absentee, what times you can vote, et cetera. It also allowed for the Republicans or whoever is in power at the time, which right now are the Republicans, it allows them to take over a board of elections at any time in the process of voting. That becomes an issue when it is close, when it is close. Now remember, they play chess. Typically Democrats play checkers. They made this law. two years ago, this law creates a de facto bias in the favor of the Republican in a runoff. How does it do that? Number one, it cut off the turnaround time. So they shorten the turnaround time from the general election to the runoff. Well, that favors the candidate that's connected

to the natural demographics of the state, which means Republicans. Georgia is still majority conservative. It also eliminated Saturday voting. Well, what happened? There was a court ruling that said, no, no, no, the state cannot do that. Unfortunately, by the time that court ruling came a couple of weeks ago, that court ruling did not come with millions of dollars to tell people, the law has now gone back to what it used to be for some of the counties. Now you can do Saturday voting. So it did not have the impact of a lot of people voting on the weekends because most people believe they could not, given the fact that the law was passed two years ago. So those are some of the extra dynamics that are probably more of an issue and may become a real issue if this election is close. Yeah, and again, don't guys, don't get too influenced by the fact that it's a wide lead

for Warnock now. Right. This election is supposed to be very close and very, and might still very be that close. In fact, I want to give you the latest numbers. Now the reporting is coming in very quickly now. 49% reporting now, in fact, it just changed as we are sitting here. Those numbers are already outdated.

53.4 to 46.6. So when we came on the air, the lead was about 11 or 12 points, it's now down to around 7 points. We'll say it, like we say it every election night, it doesn't mean that Herschel Walker's team is catching up, right? It just, they all voted at the same time, it's just a matter when the votes get count. from the different parts of Georgia. So when you see a Republican county get counted, Herschel Walker, quote unquote, catches up, even though he's, but does Herschel Walker understand that?

Unlikely given what I was going to go to earlier. Let's show the video. Well, first of all, this election is more than Hersch Walker. This election is about the people. Well, I mean, that is a Freudian slip, but if anyone has the right to say this direction is about the people, it's Herschel Walker, who slept with the people? Okay, a lot of them. Listen, here's the thing, Jake, here's the thing, I don't think people get this.

Listen, if bigoted as white men do it for you, that's the moment. Like, if you're sitting next to Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, well, yeah, you know, if bigoted ass white men do it for you, that's the moment. Well, yeah, you know, if bigoted white men do it for you. And obviously erection was on his mind. I mean, it's a fact. All right, so Michael was in Georgia recently. There's a lot more videos where that came from in talking to supporters. But Michael, I felt like you came in more confident that Warnock's going to win.

Yeah, and I'm more so confident now looking at the numbers, looking at the fact that DeKalb County is at 5%, that Fulton County is only at 55%, that a lot of these, you know, these heavy counties, even Dougherty County, where Albany is in Georgia, you look at some of these counties, and those are blue counties that's Warnock country. And I think that that's giving me the indication that the machine that puts this together for Democrats in Georgia and has done so successfully over the past four years, you have to say, for whatever, you know, issues they have and everything that Dr. Ritchie told us just now, it's all true. Also, the truncated schedule helps the best organization.

So as opposed to last time when this runoff was a two month cycle, this time it's a one month cycle. And so being on the ground there, while you go to, when you go to a rally, you sort of have to put blinders on as well because those people are there to support that candidate. But at one rally that I went to, hard to call it a rally, about 40 people there for Walker in Rome, Georgia, down in Woodstock, Georgia. By the time we got to Woodstock, there were only about 125 people there. And so I think that you can't judge this stuff by by turnout. But when you're trying to build momentum going into an election, and this was just a couple of days ago, you don't get that sense. I think Warnock is going to exceed a lot of what the predictions are by a few points anyway. And I think that's looking at these numbers as they're coming in now.

That to me tells me that. All right. A little bit more results for you guys, 50% reporting now, 52.9 to 47.1. So that's a six point lead now. You see it's getting closer and closer as we go. All right, John. Yeah, and I'll say that they're, I am cautiously optimistic, you know, and the end result is what matters, but there is no result that is going to come out of this that isn't

deeply troubling in a lot of different ways and what it says about individuals, what it says about the Republican Party, what it says about people will accept going forward. So I want to dive a little bit more into some of the comparison of the finalized county results from November to what we have right now. Now, bearing in mind that I guess it's conceivable that possibly we could have a bit of a, I don't know what kind of mirage it would be in terms of when they're counting the daily bouts, when they're counting the mail-in ballots, maybe that's resulting in some of this. But so for instance, Fulton County in November went plus, wait, hold on a second,

Fulton County in November went Warnock plus 49, right now it's plus 65. Cobb back in November was plus 16, right now it's plus 34. DeKalb was plus 70, Warnick, and I'm not seeing that one right now. But we can see that Walker was up 33 and Forsythe, he's up 28 right now. So from what I'm seeing, and we only have, in some cases, 25, percent, 50 percent, 75 percent, I don't see any of them so far that are that are going more for Walker than they were back in November again. It is possibility that this is based on when the votes are being counted, what the nature

of the votes is, but this certainly seems like good news. Yeah, I mean, look, by some estimates, Warnock is likely to win by one point, but when you look at the numbers that John just shared, that goes to optimism that Michael has. That seems like that's a much bigger win than one point, those differences. One thing to keep in mind too, and Dr. Rish can speak to this better than any of us, is the dynamic in Georgia, right? So you have people who are coming out in that election in November for Brian Kemp. What you also have to factor in are Republicans who went to the polls because they didn't

like Stacey Abrams. And they wanted, there's been a lot of Stacey Abrams in that state over the last four years. And if you're a Republican, you're a conservative, and you don't like Stacey Abrams, you're to come out to vote against someone, as sometimes happens. Without Stacey Abrams on the ballot, there is, I don't think, an insignificant number of Republicans who went into the ballot box saw in our next to Herschel Walker's name were there to vote against Abrams or vote for Kemp. They're not going to necessarily come back this time.

And I think that's going to account for some drop-off for the Republican in this race. Well, I'm super- Let me talk to that. Yeah, go ahead of you. Sorry, just as a lead-in to you, Rashad. I'm curious to see what the difference between this race is going to be and the one that we had during the gentleman terms. And that's the point that John and Michael were making because did the Republicans stay home or did they get more animated? Hey, you know, did the fact that the Senate is not on the line in this case make a difference? How would we know that it made a difference?

All these are super interesting questions related to this, but not just related to this election, but also related to the relative of strength of Trump in a primary. So Rashad, I was gonna ask you, what's your sense of the dynamic of this race versus the one we just had about a month ago? Very good question. So one of the dynamics you brought up, Jank, that has been an issue for this campaign is the fact that they're not fighting over control. Here's how we know that has already made a difference, the money.

Herschel Walker has broke no records. If this would have been about control of the U.S. Senate, all records would have been broken for a runoff election. That did not happen because he's not the person who will tilt the scale, so to speak. So that's number one. Another dynamic, which is interesting about the Stacey Abrams effect, in the first election cycle, in a general election cycle, you had Stacey Abrams who was able to motivate the base, yes, but she also motivated the opposition.

We talked about that on election night as we covered that race. Warnock is an interesting nuance. Wernock has enough, and for lack of a better phraseology, Christian credibility, that he does not frighten some of the Christian evangelicals in the Bible Belt state known as Georgia. So without Stacey Abrams on the ticket with him, he has a. Lane, that's very different from other Democrats. And also evidenced by his own campaign style, who has not been on the campaign trail with Senator Warnock? Stacey Abrams. Stacey Abrams has not campaign with Senator Warnock. That's called strategy. Because why? The impact of her motivating the base is diluted by the fact that she has the other impact of motivating the opposition. So they have decided to table her, her support in the runoff election. Some people

thought that was a mistake. I actually think it was a pretty good strategy given what we have just shared on the show. You have an opportunity to win this election based on base turnout or nothing else. If you start adding other surrogates that have been, let's say, a motivating factor of the opposition party, now you have to contend with the positive and negative of that. Also, Walker, Walker was the Trump guy. Well, look at who won statewide in the Republican primary. All of the Republican primary winners, except for Walker, were not Trump people. Raffinsberger was not a Trumper. Governor Kemp, not a Trumper. And then they proceeded to win their general elections and they got more votes than Herschel Walker, who was a Trump endorsed candidate.

So in the last week and a half, the governor of Georgia has started to campaign with Herschel Walker. They late dollar short. It's not going to work. And so those dynamics are interesting to note it's good for analysts like ourselves, but also for political strategies moving forward. If we're not would have campaign with Stacey Abrams in this kind of election, it may have been more problematic because of the excitement it would have drew from the other side. Okay, I want to talk more about that in a second as well, but more numbers. 53% reporting now, 52.3 to 47.7. So the lead narrows and narrows. So but still, you know, 53% reporting is a real, real number. That's a big number. And to have a lead that's about five and a half points,

I'd rather be five and a half points up than five and a half points down with 53% reporting. That's for sure. Because remember, guys, now that half the votes are gone, in the second half of the votes, he's going to have to win by almost twice as much Walker is in order to close the gap. That strictly depends on which part of Georgia they count. They've already counted versus the ones that they're going to count. Because obviously there's the Republican counties that are well over 10 points spread for Walker. And certainly the reverse is true for Warnock as well.

And you still have DeKalb County, which is outside of Atlanta at 5%, which would be Warnock territory. You have Fulton County at 57%, which is Atlanta, where you would expect, you know, the early voting in Fulton County was 82 to 18% for Raphael Warnock. And so you have to expect some kind of consistency in Fulton, maybe not to that degree. These are places where a lot of votes will come in for Raphael Warnock. There are other counties around the state that are red, and we can't just look at the blue counties. But when you look at the blue counties, if you look at Muskogee County, you look at Richmond County, you look at some of these counties in Georgia.

And those are places that have not reported to the same effect. Some of them are about 66%. But the ones that are most important to look at for people who want Raphael Warnock to win tonight are the ones around Atlanta, and those are not reporting at the same level as others. So for campaigning purposes, I'm more Germany than Spain. So I'm going to make a World Cup reference. It's going to be lost on most of you. It'll be fun.

Germany's not in the World Cup. Well, now they're Spain, I guess. Yeah. Well, so the Germans, unsurprisingly, attack, attack, attack, right? When they play soccer. The Spanish sit in the midfield, pass it around to themselves, literally a thousand times in a game, and never bother to shoot, right? So most of the time, Democrats are Spain.

It's passing around to themselves. They never bother shooting. It drives me nuts. And you can make an argument that Warnock ran that kind of race here. But Rashad convinced me, as we're doing election night coverage during the main midterms about a month ago, that that was the correct strategy for the reasons that he just explained. And so I just want to come back to that issue and explain how context matters. So in Pennsylvania, Federman did the German style.

He attacked, attacked, attacked, and crushed us, right? But it's a completely different dynamic. There he's going for a populist victory in a strategy. And remember, it's a Republican seat, right? But it's in a purple to almost blue state. So that's a different context. Whereas I think that Michael and Rashad are right, mainly Rashad talking about that evangelical vote in Georgia is something that is outside of my context, right? But matters a lot.

To them, being polite does matter to some degree, right? Him being a Reverend Warnock, being a reverend, does matter to some degree. But, Jake, you know, some of the people that I spoke to at these Walker rallies dismiss that, right? They say that Herschel Walker is the more godly. He's asked for forgiveness and gotten it, that Warnock. And these, again, are people that took time out of their day to go hear Herschel Walker speak. So just put that into the context there. But there are people who say when I asked them flat out, I said, this is a man who gave himself to Christ 25 years ago, been a man of the cloth, his whole adult life, and probably for most of his life. Why is he not the most Christian here? Well, they say he's hypocritical because of his stand on abortion. He's hypocritical because of things that he may have was alleged to have done to his wife and to people who live in his buildings, all things that are on television ads in Georgia now and have been for a while, even into the last cycle. So these sorts of

of things sway some of those evangelicals to think, no, no, Herschel Walker is being supported by the evangelicals, but as someone who's covered politics, and you know this, and everyone here knows this, when you go to a place like South Carolina or Iowa, and you speak to evangelicals before the primaries and the caucuses in those states, you hear from people who are evangelicals, say, I could never vote for Donald Trump. Then you go back when it's the general election, and they know where their bread is buttered, and they go out and they support those people. And I think there's a little bit of the people, a lot of these evangelicals that come out because they know that Herschel Walker is going to support the policy for getting the person, forgetting the

vehicle to get them there, the policy. There's another dynamic here that is worthy of note. None of them are from Atlanta. And let me tell you why that's important. That's important because typically the Republican in a general election, they're able to basically say, well, this person is from Atlanta. And Atlanta doesn't understand George. in order to win a Republican primary or in order to win the base of Republican. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus,

IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. Politics, you have to literally always run against the city of Atlanta in some form. Well, Wernock is not from Atlanta. He pastors in Atlanta, but he's from Savannah, Georgia. That's South Georgia, that's a quasi-rule area. Also, out Walker, well, he's from Athens, Georgia, another quasi-rule area. That evens the playing field, so to speak, because Warnock is still able

to appeal to the base where he lives, which is Atlanta. He's able to appeal to rule Georgia, which is Savannah and other places. And they cannot polarize him as a city slicker candidate as they have with other individuals. So you have the Christian evangelical dynamic. You also have the fact that he's not from Atlanta. And if you look at all of his campaign commercials, he talks about him being a child of Savannah, Georgia. That's intentional. This is strategy.

It is strategic. And at the end of the day, I'm okay with a candidate using strategy without compromising values. Now, when you start compromising values, you and I have a problem. I don't think Warnock has done anything to compromise values in the way he has campaign. So, Rashad, I have a question about that, about what you're talking about? Not only is Warner from Athens and not from Atlanta, you know, the last time that Raphael Warnock was in a race like this, it was against Kelly Leffler, who was from Atlanta, or ostensibly from Atlanta, lived in Atlanta, and bring brought with her enough of a constituency in Atlanta that it cut into those Fulton

County numbers for Warnock. Of course, he went on to win. But the point is that there's no natural constituency in the most populous county in Georgia for Warner, which I think does play into this. Am I right about that? Is that true? You know, it's, it's interesting. It depends.

It depends on what kind of election you're trying to win. In a runoff, the fact that. that runoffs can be one in the state of Georgia without a mass appeal to, let's say, middle of the road voters, right, says you got to really depend on places like Atlanta, DeKalb County. Metro Atlanta really becomes a powerful ally to the Democrat, especially when you're running against someone who doesn't know how to run a campaign, such as Walker. He has, we will call it on Glenwood self-check, all right? Walker has kind of have defeated himself. All of the gaps, yes, that's not good, right? All of the accusations, all of the evidence of malfeasance with his personal life and his own child coming out against

them. Those things are problematic, but they did not knock him out of competition. The reality is the man doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He told political he's running for the house and that this was going to tilt the scale of the House of Representatives. He said it over and over Again, he kept talking about the House and committees, et cetera. Those things, even though Republicans are voted for him because he's the no objector to whatever rich old white men tell them to do, they voted for him because of that. There are some Republicans who are simply going to sit down on this one. They're going to sit this one out because they are well aware.

This is not the guy they won't represent them. Okay, I gotta give you numbers. So the race has gotten much, much tighter. So with 55% reporting 51.1 to 48.9, that is a 2.2% lead for Warnock. Just narrowed again. Yeah, and so yeah, there it is. It's now exactly a two point lead, 51 to 49. So now that talk of like, well, half of the voters have already voted, no, with 55% reporting a two point lead is is not good enough. that's, that that won't hold.

Like if you have a 10 point lead, even if all the wrong counties come in, you're going to be okay, right? I'm giving you a rough guidelines here, guys. But with a two point lead, any swing in any county can take away a two point lead. So, so the lead is gone. Let's put it that way. But also, it's not counted like a soccer game. It just doesn't go back and forth.

You're still at 5% in DeKalb. You're at 57% in Fulton. Cobb is at 23. You go up to those north Georgia, south, you know, on the border of South Carolina counties. They're at 77 and 88 and 91%. And those would be where you'd have strength for Walker. I'm not just saying this to be rose color glasses. It's where those numbers that remain are.

And you have to look at the dead center of that state. And you still see a lot of voters and the presumption would be that a lead of two points at this point with looking at 5% in DeKab and 4%. and the 57% in Fulton is okay for Raphael Warnow. Yeah. Really fast, obviously I'm not an expert or anything. Based on the numbers that I'm looking at, I, my guess would be that I think his eventual win, which I'm leaning towards thinking he's going to have is going to be bigger than two points. I would say at this point, just looking at what votes are still outstanding.

I know later on the show, I would love us to have a conversation, so we were just, Rashad was doing a great job of breaking down some of the politics of how the different scandals have broken down, I would love to have a talk about what role scandal has in candidacies going forward. Because we know, I'm Michael, you know, I'm sure you can think of a bunch of candidacies that have actually been sunk by scandals. Why is it that some seem to break through for some candidates, but in this case, I mean, so much of the dynamics here are in theory different with not having Brian Kemp, not having Stacey Abrams, the fate of the Senate not being on the line. There's so many

things that could be massively swinging this. And yet it doesn't seem to have been massively swung since November. And so I'm just really curious what eventually what you all think about if scandals matter at all anymore. Look, my quick answer to that is they do if you're a Democrat, but they don't at all if you're a Republican. So I mean, you can't, and we'll talk more about this later. But if you did Freaky Friday and Warnock had the scandals that Walker had, this race would not be close. Walker would win by about 10. That's okay. That's true. That's new, that's somewhat new to, because there are others, but as you said, your quick answer to this, which whenever you say that makes everybody squirm. All right, but it was quick.

We'll come back to it, though, because it's actually very important political phenomenon in America. Right now, I want to give you more facts. Dave Wasserman is an election expert. I have mixed feelings about him, but he has been pretty reliable lately. So anyway, he writes in a couple of things here. He says, a pattern emerging. Walker is hitting slash getting close to the numbers he needs in the reddest, most rural counties, but he's falling a good bit short of the numbers he needs in small slash mid-sized cities.

So doing a little worse than expected what Hershey Walker is, said like Yoda. All right, and then second tweet, at this point turnout in Metro Atlanta would need to be unusually rough for Warnock to lose. it'll be a close margin, but he's in the driver's seat now. So that is an election expert that has been generally right in most elections, saying that it looks like Warnock's in the driver's seat now. So that's reassuring for sure. So, Rishat, I know you were going to say something. You know, one of the elements, regardless of conclusion of the election,

that has to be discussed among Democrats, is there, I don't know if it's fear, if it's just strategy, if it's significant hesitation to appeal to the base predicated on actual policies that are progressive. Now we know progressive policies in Georgia poll very well. It's the messenger that tends to start skewing the lines a little bit. There was an intentional effort by the Warnock campaign. And I know this because I know Senator Warnock. I knew him well before he wanted to run for the U.S. Senate. He's a friend of mine. His campaign manager is a new guy. I don't know him that well, but we do talk. Well, there was an intentional effort to figure out a way to not offend particular individuals on the other side of the political aisle,

not because they were trying to get their vote, but because they were trying to not excite them to vote against Warnock in a runoff, because runoffs typically have a lower threshold of participation. I think that may not have been the greatest execution of strategy because we should see at this moment, we should have seen record turnouts in some of these places like DeKalb County should have been a record turnout. They have one of the highest per capita democratic populations in the state. Clayton County is this state with the highest per capita African American population. You do not see record turnout in these particular counties. And you should, but something did not happen that should have because those are the votes

that as long as you get them out to vote, they vote for Warnock, but they're not getting out to vote at the numbers I would have hoped. So I just submit that after the election. I said I was gonna wait post election to critique the campaign on that dynamic. Yeah, so we've got more where that came from. We also have the concept of owning the libs, which I think is such a huge element of what's happening in elections now, including this particular election. And it relates to what we're discussing earlier.

Then I wanna go back to Freaky Fridays. I wanna go to some of Michael's clips from Georgia. But most importantly, I have to tell you the vote right now as things stand. As we tell you these optimistic things, with 57% of the vote in, Warnock's lead is down to half a point, 50.24 to 49.76. So presumably with the Cobb and Fulton County coming in more later. And Cobb, that lead will go back up, but for now, it's down to just half a point. We also have a flip, by the way, Baldwin County went for Walker in November, but it's narrowly within a point for Warnock tonight.

So there's so many positive signs for Warnock except the vote. So as it stands right now, we're going to have to take a break here, but we've got so much more, including the latest votes, as soon as we come back. All right, back on the entrepreneurs coverage of the Georgia election runoff in these 2022 elections. Jank Huger, Dr. Rashad Ritchie from Indisputable, John Iderolo from Damage Report and Michael Schur, who's on a lot of our programming and recently went to Georgia and had some incredible clips that we're going to show you guys a little bit later with Trump supporters, Walker supporters, etc. We're also joined by Pat Stiles, Mr. Cy 54 and Kevsey 247, who wonderfully gave five young tourist memberships within YouTube.

So if you're on YouTube, those guys just signed up. We love it, you make these shows like these possible. We appreciate it. TYt.com slash join and you can sign up from anywhere. And I'm gonna just to read one comment here and then I'm gonna get to bad news. Dirt Flyer says, I love that TYT does the hard news. Now if you're wondering why, doesn't everybody do know hard news? No, online, we're among the few.

Online, there's a lot of cultural war issues and oh my God, critical race theory, this, and, you know, groomers that, and people hardly ever actually talk about the real news. So this is an actual news event where someone's going to go into the Senate, they're going to vote on issues that affect your lives. So now having said that, now let me give you the depressing news. Walker's taking the lead. He is now up 1.4 points. Herschel Walker leading 50.7 to Warnock's 49.3, and now 60% percent. of the vote is in. Again, large African-American counties are still outstanding, not completely outstanding, but outstanding enough that we think that it's going to change that result,

but for the moment being, Walker with a depressing 1.4% lead. So actually I'm going to go to another comment here to start the conversation, restart the conversation we were having. Danger Dave wrote in on Super Chat, scandals matter for Republicans, but it has to be Republicans going after them. Madison Cawthorne was erased from history for scandals that are are minor in the Republican Party. So great point. If Republicans attack you, you're in a world of trouble. First of all, Democrats almost never attack, but if they did attack you, it's irrelevant.

So you'll see from some of Walker supporters why they think that way in a little bit when we go to the clips. But in terms of why Warnock did the strategy that Rashada was talking about earlier, which is Be relatively, you know, soft in your campaign, that's my way of describing it soft, right? Not be overly aggressive or at all aggressive, if you ask me, towards Herschel Walker. One, because let's be, you know, let's acknowledge the fact that Hersch Walker punched himself in the face about 12 times a day. And, you know, if that doesn't do it, I'm not sure that any further attacks by Warnock would have done it. Let's acknowledge that,

Right? But secondly, he didn't want to get Republicans more riled up to go out and vote against them as happened with Stacey Abrams in the Brian Camp race. And we talked about that earlier. But there's one other reason why you don't want to get the Republicans riled up. And by the way, the evangelical Christians are theoretically slightly more open to Warnock. They're not going to be completely open. No, the overwhelming majority of Republican evangelical Christians are going to stick with Herschel Walker, no matter how immoral he's been, how many abortions he's paid for, no matter how wonderfully moral Warnock has been, and that he's a pastor. Then I don't care about any of that.

Warnock's just trying to get a couple of percentage points from those guys. Or just a couple of percentage points to stay home from those guys, right? That's the strategy. But the other reason is Republicans love to own the lips. And so if you are out there flamboyantly attacking Republicans, the Republicans are going to want to own you back, right? And so then they will go out to vote. They're excellent voters, and you have to give them credit for that. They outvote Democrats all the time, even though there's smaller numbers. It's like those old school battles where the smaller army would

win anyway, because they were more animated. And that has been true for Republican voters for a long time. And another member wrote in here, but I can't find it right now. But the question is always, yes, the Republicans are given. How much of a given they are is important and what I just talked about, but will the Democrats show up? That's always a question in every election these days. Will the Democrats show up? Unfortunately, that's a mystery most of the time and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. And so that's a mystery in this race as well. John, you got numbers? Yes, I just lost like a year off the end of my life when I saw the numbers massively changed and it took me a second to compute, oh, the two point

lead that Herschel Walker had at that point accrued had been cut in half to just one point. There was another minor update. It's now less than one point. Again, all these little minor updates, like, it doesn't mean anything, but I immediately started to look at what counties were coming in and there still wasn't big movement in the big blue counties. Do you ever watch Bob Ross, the guy who painted the pictures, right? At the beginning, he'd had the canvas out, putting things in, looking at it. It's like, this is never going to be a painting. And then by the end, you're blown away. I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's, a painting and it looks like what he said it was going to look like.

That's exactly what you're looking at here. So you can talk about Walker being up by a point. You have no idea where the paint's coming from right now. You have no idea what it's being put on. It would be like jumping to 20 points into the Bob Ross thing and then saying, I thought there were going to be happy little trees and I don't see any happy little trees. They'll probably never come. It doesn't mean this is going to happen.

But I'm just saying it's too early to say what the painting is going to look like. Yeah, you guys are absolutely right. We say it every time, we say it probably 10 times on election nights, it's not a foot race. They're not actually going back and forth. It's just a matter which, how they count the votes and when they count the votes from different counties. All that notwithstanding, as I see right now, 64% of the precincts reporting, there's two thirds of the vote is in already. And Walker still has a 1.2% lead. I'm human, I still get nervous.

And it's not like Warnax is going to win by 10. It's not impossible that Walker could win. So he's going to win by three. Okay, I hope you're right. I hope you're right. Listen, people should get nervous. Let me tell you why, all right? And I hate to burst any bubble that exist at the moment.

People should get nervous because number one, obviously, Herschel Walker should not even be this close at all. Number two, they've created, based on the law, they've created an avenue for close elections. Republicans have already done this. If this election is close enough, they can take over one county, and they already laid the groundwork for the county they will take over, and that's Forta County. How did they do that? Raffensberger, the Secretary of State and Chief Elections Officer, his office already has Fortin County, under investigative review prior to the run on.

Why? Why that only county? There were other counties with actual problems in the general election. Fulton County was not really among them in a comparative sense. So why do this to Fulton? Because Fulton is the place where you make or break a democratic statewide candidate. And if the election is close enough, you start going into that county to invalidate vote. That's why. That to me is more problematic than some of the other elements of the voter restriction bill that was past two years ago in Georgia.

So I'm concerned about that. Also, we did hear when I did my radio show this morning, we had people saying, hey, I had to vote provisional ballot. They did not have information correct. Well, that happened because the secretary of state, s.os.g.gov, you're supposed to go to their website, put in your address, and it says, hey, this is your precinct. Well, guess what? The information was incorrect. Many people were being sent to the wrong precinct. Now, according to the Secretary of State's office, the reason why that happened is because the lines just got redrawn. And the configuration of where you're supposed to vote did not coincide with the local board of elections. So we had to tell people, hey, you got to check with your local county board of elections. Well, good luck getting somebody on the phone on the day of the election that wasn't happening. So they went to vote in the wrong place,

a whole lot of people, not just a few. They had to vote by way of provisional ballot. Well, in the state of Georgia, you have three days after the election to cure that ballot to update whatever needs to be updated in order for that vote to count. That's another dynamic that has happened today in the state of Georgia that has gone underreported. So guys, as we talk here, I got more and more data that makes me more and more nervous. So first of all, now 65% reporting and Walker's got about a two point lead. Okay, so that's- You just said it wasn't a foot race, though.

I got you, I got you. But so let me follow up, though. So, but the second thing I was going to say related to that is it does remind me a little bit of 2016 where Trump had these leads in the swing states. And we said, well, the polling indicates that Hillary Clinton is going to close it. And, you know, these counties are still outstanding. and there came a point where we started saying, well, maybe she's not going to close the lead. And so there's a little bit of that vibe here. So as you guys keep reassuring me that he's going to win by three, not yet.

And so, and by the way, hold on, let me build a case. If we've got the predominantly African American predominantly Democratic counties still outstanding in a significant enough way that we think this is going to swing this. But remember, we were just talking about democratic turnout. So yes, Warnock could be winning Fulton County by an even larger margin than last time. But if not as many people voted Fulton County, he could still lose overall. And I haven't seen voter turnout information yet. A couple of things Rashad said earlier makes me worry about voter turnout. And one of the things that New York Times does is they have this needle that tells you,

okay, okay, don't worry about what you're seeing in the numbers right now. This is the likelihood that this person is going to win at the end and by how much, right? Well, they had Warnock winning on that needle by 1.1, and it wasn't even like, that's a blowout or anything. But they just said a little while back, oh, we were, it turns out we were having technical difficulties with the needle, ignore everything the needle said earlier, and it's shut down right now. It's a data issue, and they say they paused it. Yeah, so if you were reassured by that needle that, oh, don't worry, Warnock's going to win at the end. Well, that's gone.

So now we're just waiting on the counties and hoping that they were Democratic enough and had enough votes to reverse the tide here. And so, but, but Rashad, I got to go back to you because the main issue now is it appears to be Democratic voter turnout. So tell me more about that. What's your sense of Fulton County or DeKalb or Cobb and et cetera? All these counties and whether Democrats are going to show up for the selection. You said something very true.

You're looking at percentage performance data typically. That means nothing because it's all about numeric data. If you have a better performance ratio compared to the Republican opposition in Forta County, great. That doesn't mean you have a better number ratio. And once again, this goes back to base turnout. So Cobb County should show Warnock some love. It should. DeKalb County will show Warnock a whole lot of love.

But then you go to a place like Clayton County. Clayton County is the reason John Ossoff is a US Senator. A lot of people forget that. The whole damn world was waiting on Clayton County on that election night to finish their vote count. That gave Senator Wernock the victory without a runoff because people were excited. were excited and when that excitement translated to votes, well, you look to the county where you

could get the most bang for your bucket. That was Clayton County. You don't have that right now. I still think it was a solid strategy. It doesn't mean it was the only strategy, nor it doesn't mean it is the winning strategy, but I think based on you not knowing the future, it was a solid strategy to do it this way. However, on the other side of it, is turnout and the turnout has not been, as I said, the best in some of the counties, I don't think they maximized. And I think they could have done it in a way that was strategic that did not excite Republicans. Remember, these counties, you can engage individuals in these counties, voters in these counties without having a large media presence. It's called

direct voter contact. You can engage directly without having the opposite effect of the Republican party and Walker, he is such a horrible candidate and absolutely out of his element as it relates to campaigning. He's not savvy enough to respond in a way where he could have capitalized like a more sophisticated political opponent. I think they gave Walker and his camp a little too much credibility as a relation to strategy as if he was somehow able to capitalize on some of their more aggressive tactics. I think that was a strategic error. But even with Warnock down at the moment, based on the polling data, I do think Warnock will still inch this election out. Yes, well, there's now good evidence to that effect, because a huge batch of votes just

came in. Now 69% reporting, and Warnock has taken the lead again. He's up by a point. So, Okay, now I'm sure it's over because he's now taking the lead. He's running faster than wall. He can almost see the finish line, clearly. Yeah, okay, but it looks like it was DeKalb County. It looks like a significant chunk of that came in in one go. And we'll look at Clayton County too, because I think what you said, Rashad is interesting. You know, we'll look at, it carried Warnock right now, Warnock has 91% of the boat there to 9%, 60% counted.

Assoff finished with 88% I remember watching that too. I was in Georgia on the last runoff thinking that I had the biggest story in the world that the Democrats took the Senate and it was on January 6th, 2021, not the biggest story in the world that death. But the, you know, so I think it is really important. And I think the, you know, what they call the post-mortem on these things is going to be about these counties and about voter turnout. And one part of it last time, too, was Stacey.

Abrams. Stacey Abrams did a magnificent job in an off-season election, because she wasn't on the ballot that year in 2020, of getting people out to vote in that election. I think it's very, what you talked about before was very interesting in the fact that they've stated that Stacey Abrams hasn't been on the trail. And the same way Trump hasn't been on the trail for Herschel Walker, Stacey Abrams, probably the best surrogate in Georgia aside from maybe Jimmy Carter, who's certainly not on the trail that Stacey Abrams is not out there but she was back then and she did such a good time but a good job organizing getting people out on that day and and to vote early so it'll be interesting to look at that part of it as well and what that what the effect was of that sort

of impressive surrogate in two years ago and how that's changed so one of our viewers and members just wrote in a comment that's interesting and I want to talk about it for a minute Benjamin G.L. wrote in on Super Chow, Warnock needed to run a loud but peaceful campaign, and not just in Georgia, but on the federal stage. He needed an MLK-like protest and speech like Cory Bush and Capitol Hill on live TV, taking a loudstand criticizing Congress on rail worker strike would have been perfect. So Benjamin, you convince me.

So I, no, it was seductive for a second to think that in this particular race, staying more quiet so that you don't trigger the owning the lips thing, you don't trigger the evangelical Christians. And because Herschel Walker is doing such a great job against himself, right? That it was the right strategy. But no, I come back to, and I'll ask that this is a form as a question to you, Rashad, and then we'll take the break. What would be the harm in being, forget attacking, forget, you know, triggering the culture wars, etc. But what would have been the harm in being very loudly in favor really popular proposals, and aggressively so on paid family leave, higher wages, all these things that poll, you know, 66% or high.

Not a damn thing. And honestly, I fought in large part the campaign manager. And I'm saying that authentically because of the inside information that I have, there was an intentional strategy design to stay away from those issues or policies that actually were popular because of fear. Now, Senator Wernock is the kind of senator where he empowers his team. He says, hey, it's a campaign. You have the authority here in this particular element of the campaign. And he allows those managers to operate as such. I don't particularly like that kind of. style or that management style, but he does. It works for him. I don't think there would have been any backlash as far as a negative. I do think it would have been a positive at

the end of it if he would have been more aggressive, especially connected to some of the more popular dynamics that he could have spoke about. But he didn't. And he could have. He could have. His strength, remember, Jack, his strength is in oration. This guy's an amazing speaker. And he's one of the very few individuals. When you go to his church, you don't feel like you're being preached to or lectured at. You feel as if you're in the moment with him. One of the strengths has been deleted from his campaign by intention. This was done purposely.

And so I agree with you. I think this should have been more of a forceful proclamation about policies that will popular. You'll be shocked to know. Don't necessarily agree. I don't know that any of us will ever be right about this, maybe even tomorrow I'll be very wrong. But I think that in a one month truncated runoff election where your opponent is Herschel Walker, you spend that time defining your opponent and distancing yourself from Washington and not getting into the surrogate and the policy game that is so easily pointed to by opponents, because what

the Republicans want to do is make this not about Herschel Walker. The more you talk about policy in a race like this, you make it about Raphael Warnock, and that's not necessarily what in the chess game of this they wanted to do. So I understand, I don't know that it's the right decision. I totally understand the decision that his campaign team made and his advisors made, and I have to think that people in Washington made and Chuck Schumer made to do this campaign to some degree in this way. And it's not the bravest thing, clearly, but I think that there's some strategy to it that I can. Yeah. Just quickly. Yeah. I want to respond quickly to that. There's a way to target mailers,

robocalls, live calls, canvassers, and even now geotagging or geofencing social media campaigns. You can do that toward individuals who are more likely to connect with the message that you're bringing. But if your targeting has you walking a dog, I literally had a black woman called my radio show upset about a Warnock commercial where he doesn't say anything of substance, he's simply there with his dog and his dog is looking his face and he's hugging his dog. And I said, well, listen, got to understand. He as a black male, he has to humanize himself. So he has to run this kind of commercial that has nothing to do with policy, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with the campaign, because he has to seem as if he's a human being because there are people in

the state of Georgia who will vote for him because, yeah, he seems like a human being. Now, because he has a on with them. That should not be a requirement for a black male candidate, but it kind of is. But she was upset by that commercial. If one person is upset in your natural demographic, believe me, other people are as well. They didn't like it. They expressed it. It was it enough for them to say, you know what, I'm just going to sit out this runoff election? I don't know. But I do know it had some level of impact. Well, and that balance sheet there goes to those border counties. I mean, Part of that, part of that dog is to get to over 20% along the South Carolina border, along the Tennessee border, along the Alabama border, and some of those ruby red counties,

get to 20% in those counties, and you're picking off the people that are offended by that ad in the black community, the woman that phoned your show, but you're doing it because you're going to get, you're going to cut into the margins that Herschel Walker may have on those border of red counties. Yeah, that's the hope. And we don't, that's what I'm saying. I may be a fool tomorrow for disagreeing with you guys. But I, and I don't know that I disagree. I see the wisdom in it. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, I'm now positive. For what it's worth, and it's not worth, I mean, it's worth whatever you think of my commentary, right? No, it's too cute by half. This let's not run a race. Maybe Warnock pulls it out because he's running against someone who is literally mentally handicapped. But that's why you did that in this case, though, Jen.

I mean, that's why I know. But winning by three, if he does, that seems to be the outer edge of it, against someone who says I have 12 different personalities within me. One of them thinks it's running for the house, by the way. One of them thinks it's a serial killer. And winning by three points, if that's the case, and that looks like it's the best case scenario, is not something to write home about. I mean, you should beat that guy by 20. And so part of the, and I know, I know, polarization, blah, blah, blah. But part of the reason why the Democrats are barely winning or losing a lot of times is because they keep running non-campaigns, they just don't run.

It's not, doesn't mean Warnock's going to lose tonight, but it does mean that if you do that enough times, you're gonna lose, you're gonna lose the House, you're gonna lose the presidency, you're gonna, you're gonna keep on losing because this is look guys, if this was the only race the Democrats did it in, the tenor of the conversation is a hundred percent different, right? Oh, I get it, in this specific race, they chose to go outside of their pattern and do this. No, this is, the pattern. Federman is the one that broke the pattern. And by the way, crushed Oz, picked up a Republican seat, and he had a stroke and could barely talk. I mean, look, guys, here,

I got to end it on this. But no, no, no, there's no but. There's a bud. Of course there's a butt. There's always a butt. And the butt here is that Pennsylvania and Georgia are two different animals. And you're right. And you're right and you're right about and you're right about Federman. You're absolutely right about Federer. They're both running against what are termed weak candidates. Both could be termed carpet baggers in their own way, although Walker is from Georgia originally. But the point I'm making here is that, first of all, Democrats have the White House, they held the Senate, they've won the House the last two cycles, or the last cycle, and they don't have it now. And that's part of the ebb and flow of politics. There's so much

that they do that is not defensible, but you can't just sort of whitewash it because in a one-month race, they chose, and they chose it consciously. But it's not a one-month race. If it was a one-month Well, this is a one month, the runoff is a one month race. No, no, and it was just this race, then I'm telling you that I would agree with you. But it's not just this race. But you're talking about? A track record of total and utter failure, Michael. What are you talking about?

I'm talking about, when I said they held the Senate, hold on, hold on. They held the Senate. Yeah, I'm telling you. Are you insane? They barely held the Senate, they lost the house. If they barely held on, hold on, hold on. Okay, I'll hold on. Hold on.

I'm holding on. I'm holding on. I'm holding on. When the leader of the other party is a verifiable lunatic. They lost a goddamn house and they barely can hold on to the Senate. And right now, Biden and Trump run, Trump wins. The other guy's a lunatic and absolute imbecile. He just said we should cancel the Constitution.

They're losing to him. This constant strategy of well, we'll run another day, we'll run another day. Maybe, maybe. Constant weakness, I despise it. You can get as loud and as excited as you want about this. You're correct about some of what you're saying. But you're not correct about everything I'm saying being incorrect, because there is, these are, they're each battles. And battles are fought very differently and where they are fought.

You might be right about the war. You might be right about the big picture of this and how Democrats may need to change their tone and change their tenure and change their strategy and come out in different places in different ways. But this is a battle. This is a battle in Georgia with two specific candidates over one month. And I'm not even saying you're wrong. I'm saying that I understand what the other side is, what Warner's, sorry, Warnock's people are saying to him and what Dr. Ritchie has a problem with and maybe right about and what you have a problem may be right about.

And if it doesn't work, then it's a huge problem. But I understand it. It's a critique. Yeah, that's a critique is correct. And let me let me just say it another way. Republicans have figured something out. They figured out as long as that. They don't give a damn about anybody but Republicans.

Even when they are not in power, they are an effective minority to stop whoever is. Democrats have not figured that out yet, not at large, somehow, but they have not figured this out as a group that if you actually present remedy, solution, policy dynamics, and you don't give a damn about anybody else, you could be a powerful minority and an effective majority. You can do both. I've proven this. But here's the other part, man, that really pisses me off. We're literally arguing about Republicans as if somehow they are comparable to Democrats in thought

and strategy and, you know, things like policy and they're not. It's like me saying, you know, it was a tie when I did this race. I did a hundred yard dash. It was a tie. I didn't lose, they didn't lose. But I was running against a seven year old. That's the comparison here. Republicans are not presenting any, any solution that an American actually likes. Look at the line items, dear brother. When you look at it, line by line, Republicans are told no to all of their ideas, all of their policies by the average American. They are still in control of some of the most, I don't know, important dynamics in this country, even though they are completely out of touch with the average American. That is a problem. There is nothing comparable to that. And I thought Democrats

for not picking up on the reality of where we are right now in politics. So I agree with Jenk on that. All right, we got to go. But I'm going to see if I can get a quick agreement on this. I doubt it. But by the way, Walker's retaking the lead. I agree. Okay. So okay, yes, that one, that was a matter of fact. Now, 74% reporting. So three quarters of the vote in Walker with the minuscule lead, 0.06, I think. It's basically tied. See if I can get any way. Look, we think Warnock's still going to pull it out based on the counties that are out there. He's definitely going to. Okay. And John says, a lot of people have a lot of confidence. And I believe you guys. I believe where the votes are coming from, et cetera.

I'm still a little bit worried because the voter turnout, but I believe you guys. Okay. But if Warnock somehow loses tonight, can we all agree that the Democrats are complete and failures and total losers for losing to a guy, for even getting close with a guy like Walker who says one of his 12 personalities is a serial killer. I mean, like he has said that to girlfriends that he was going out with. I mean, Jesus Christ, how incompetent do you have to be? Yep. If they lose, they're total losers. Do we agree? I say it, I say it loud, I say it proud. If they win, they're still basically losers, I think. This one race doesn't absolve. a million prior Senate and House and state legislature races.

No, Mike was not going to agree. I'm not going to, it's more than just, I agree that they're total losers if they lose this race. No, it meant that the campaign and the Democratic Senate campaign committee blew it when they should not have blown it if this were to happen. I don't think it's going to happen. And if it does, I don't think it defines the party. It defines the way that the party approaches some races, which is, I would say, the absolute. wrong way to do it to run timidly is never a good thing. In a one month runoff, I think there are different factors that come into play. But again, you should not lose. Look, we shouldn't

live, Dr. Ritchie shouldn't live in a state where 1.3 million people with 65% counted or 74% counted have voted for Herschel Walker for the United States Senate. That is where the problem lasts. That we all agree to. All right, we got to take a quick break here. Rashad, John and Michael are going to come back. We've got so many things to get to, including the videos that of Michael's interviews where you get to actually see Republicans tell you why they're voting for Walker and why they're animated about it. So stay right here. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work. Listen ad-free. Access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash

t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.