 Welcome to our second discussion event of this semester. It's entitled Super Tuesday and Beyond. He head toward 2024 is National and State Elections. And we'll be talking about as the title implies, mostly national elections, although we may also discuss state elections and other elections as well. It's kind of up to you guys to some extent. So without too much further ado, we'll go ahead and get ourselves started here. So this is a virtual panel discussion that is being hosted by the Department of Political Science at the School of Education and Behavioral Sciences at Middle Georgia State University. We are co-sponsored by the MGA Political Science Student Organization, as well as the Alpha Museta Chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, which is our National Honorary Society for Political Science. Excuse me. And before we do get started, I just want to tell you a little bit about our department and its programs for those of you that might be unfamiliar with us. So our department offers several different programs, including two bachelor's degrees of Bachelor of Science in Political Science, as well as the Bachelor of Science in International Studies. We also offer minors in Political Science, African and African diaspora studies, environmental policy studies, global studies, pre-law, and starting in the fall of this year, we'll also be offering a minor in local government administration as well. And those are undergraduate minors that are open to anybody with a bachelor's degree in another field, or for that matter, one of our fields. So for example, if you were interested in, say, majoring in psychology or criminal justice and getting a minor in pre-law or a minor in Political Science or something like that, that's always an option. We have lots of different minors being offered by the university, and these are certainly among the fine ones that are available. And then last but not least, we also are a participant in the consortium of about nine different universities and colleges in Georgia that participate in the certificate on European Union Studies, which deals with, as the title might imply, the European Union and associated countries and things like that. So if you have interest in the Culture of Politics Society of Europe, that might be a certificate worth pursuing as well. And we also offer, through the consortium, we offer a series of online classes in that subject area. Let's see. So let me go ahead and introduce you to our panelists for today. So we have with us Dr. John Hall, who's an associate professor of Political Science. He has been with us at Notre Georgia State University since 2015. His doctorate is in Public Policy Administration from Auburn University. We're also joined today by another of our colleagues in the department, Dr. Matthew Cavali, who's a lecturer of Political Science. He has been at MGA since 2016. His PhD is in Political Science and from the University of Florida. And then I am going to be serving as our moderator slash host slash system wrangler, I guess. And I am a Dr. Christopher Lawrence. I'm the chair of the Department of Political Science and also a professor of Political Science. I've been here at MGA for about 12 years now, since 2012. And my doctorate in Political Science is from the University of Mississippi or Ole Miss. So we have quite the SEC contingent going today. So we have discussed beforehand a few potential topics among the panelists and we'll be starting with questions related to those. But we are also more than happy. And matter of fact, I'm very happy. We love to have your questions as well. So that's what the chat window is for if you want to post your chat questions in the chat. We will try to get those. Usually we get through two or three of our pre-arranged questions first and then we then turn to the chat. But if something comes up earlier, we may bring it up earlier or if there's a follow-up or something like that that needs to be brought up earlier, we can certainly bring that up earlier as well. All of you members are welcome to ask multiple questions if they want. We will prioritize answering one question per participant. So just in case there's somebody out there that really wants to ask a bunch of different questions, that's great, but we do want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to answer questions as well or have their questions answered, I should say. And then please of course also be courteous and simple to each other in the chat window. Make sure you are abiding by the various and sundry guidelines for being part of the Middle Georgia State University community. So these are some of the topics we may discuss today. I won't get into too much of them in detail, but just so you are aware of what they are. And I think we'll start and launch with a little bit of a relatively current event. So this morning, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling on a fairly short time scale that regarded whether or not states could remove Donald Trump from their ballots for his alleged role in inciting the January 6th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. So my question for our panelists is first, what is the court rule and what was their reasoning and what is the impact of that ruling? I'll jump in here real fast if that's okay. Sure, thank you all for coming out again. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Matt for being here. I notice that the Dean of our college, Dr. David Beak is here. So welcome and welcome all students. Really quickly, the first question regarding the Supreme Court's opinion earlier today, it has to do with the state of Colorado removing former President Donald Trump from the ballot. Now, the big question that many might have is why would they do that? And it all boils down to the 14th Amendment. Now, really quickly, as we are discussing in our American government classes, there are three amendments after the Civil War that we conveniently call the Civil War Amendments. The 13th ended chattel slavery. The 15th tried to guarantee voting rights to African-American men. And then there's the 14th. The 14th has a lot of moving parts. But regarding this case, what we're gonna talk about in the 14th is section three that basically says, if you have ever taken part in an insurrection or rebellion against the United States, you are no longer able to serve in the federal government. Now, when this was ratified, obviously this was talking about former Confederate soldiers and officers who may want to then serve in the federal government. And Congress had been given the power with a two-thirds super majority vote to let people serve again. So 150-ish years after the 14th ratification, it's back on the front page because of the January 6th insurrection that occurred at the Capitol. The question that Colorado's Supreme Court was asking was this. Did then President Donald Trump's speech, particularly before the insurrection occurred, did that constitute his participation in insurrection? The Colorado Supreme Court said it did and they removed him from the ballot. This morning, the Supreme Court overturned that. Now, why did they overturn that? It's important to note, they were not making any statements toward President Trump's guilt or innocence regarding an insurrection. What they were saying is simply this. The states do not have the power to enforce section three as it pertains to federal officers. And they basically said he has to be put back on the ballot. Congress in section five of the 14th amendment is given the power to enforce it. Now, the Supreme Court did say this morning that if the state of Colorado or any state for that matter feels that someone running for state office has violated the 14th amendment, then they can remove them from the ballot. They simply can't do it for federal elections. And their logic was relatively somewhat sound. I mean, it was somewhat of a straightforward opinion. It was a percurium opinion. And they basically said if we allow states to enforce this provision of the 14th amendment, it can create an unsustainable patchwork where some states allow you on the ballot, some states don't allow you on the ballot. That would be, as you could imagine, overwhelmingly problematic. So the Supreme Court's opinion was quite straightforward and it was very much a landmark opinion saying that it is Congress that will enforce the anti-insurrection element of the 14th amendment. Now, with that, I could keep talking for the next 30 minutes on this, but I'm gonna make sure I stop and give Matt a chance to fill in any of the many blanks that I might have left. Well, you're very kind, John, but I don't think you really left any blanks. I think as being the public law theorist that you are, you covered all the ground. I think the only thing I would add is that I think there were a lot of people sort of out there in the blogosphere and the talking head zone and all of that in politics that really wanted the courts to come down on whether or not the former president had been somehow directly or indirectly complicit in the insurrection itself. And the court, being the court as scholars have often argued that the Supreme Court is institutionally conservative, meaning that it's reliance on precedent and the doctrines like starved decisis and so forth, that in general, even so-called activist judges and those who embody judicial liberalism in practice are have a kind of philosophical conservatism. And to some extent, I think that we've seen this here. The other thing that I would say is that really this, you could argue this came down to the politics of intergovernmental relations, the politics of federalism that the 14th Amendment was talking about the powers relative to the federal government and that the states in this case, regarding offices to federal offices, don't have any power. They don't have any skin in the game on that. And that's a classic notion of the division of powers across the levels of government. That an interesting thing here, you could argue that the marble kickers, the cooperative federalists, which would be the liberals in today's politics, would say, well, yeah, there you go. That's national power. But you could also look at that from a different perspective and say that the dual federalists, the layer kickers, the states writers could have their own little view on that, which is that this was a national zone and politics is for the states. But I found it interesting, you mentioned the thing that, well, maybe the states could deny state office holders. And I think that would be very consistent with this decision. So it's an interesting decision, but I think the courts did what they do best. They made a decision, but then they narrowed it down in terms of application and let's face it, they tend to do that on just about everything. That's all that I have to say on that. Okay, thanks a lot. So before we move on to our next question, just wanted to acknowledge some of our faculty guests as Dr. Hall pointed out, we were joined by our Dean, Dr. David Beek. I'm glad to have you here. In addition, we're also being joined by some of our faculty colleagues. So Dr. Grace Adams Square, the newly minted Dr. Grace Adams Square, I might add, is with us, as well as Dr. Julie Lester. And then we also have a guest from outside the university who's a esteemed professor of political science as well, Dr. Renan Levine, who was a professor at the University of Toronto at Starsborough, if I believe correctly. And so we're glad to have him here. I think we may have some of his students as well. So great to see a contingent from, although Renan himself, I don't believe, is from originally from north of the water, nonetheless, to have a international contingent here with us as well. So thank you all for being here. And let's move on to what was originally intended to be, I guess, our first question, which is about the subject matter of this whole discussion, which is the concept of Super Tuesday, right? So you may have seen that phrase, Super Tuesday, and I'm not even sure what Super Tuesday was. So we stuck it in the title, which begs the question, what is it? What is Super Tuesday? And when did it start becoming important in presidential nominations? I don't know, Matt, if you wanted to lead off with that one. Sure, Chris. So what Super Tuesday basically is, is where a number of states varying numbers, depending upon election year, but a multiplicity of states hold their national nominating primaries and caucuses and conventions all on the same date, all on the same Tuesday. Now, historically, normally it's occurred in the first Tuesday in March, but there have been other versions of Super Tuesday have come along. They, what it actually responds to was movements that date back to, well, they really date back as far back as the 50s, where they were first formalized in the committee report on American elections that the American Political Science Association did. And which called back then for a national primary. And so there's long been an idea out there that what we ought to do is somewhat standardized and centralized and simplify the presidential nominating contest into a single event or a small series of events. So, like a lot of things in politics, that was thrown out there and nobody really did anything about it for a couple of decades. But in 1984, well, during which I will say this, one thing did happen along that way. In the 70s, we moved away from the caucus convention system which was dominated by the party machines and towards a more democratized system where the party and electorate voted directly for the delegates in primaries over caucuses and conventions. That was in place in the Democratic Party in 70 by 72 and in the Republican Party by 76. That flashed forward to a decade in 1984. In 1984, that presidential election cycle was the first employment of this effort to pile a bunch of states all on one day. And that was the first super that was given by the name by the media the super Tuesday. Ever since 84, there's always been some kind of super Tuesday. And in many elections, there's also been a multiplicity of super Tuesdays. Actually, believe it or not in 84, they actually had three, that's super Tuesday, one, two and three. But there's been sometimes been called many Tuesdays. They've had mega Tuesdays. But what it really comes down to is it's just a way of, if you will, how we nominate presidential standard bearers is the same as a copy of how we elect presidents electoral college. How we elect president electoral college is just state by state elections where the voters select electors who can then come to electoral college and formally elect the president. And that's been in place since 1824. In the party system, they just copy that. The only difference is you pull out the word elector and you put the word delegate in and you pull out the electoral college and you put the national nominating convention in. And so when you vote in the primary, when you come up here in Georgia and you vote in the Georgia primary, what you're doing is you're voting for a slate of electors who have pledged at the first ballot, the first vote at the national nominating convention to vote for their standard bearer. And so when you have a multiplicities of these done, usually in the first Tuesday in March, they call that a super Tuesday. Yes, we are gonna have a super Tuesday and yes, it is tomorrow. Georgia's not involved in that, but I will say this. Georgia and actually my state as well, Florida are in sort of these follow-on super Tuesdays that sometimes get called mini Tuesdays and stuff. So anyway, basically the prediction right now is pretty much by the end of March, we'll know who the nominee is. That's really what the super Tuesday does, by the way, is it accelerates whoever's the leader in the delegate total, it accelerates their march to the nomination. And now I'm gonna turn this over to John because I've probably spoken more than I should have. No, that was perfect. And you did not leave a lot of holes to fill. I'll look at it more from a theoretical perspective, just to make sure we all get, which we're teaching in class right now for any of my students here. The process for political parties, picking who they will run for president, for the US Senate, for the US House, even for state governor for local representation. The political parties fundamentally make up their own rules regarding how they will select their candidates. And historically, pre-progressive era, political parties would pick who they wanted to run for themselves. However, the progressive era among the many changes that came from that at the turn of the 20th century was a push to have primaries. That way, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party don't pick who they're running for office. It allows the people to select who they will run for office. This is one of the reasons, one of several reasons why we refer to American political parties as being relatively weak compared to many, say Western European allies. The political parties don't even have the power to select who they will run. That is something that is in the hands of the people. And beyond that, Dr. Cavali, you did a fantastic job of describing the rest. Again, Super Tuesday is super simply because there are a lot of elections at the same time. The Republican Party requires a little over 1200 delegates to win the Republican ticket for president. And on Super Tuesday, over 800 delegates will be available. So that's in the vicinity of well over two thirds of the required votes are right there on that one day. For the Democratic Party, it's a little under 2000 delegates to win the Democratic nomination. And there will be a little over 1400 delegates on Tuesday. So it's not as if a presidential candidate for the Democratic or Republican Party can win the nomination on Super Tuesday by itself. But it's extraordinarily important simply because there are so many states involved. I believe this year we have 16 states and one territory involved tomorrow. And but as Dr. Cavali said, Georgia will be next week, not on Super Tuesday. So make sure to go out and vote. Beyond that, none of these states that are having primaries or caucuses tomorrow are more important than any of the other states. It's just a lot happening on one day. Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah, and just a couple of points I would add very briefly. First is as Dr. Hall notes, the election itself right in Georgia is scheduled for the 12th. So a week from tomorrow. Early voting is available until Friday at various early voting sites. So you can check online using your voter registration information on the Secretary of State's website to find out where and when you can do that. Usually it's in during regular business hours, but check it's different depending on which county you live in, but there's usually going to be at least one early voting site per county just so you're aware of that. Although I would not expect terribly high turnout next Tuesday if you do wait and vote on Tuesday. The other thing is just to kind of get back in a little bit of the history, perhaps just to fill in a little bit of the gap there, right? The 1984 was kind of a turning point for the parties in part of the impetus for Super Tuesday at the time at least theoretically was to strengthen different factions within the party, particularly for the Democrats. So the Democrats, Southern Democrats in particular thought that having their coordinating, essentially, their primary contest for the same day would give them an outside influence over who was being nominated. It didn't quite work out that way. Certainly in 1984 it didn't, but it did eventually theoretically at least pay off in 1992 with Bill Clinton. And so the goal was to sort of, I guess, create a, from their perspective, a quote-unquote moderate block of states that would nominate a Democrat who could win in the South, right? Today, we're talking 40 years later, the geopolitics and all that is a lot different perhaps. And so those considerations may not necessarily be the same for both parties. But nonetheless, we still have the legacy of that and some of that also leads into things like for example, a lot of those same states that started Super Tuesday also being states that are open primaries, right? Where you don't have party registration, things like that. Although there's not a complete overlap between the two, but certainly the Southern states around the same time we're also adopting open primaries in part to try to keep more conservative white voters from switching parties and becoming Republicans and still having an influence in the Democratic Party. And so I just wanted to note that very briefly before we moved on to the next question because it is a little bit of a, I guess today a little bit of a historical footnote, but it's also an example of where our past kind of political development shapes where we go, right? So speaking of our primary and caucus season so far, as anything expected or sorry, unexpected or unusual occurred in the primaries and caucuses so far, we've had a few caucuses as well. And should we expect anything unusual or unexpected either tomorrow or perhaps in some of the upcoming contests? I'm guessing this is gonna be a short one. Great question there. This could take the rest of the month. In terms of what has happened unexpected or unusual so far in the primary and caucus season, I would have to point to the multiple trials that have been going on for former President Donald Trump. One of the more important opinions that went in his favor, obviously we discussed earlier, and that was the simple fact that the Supreme Court removed state government's belief that they could enforce the 14th Amendment at the federal level. Going forward, we also have additional trials at the federal and state level that will also make this an extraordinarily unique election. If I were a Republican political strategist, I would be most concerned. I would think about the Georgia trial in terms of election tampering, mainly due to the fact that there's actual video, excuse me, audio evidence there. So in terms of what has been odd so far, I would say that it would be the fact that the judiciary is playing such a prominent role in the electoral process during an election year. In terms of, and again, we could talk more about the oddities even beyond that. I just wanted to limit myself to that because it's such an unprecedented series of events with a prominent, not only presidential candidate, but former president who has several pending trials that have been complete and those in the future. In terms of anything unexpected or unusual in tomorrow's contests, I don't necessarily see anything that would go beyond a normal electoral cycle. We can always have close elections, and I think this will obviously be a close election. But in terms of the primaries, I think that we will see President, former President Trump sweeping all of the states tomorrow for the Republican ticket, and I think we will see current President Biden sweeping all of the elections. Now, keep in mind, I don't want us to limit the conversation to just presidents, to remind all of the students here, the president is running for reelection. We have presidential primaries, but we also have all 435 members of the House that are up for reelection. We have one third of the U.S. Senate that's up for reelection, not to mention the many state and local elections that are ongoing. So there could be a number of surprising events that occur tomorrow. I would like to think that the most surprising will be a high voter turnout, but that would be my optimistic expectation for tomorrow, more voters than we would expect. On that, I will leave this to Dr. Cavali and to Dr. Lawrence to fill in. Okay, well, I think it's, I don't know about, it's not really an oddity, it's more of a similarity, but it's an oddity in the absolute sense. It's on the Republican side. So you've had somewhat of a repeat performance of 2016 in this sense. So in 16, then Mr. Trump, he comes down the escalator at the Trump Tower, and in all honesty, I think a lot of the Republican party thought he was a bit of a joke. And you had all of these, 10,000 and one-half people running for president on the Republican side back in 16 and Trump beat them all. And it was funny about that particular election because it started out, Jeb Bush was the front runner, and a month later, Trump, after he announced, he was the front runner and he never lost it. Well, flash forward, we had the 2020 stuff, and now we're in 2024. An interesting phenomena is we've had somewhat of a repeat. Trump is making a comeback, and he had a whole stew pot full of Republicans who came out against him, and there's nothing against Ambassador Haley. I know she's still in the game, but he took it out on all the rest of them. And I mean, unless something, well, honestly, I think it's approaching a point where she needs a miracle to overcome the current trend line. But so that's not a, that's not a, it's unusual in the sense that it's been a kind of a repeat performance. And that's been, but that was surprising to me, I have to say. And the Democratic side has not been surprising at all and against nothing against Congressman Phillips or Ms. Williamson. But the reality is that neither one of them probably had much of a chance and they're kind of showing that. So it's, but I agree with Professor Hall. The role of these court cases, now that is odd. That's a very unique thing. I mean, we don't, we had a guy who ran for president from a jail cell, Eugene D. Debs, but he had, he got busted for speaking out against the World War I draft and they locked him up. And he ran, he was kind of one of those perennial, there's people out there that run for president every year for like 20 and 30 years and stuff. He was one of those guys. And he was the head of one of America's socialist parties. And so anyway, he literally ran for president from a jail cell, but it wasn't that, it wasn't that big of a deal. But this one here, and we have a president who's, looks like he's going to go to criminal trial. Now it may not happen in this presidential cycle, but that's a, that's it, we've never had anything like that. And so in that sense, that's a, that's a, that's a, we also have going on right now on the other side, we have the whole Hunter Biden stuff. And, and, you know, there's a chance the current sitting president, Joe Biden, now I don't think there's any shot at all, he'll have any conviction in the Senate, but there's a chance that the Republican House might just impeach him. I mean, they're doing an impeachment inquiry on him. Where, so we got to, we, and he's running against, or his challenger is a guy who was impeached not once but twice. So we might have a one time impeached guy against a two time impeached guy all on the same election. Now that I will say that's a, that's a, that's a pretty unique event in American history or it's the harbinger of things to come, which I hope it's not because that's a, that's going to lead our politics to a very, very dark place. And I hope that that doesn't happen. But so that, that's a little stuff for there was a little bit funny, but, but that, that's not funny at all that, that dark place. Cause we, we went down that road once this country and we don't ever want to do that again. That war, that war killed almost a million Americans. We don't ever want to do that again. But anyway, I'm on that, on that rather pessimistic note, I'm going to sign off there. Great point. Dr. Cowley, phenomenal. I enjoyed and agree with everything that you said there. I wanted, it's something hit me, I believe in terms of what has unique, what's unique this happened also, but not tomorrow. Believe that former governor Nikki Haley did win the district of Columbia's primary. So that was relatively interesting, but I agree with you that she is definitely out of this, I think, and I think she will bow out after tomorrow. One other point I noticed, and this is to all the students, while I have told my students that you do not have to ask questions or take part, I noticed that the chat is quite quiet. So please, I encourage all of you, if you have any questions on the extraordinarily important 2024 election, either at the federal state or local level, please shoot those over to us in the chat. Thank you all for making the pitch that I was about to make. So I would add one more thing that is unusual, I think is just the fact that we have a rematch of the same presidential election we had last time. That's not happened since what, the 1950s, right? So, and that was obviously before the primary era as we know it today, right? So a very different time when the smoke filled rooms were very much in, still in contention for deciding who the nominees were gonna be and that sort of thing. So it is worth noting that, there was an old saying that there are no second acts in American politics, but Donald Trump is definitely trying to challenge that old saying. We'll see if he can be successful or not over the next few months. But he definitely at least is getting to the final round it would seem. So speaking of the final round or the next round if you will, right? So we've already said that the next primary really up is gonna be next week with us here in Georgia. And in fact, both President Biden and former President Trump are expected to campaign here in the next week. I was reading that earlier today in advance for our primary, even if both primaries are essentially decided already, right here by sort of, I guess it's taken for granted that Trump is going to prevail in the Republican side and that Biden is going to prevail on the Democrat side. Why would they be coming here and going to all that trouble if it's already kind of a foregone conclusion that both of them are gonna win? It seems like a poor campaign strategy at some level unless there's something I'm missing which I'm maybe missing for rhetorical purposes. Great question there Chris. I didn't want to jump in front of you Matt. There's two ways of looking at this. If we know that President, former President Trump will win Georgia and current President Biden will win Georgia for their respective tickets. Why are they doing it? You can look at it from one perspective why are they actually doing it? Why are their parties doing it? Why are we having this? And obviously if you go back for all of my students we've covered this, Article 6 of the US Constitution requires of the states that they create that they provide a Republican form of government. So there is no choice. We actually have to have these elections. In terms of the primary elections, why bother? Again, from the perspective of their political parties there is no choice. They have to have a primary election in the state of Georgia and the rest of the states except those who use caucuses and they're not just running for this particular primary. President Trump is not just running in Georgia for the Republican nomination. President Biden is not running in Georgia right now just for the Democratic nomination. They're running for the general election in November. So there's never a bad time to campaign Georgia. It has become one of the most important swing states in the Republic, meaning that it can go Republican or Democrat. So while the Republican party primary and the Democratic party primary in Georgia are foregone conclusions, they are campaigning for the long haul. They're looking at the long game. That's the way I would look at that. And from a non-presidential perspective, we have to remember all 14 representatives from the House of Representatives representing Georgia are up for reelection. So those elections are still very much in play. We don't have a senatorial election in Georgia coming up but the primary elections even though they are foregone conclusions in terms of the results, the campaigning I would argue is definitely for the November general election in this incredibly important state. Oh yeah, I don't really have anything to add of any real substance on that. Just, I mean, we have these, again, we've got the, Georgia is important because we got the court case here. And that's a criminal case. And that's, you know, again, I can't emphasize, I can't emphasize enough how unusual that is and how impactful that could be on not just this election but on governing and, you know, governing in general. I mean, especially, you know, if the former president wins, you know, what's going to happen with this? So that's, we've never, we've really never been around as down this road before. I mean, you know, I guess sort of in a way we had a, we had a guy who had been vice president who got in trouble for being involved in a traitorous activity that was Aaron Burr. But that was actually after he left office and he wasn't running for office anymore. But, you know, I don't know what's going to happen within that. And as just to pile in a little bit of what Dr. Hall just said on the, listen, Georgia is, Georgia is a big state in terms of population. And it's a competitive state in statewide elections. If a Democrat can really amp out turnout in the major municipal areas, one of those, by the way, he's making, but the big one, of course, is Atlanta. But, you know, you could also think Columbus and you could think Savannah and you could think Augusta. You know, a Democrat, if a Democrat can get enough there, they can flip the state. And that's what Joe Biden did in 2020 and he might do it again by the same token. In the rural areas of Georgia, man, it's Ruby Red, like right, you know, where I'm at here in Bleckley County. I mean, we're as Republican as you can get. And if you can, if you can max out turnout, you know, the old ad is the old clinical scientists, they used to say, well, the rule, you know, rules and realities are in decline and they're, you know, turnout, you know, it's, they just don't matter that much anymore. You know, one thing about Donald Trump showed in 2016, but especially in 2020, even though he lost, he showed that you can really ramp up numbers in those areas and that proved a lot of us poly-side types wrong, quite frankly. And so he could do that again. Well, we could have a really high voter turnout. I mean, I would think this is a, you know, as Chris pointed out, this is the last time, we haven't had a rematch since 1956. And the last time, you know, we had a former president who really, I mean, who made it in the general election. Now we had former, you know, Harvard Hoover tried to win the Republican nomination again and he didn't achieve that. But the, you know, and back in the, you know, when I was a kid, they used to talk about Jerry Ford trying to make a comeback back in 1980. But that didn't happen either. But, you know, you really have to, you really have to go back a long ways. I mean, you guys are talking about Teddy Roosevelt in 1912. So it's gonna be exciting. I mean, in regards to what happened, but Georgia's a big deal. Georgia's a player, not just in presidential politics, but across the board. How Georgia goes goes to nation. In many respects, Georgia helped put Joe Biden in the White House and in many respects, if it goes the other way, Georgia could help put Donald Trump back in or whatnot. I mean, it's a really big deal. That's why those of you that are out here that are watching that are Georgians, you should really pay attention because you matter. I mean, you matter a bit. Now we could talk about, well, is that really fair? You know, is that fair to the good folks of Massachusetts who we know going in already that if the Democrats ran Mickey Frickin' Mouse, Massachusetts is gonna go for Mickey Mouse. They're gonna run Joe Biden and that election's already over in Massachusetts. And so you could argue, well, from a Democratic theory perspective, it is fair that Georgia effectively in a presidential election matters more than Massachusetts because we know the way Massachusetts is gonna go. By the same token, you know, Alabama are good friends over there in Alabama and I know Dr. Hall with the school there in Alabama. But, you know, listen, Donald Trump or whoever, if the Republican Party, it didn't matter who the Republican Party ran and in today's politics, just as in old days, it would have been a Southern Democrat, but in today's politics, look, Joe Biden hasn't got a ghost chance in heaven hell or any world in between in the good state of Alabama. But isn't really fair to Alabama if you really think about that compared to Georgia? We matter in a way that they don't. We determine elections in a way that they don't. That's just something to think about anyway on there. I've rambled on too long, I apologize. Matt, that's a great point. And we've covered this in class again, I keep referencing that. You make a great point that some states, swing states are, I want to say quote unquote, more important than others. I would look at it from this perspective, they're important because we don't yet know which direction they will go. It's not as if the nine electoral votes in Alabama don't matter as much as the 16. Think of it, this is a metaphor I'm making up on the fly, so please forgive me if this does not work out. Think of a football game. Is the fourth quarter more important than the first quarter? I would argue, of course not. But if you're in the fourth quarter and you already know what happened in the first, the second, and the third, well then the fourth quarter seems more important, but I'm gonna work that metaphor out a little bit more later, but great point. Georgia is definitely, from that perspective, exponentially more important than states with, even states with more electoral votes like California that we know which direction they're gonna go, but great points. Yeah, Kodaki, thanks a lot. So we have a couple of questions from the chat. So our first question is, by the way, I'm not gonna address the one that we did address at the very beginning, which both Dr. Kavelin and I were able to address. But we do have a question from actually Dr. Adam Square, who notes that there are 16 states on Super Tuesday, goal for the Republicans that need 1200 delegates. If Nikki Haley does stay in past Super Tuesday, can she make a significant impact or with the court challenges you have identified, is it wise still for her to stay in as a likely replacement or presumptive in the event that Trump, for whatever reasons, is unable to become the nominee, I don't know if either of you wanna... Do you wanna jump in, John? Okay, well, so I would say, so I would say you have to think about something here. Remember that the convention is actually where they officially mint the nominee. That's where they choose the nominee. And in fact, before the modern primary system that again goes back to 76 for the Republican 72 for the Democrats, the convention overwhelming is that's where it was decided. Because nobody would have the delegate support going in. They're usually somebody who was leading and the convention would wheel and deal and they'd work things out. So let's say that President Trump derails somewhere along the way. And we go to the convention and we have a broker convention. The broker convention is just a term where there's nobody has a lead. Well, at that point, now remember if the only person that is there, that is Ambassador Haley, you might say, well, now wait a minute, everybody will just go to Haley. Well, here's the thing on that. They don't have to. And you have to ask yourself the question. If you have all these people who had supported Trump over Haley, would they switch at that point? Or would they go to somebody who never said anything bad about Trump? And because at that point, it could be anybody. At that point, they could resurrect DeSantis. They could go grab Tim Scott. They could pull, I mean, we've had stuff like this happen. I mean, that's how we got pulp. And now it was an old election back in 1844 where the Democrats couldn't figure out who to nominate. And so after I think it was a 40-something ballot or something like that, they came up with pulp. We've had this kind of stuff. In other words, I think it would ask a question. Would people change their support? I think she might make a strong run in a broker convention, but I don't know if she could overtake because you could easily choose somebody else and they might choose somebody else. I mean, you could even think they might resurrect some old unifier or something like that. They might grab Jeb Bush or somebody. So in other words, what I'm saying is that you wouldn't have to take the number two because once you go to the convention, that's where you officially nominate somebody. You don't have to nominate whoever came in second place. If it's a broker convention, it can be somebody that never ran. I mean, it could be as long as they met the qualifications, I could go in there and I could put up John Hall and he could be the nominee. I vote for him. Thank you. I agree completely with everything you said there. I do think it's important to note that you mentioned if President Trump derails, the only thing I think that would derail President Trump would be something from one of these court cases, cannot stress is enough. If I'm a Republican strategist, I am terrified of the Georgia elections tampering case. That's what would scare me the most. With the exception of a conviction in a criminal trial that would derail anyone's hopes of becoming a president from literal prison, there is absolutely no way that President Trump does not win the Republican ticket in a landslide. But yeah, I agree with, I love what you pointed out there. After that first ballot, especially, it's anyone's ballgame and any predictions, I wouldn't make a single prediction of what the Republican convention would do from a second ballot onward if President Trump had been somehow removed. That would be A, terrifying and B, fun to watch at the same time as a political scientist. Yeah, the only thing I would add is, and this also alludes to a question we got in the chat, just because the president is in jail or the potential presidential nominee is in jail or even in prison, whether we're talking about federal jail, state jail, whatever, that does not necessarily disqualify them from running for office or even taking office. So there, although this is not precedented, that is entirely within the scope of the constitution at least to envision the idea that inauguration day rolls around and they gotta go and bail the president out of federal prison to bring him to Washington to swear him in as president. Now, is that realistic? Who knows? I mean, I think that we're in, what I would say are fairly unprecedented times and we're also in a situation where, although certainly opinion polls suggest that President Trump would lose a lot of his support if he were convicted of a crime. Those opinion polls are opinion polls, right? When you collapse, when reality shows up and that's the actual scenario, we'll see how many of those people actually follow through and stop supporting him. My suspicion is a lot of people say they would not support him anymore. And then what we'll find is that like in a lot of cases, people are just rationalizing decisions that they've already made, right? So for example, I think if you asked people eight years ago, if it came out that Trump had engaged in various types of sexual misconduct with rape and things like that, that they would not support him anymore. And yet the vast majority of people that said those things that were gonna vote for him before, still end up voting for him. And there's always, like I said, the post hoc justification of, while it was a prosecution witch hunt or the Biden administration's out to get him or Fanny Willis is out to get him or whatever, right? So that's the one caveat I would say about any sort of replacement of Trump. I mean, I think at this point, right? You almost have to think that it would have to be a disability more than anything else, right? A physical or mental disability that just simply preclude him from being able to run effectively, right? I don't think even a political disability would be sufficient at this point. Now, you can disagree with me on that if you want, but I think that's kind of the realm of the sort of thing that would probably realistically be the only kind of obstacle at this point, in which case it would open it up to questions of, do you go back and revive Ron DeSantis or I do mean revive in the broadest sense of the term? Let's see, so we have another question. This presidential election would involve an incumbent president, a former president. What are your opinions on who would win this election? It's kind of a run on. Consider the odds are in favor of Biden or, I mean, I guess we could start with, right? What sort of things would make us think the odds are in favor of Biden and what sort of things would make us think that perhaps they would be in favor of Trump here? Great question. The part of the question regarding President Biden being favored, that's not really reflected in the polls right now. And again, polls this early in an election year are just that, they're just polls early in an election year. But as of right now, I believe the last thing I saw from the last poll I saw, I don't think it was Gallup, it was Gallup has former President Trump up by almost three percentage points. So as of now, and for several months that I've been watching former President Trump is a couple of points above current President Biden, but that's within the margin of error. So that's neither here nor there. In a close election, if you're asking who would win Georgia? Was that the question? I think the question was just generally who would win overall, not necessarily Georgia. I've got a great answer to that. I have no idea. This is going to be a shockingly close election just like 2020, just like 2016. There are no words that I have to express to everyone hearing this, please go vote. Regardless of who you vote for, please go vote because this is going to be a nail biter. Driven a great deal by, again, the state of Georgia. I agree with everything John just said. This is going to be, it's possible that this could wind up being a record breaker in terms of its closeness. I mean, it's that tight. I mean, these guys are, I mean, they're, whenever, so for those of you haven't had your statistics course yet, when you say that an outcome is within the margin of error what that means is that you can't make an accurate prediction. So in the poll it might say, well, Trump is up by two points but the margin of error is three points. Well, that means that in reality he might actually be down by two points. And that's assuming that they did everything right in the poll and they don't always do everything right. But if you, scientific polling, by the way, I just want to say something here. Scientific polling, I'm not talking about push polling. I'm not talking about what a lot of campaign advertising advertisers do, but actual scientific polling for the most part is pretty good. I mean, it's a, what you need to make a poll accurate is you have to have a certain number of respondents in the sample and the sample has to be representative of the population. And as long as you have random assignment and random treatment, you're gonna get an outcome that you can make a pretty accurate prediction. Believe it or not, you only need a sample size if it's appropriately gathered of about 1500 people and you could say something about the country as a whole. That's the advantage of polling. Now people say, well, that sounds like magic. It's not magic, it's just math. It's probability theory. It's a classic bell curve. Things occur along a bell curve. There's a mound that appears in the middle and there's two tails that go off for the extremes. That is a, for good, bad or indifferent reasons, if you take your course in physics, what they're gonna tell you is that probabilities are an aspect of the structure of the universe as we can render it. So that's all that is. It's just tapping into something that's already there, which is just mathematical probability. If you flip a coin enough times and go back and add it up, you'll get about an equal number of heads to an equal number of tails that will always happen no matter what. That's a law of mathematics. That's a law of physics. It's just an application to it. That's how it works. So that's probability. As long as you've done it right, you can say a lot with polls. Unfortunately, as John has just pointed out here, if the end result is, well, we don't really know, then the prediction that you have to make from that end result is we don't really know, which is what he just told you. And that's where we're at right now. Yeah, the only thing I would add to that is, and I think it was a very good explanation to like the probability theory and things like that behind it is, and that's why you can't really extrapolate much from a statistical time, right? I mean, there is a narrow lead, but is that, I mean, is there some systematic error? Is there, we just don't know, right? But the one thing we do know, right, is that there are certain factors that tend to go into incumbents getting reelected, right? So I think if you can have them, I say, okay, what sort of things would you look for if you were expecting the incumbent to win, right? You'd want to look at, you know, stay the economy, right? You know, is economy getting better? Is unemployment getting better? You know, those are kind of the traditional macroeconomic indicators, right? Is consumer sentiment, which is more of a, you know, Lucy Goosey perhaps indicator, but nonetheless is an important one. You know, you're gonna look at that, you know, you, I mean, there's a very strong historical trend that, you know, the state of the economy about this far out from the election is what kind of seems to drive presidential election choice, right? So if you're looking at, okay, you know, my best indicator of what's gonna happen six months from now is probably things like the state of the economy, right? As opposed to those, again, those opinion polls, because they're so close. Yes, it could go either way, but on the balance, right? You know, but then again, you know, you also have to consider that you have, you know, two groups of voters, they're very locked in, they're probably not gonna be persuaded. And so, you know, it really kind of has kind of come down to two things, right? You know, motivation, you know, who is more motivated to vote and mobilized. And then to some extent, persuasion, right? You know, there are some persuadable voters out there, there are people that live under a rock, believe it or not, that don't pay attention to politics all the time. They could go either way. And so, you know, those are your kind of, you know, the two kind of wildcards here is, you know, how well can Trump and Biden mobilize their bases? And how well can those two campaigns persuade them, the other voters, right? Either to vote for them or not vote for the other guy, right? I mean, that sounds kind of very simplistic and oversimplific perhaps, but that's kind of how elections work is, you know, that mobilization plus persuasion equation. How's that for Iran? So, speaking of mobilization, parallel and the other one, persuasion, right? You know, we haven't talked much about issues, but somebody does have a question about the issues. You know, the media says we should talk more about issues. So, we'll talk about issues. So, Seth asks, how do y'all think the Texas border situation will affect the election, or even if it will have an actual effect? Great question. That is definitely one of the more important policy areas right now, especially if you have any interest in the survival of, let's say, Ukraine as a nation state in the past that was tied in directly to that. The border issue, in terms of federal legislation reforming the US border, particularly the border between the United States and Mexico, this has been an issue in American national politics for decades. Regardless of your political persuasion, you could probably make the argument that the federal government has not necessarily succeeded in providing a concise and effective border reform. As it stands today, it really depends on your perspective. The, if you follow this issue, former President Donald Trump, who has an extraordinary amount of influence over the current Republican Party, has repeatedly stressed his desire for the US House, which is controlled by the Republicans, to not pass border reform. You might wonder why is that? This is nothing against or for the former president. This is just politics. If there is a problem with the border that gets fixed during the fourth year of President Biden's first term in office, President Biden will effectively get a great deal of credit for having solved a horrifying problem on the border. So if the border issue is not solved, then that's something that President Trump will be able to run on in this election. So again, that's not a negative or a positive. That's just a neutral political reality. If there's a problem that is not solved by the incumbent, the challenger can run on that problem. Having said that, I don't think it will necessarily sway the election one way or another because as Dr. Lawrence mentioned, there are so many voters that were entrenched in the Biden camp or the Trump camp. I do think maybe it could encourage a few more people to go out and vote. So I don't necessarily think it will sway someone's vote. I think the biggest effect it might have, if any, is its effect on voter turnout. But other than that, the Biden administration obviously has a great deal of interest in solving this particular issue, at least appearing to solve it now. And the Trump campaign has an active interest in making sure this is not necessarily solved now so that he can campaign on it. I don't leave it for everyone else to jump in on that. The only thing that I would add is that if you think about it this way, whoever, whichever one of these guys wins the turnout fight on election night or across the election period, that's the one that's gonna win. And that's another thing right now, going back to the previous question, we don't know who's gonna win that fight right now. But the border issue can stimulate turnout positively or negatively within both camps. Now, then the question does, do they balance each other out and then effectively doesn't really change? Or does the turnout effect from something like the border issue or any other single issue promote one side or the other? However that's gonna happen will help determine who wins on election night. But again, I say that right now, it's a difficult thing as to that turnout because there are, I will say this is not across a wide span of issues, both President Biden and former President Trump have some potential issue problems that will impact turnout among their own base. Now, they tend to be different issues. So for Trump, it could be something like the abortion issue which has tended to hurt him, particularly among women and independence. But the border issue has had some impact on Joe Biden's core constituency. Some of the sort of the working class voters have reacted negatively to Biden on the border. There's also a, I see somebody has put up in the chat related to the Israeli Hamas war. That has had an impact, not just among certain voters, among voter constituencies within the Democratic party. And so if the question is about young voters, but it's not just young voters, but it's also Arab and Muslim voters and stuff on that particular issue. But within the border issue, and we know one of the, there used to be an argument out there in terms of race and ethnic vote studies people. They used to say this, whoever wins the Hispanic vote at the end of the day is gonna be a nationally dominant party, will have a realignment. It'll go one way or the other, whoever gets the Hispanics. See, right now, historic, the Republicans have done well among Cubans and the Democrats have done well among Chicanos, Puerto Ricans and more recent Hispanics. However, however, beginning as far back as the Mitt Romney campaign back in 2012, there has been a movement among Hispanics writ large, a bit away from the Democrats and towards the Republicans. There has also, and this goes back to Obama in 08. There has been a movement on the other side among Cuban voters, young Cuban voters, away from the Republicans toward the Democrats. So we have that going on, but that's an example and a big issue there is Cuba, but I mean, the movement of Hispanics and general involves the border. So there's a lot of these issue voters can be an impact. You gotta understand something, if enough people stay home in Michigan, Trump will win Michigan because Biden will lose them if enough people stay home in Michigan and it doesn't take much. If 20,000 people stay home that otherwise would have turned out, there's a good shot that Trump flips Michigan back to the red. Or something like that. So this could easily happen either way. So again, this is gonna come down to turnout and the issues are very much pushing that. You're good, thank you very much. So I wanted to pick you back off of Ariel's question. He also asked about addition to the Israel Gaza thing which we could talk about if we want to, but he also emphasized something that we were gonna talk about, which is H, right? So both, obviously both candidates are old by any relative term, I think. It's certainly relative to any former president. They're both way up there. So even though both are fairly advanced in age, nonetheless, it seems like from the opinion polls and certainly a piece I was reading in the New York Times this week that Biden's age seems to be more of a liability with voters than Trump's even though they're only about four years apart. With Trump being in his late 70s and Biden, of course, being 81. Why does the age as you seem to be affecting Biden more than Trump here? Even though perhaps, certainly a lot of people have argued that Trump, if anything, has shown more visible signs of physical and mental decline. I'll jump on this one. That's a great question. Again, we need to recognize that one of the unique elements of this and the last presidential election is the fact that we have the oldest candidates we have ever had. The oldest candidate elected president was President Donald Trump in 2016. President Biden broke that record in 2020 and somebody's gonna, the way President Biden wins, he'll break it again in 2024. So President Biden's 81, former President Trump is 77. They're both old. So why does President Biden appear to be getting more, I would say negative press regarding age and President Trump doesn't. A lot of it has to do with one simple fact. President Biden is the president. There is no position on the planet Earth with the level of visibility of an American president. They are one to argue from a secular perspective, the most powerful human being on the planet. So that very simple fact, the fact that President Biden is currently in office gives him more press regarding his current age. Now, another interesting variable has to do with the fact that it's actually split between the party's voters. One of the main reasons that President Biden seems to have more public concern regarding his age is because Democratic voters have more concern. If you poll, when poll, Republican voters have almost, it's extraordinary the consistency here. Republican voters across the board just do not seem to care at all that former President Trump is 77. When asked, that is one of the least significant things to Republican voters. When polled, Democratic voters do have concern. So there in the math, you can see why President Biden is getting a little bit more negative press because of his age. And that's because his base, the Democratic voters are concerned while Republican voters have such a level of support for former President Trump, they really just don't care, at least in the polling. So those are some of the major variables at play. Also, when you look at their style, this is something that's hard to operationalize, but former President Trump is, how do I put it, he's a more, he has a different debate style. He has a different speaking style. He has a much more aggressive speaking style compared to President Biden, who has more of a traditional speaking style for American presidents. And that in of itself could also lead some to believe that he is more energetic, not necessarily because he is more energetic, but that's how he speaks. But again, yeah, those are the main reasons that I would think President Biden gets a little bit more negative press for age when both President Biden and President Trump are so close in age, it really doesn't matter. They are both what we would consider old. That's very good. I think that that's right on. The only thing I would add is a couple of things. One is this, Joe Biden has a speech impediment. He's a stutterer. And when he gets tired and when he gets a bit excited, you can hear that come out. And that comes out often as gaffes. And of course, as Professor Hall pointed out there, when a president, when a president does anything, everybody hears about it, no matter what. And if you watch them, you'll see that President Biden has a slower gait when he walks and stuff and moves than Trump does. And so that can also somewhat give the image of well, he's a teeter and old man about to fall over dead relative to Trump. And the other thing I would say is that one of the great bifurcations in American politics is the young versus the old. And traditionally, the old has always went with the more conservative party, which is in this case, the Republican party, and the young with the more democratic party. And so because there is, there are more young people make up a larger coalition, a larger proportion of the coalition that is the Democratic party than they do the Republican party. You're gonna have a deeper look, if you will, about age, because one of the things about young people that they do is they do the same thing that older people. Older people criticize young people, younger people criticize older people. And so that phenomena is possibly also playing itself out in the polling and so on and so forth in the focus groups and whatnot on that. But the reality is, there's also a wonderful, I'm about to kill some of the political scientists out there, but there are at least aspects of politics, behavioral politics that are illogical, if not fully irrational. So because here's the thing, if you say, if you say Joe's too old, then if you're being logical, what you have to conclude is that Trump is also too old, but people don't do that. And people do stuff like that all the time. And so that's one of the great criticisms that always leveled against rational choice theory was, well, yeah, but in reality, people actually do do contradictions and stuff like that, but so that's one of them right there. And some of that is, I mean, what are you gonna do? I mean, they're in anybody else there. I mean, unless again, Ambassador Haley can unseat Trump or and Congressman Phillips or Ms. Williamson can somehow unseat Biden, but I mean, I don't see how that's gonna happen. And of course, if we get a broker convention, remember I've always thrown my hat in the ring for Dr. Hall there. So I'm gonna be his campaign manager and we're gonna take this thing by storm. So I turned that over. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, the first point is, I mean, I think I would agree that, like you said before, people will rationalize anything. And so, that's always a possibility here. I mean, I think another thing to consider here is that, and I hate to say it in a negative way because it's not really negative, but you could argue that Trump by having to campaign has put himself a little more visibly out there and therefore been able to dispel maybe a little bit of the idea that he's old, even though in some ways he hasn't. Whereas, if you're Biden and you're not, I mean, you're basically not campaigning, right? More or less. You don't have serious opposition. So you're not going out there and doing the same level of campaign activity, right? Then that's just gonna be perceived, I think as, you know, you know, a lack of participation. And it's hard to perceive, it's hard to perceive vigor if there's no vigor on display, right? And so, if all you're doing is friendly interviews and things like that, that's not what's gonna demonstrate to the public that you're kind of on the ball, right? Now, as we transition to more of a general election campaign as we transition to making more public appearances and being kind of compared in the moment, perhaps Biden can capitalize on it, right? I mean, not to be his campaign manager or anything, but it seems to me that the Rose Garden basement strategy, whatever we might call it, isn't really working for him. And I think Biden realizes that, I think he knows that, right? But at the same time, why go into that too early if you don't need to, right? And so, I mean, I think that, going back to our earlier question about why, why is Biden coming to Georgia? I think that's maybe part of this is, okay, we're rolling out the real campaign now, right? It's basically settled. We know it's down to Trump. We know Haley is a non-factor. We know that he's gotten past his biggest speed bump in Michigan, presumably, as far as Biden's concerned, right? Because that turned into a nothing burger. And so, he's the presumptive nominee. And again, unless he wants to do something about that, right? Then nobody's really in a position to tell him, no, right? So, I think that that could be a possible turning point here. Not to, again, not to quarterback for him or anything like that. But I do think that might even the perceptions a little bit if, again, there was a little bit more visibility, I think there. Let's see. Chris. Yeah. Real quick, at a great point there, I think you nailed it. Incumbent presidents running for reelection do not have to traditionally do a lot of heavy lifting. They're expected to win their nomination. Also, as president, you give up a degree of your privacy in terms of health. And President Biden, I think it's important to point out, has a physician that has reported very recently that he is cognitively healthy. He is physically healthy. There are no medically diagnosed issues with the current president. And to my knowledge, there are none with the former president. So, while they are old, they both appear to be extraordinarily healthy. Yeah, the only thing I would also add to that is there have been journalists and things like that that have reported on extended interviews with them with President Biden at least, have said this idea that he's not able to function or whatever is a complete exaggeration. There's no, you know, that you can string together words apparently better than I can at definitely not 81 years of age. So, yeah, I mean, I think that again, not to sort of say, not to minimize the problem because it is a problem. Even if it's a perception problem, in politics, perception problems are problems, right? Marketing, perception problems are problems, right? We saw this over the, I mean, heck, we just saw this over the weekend with Wendy's, right? You know, if you talk about, you know, how you're gonna give discounts or price things differently at different times a day, right? And if it's framed one way, it sounds like, oh my God, they're gonna do surge pricing rather than, you know, you're giving people a discount to get people in when they're not normally there, right? It's the same damn thing. It's the exact same economic thing, right? You know, it's just, okay, we're giving away the frosty cheaper at 2 p.m. As opposed to we're making the frosties more expensive at 6 p.m. But the grand scheme of things, it's the same deal, right? And so, you know, again, marketing, perception, is that reality? Not always, right? Again, going back to what, you know, Dr. Cavill was talking about the limits of human perception, perhaps, and also the way that we don't think rationally about costs and benefits and things like that, right? We see a discount as good, even though it could just be, you know, a false discount, right? Or we see a higher price is bad, even though it could just be an artificial increase, right? Oh, let's see. So we don't have any additional chat questions. So we do have one more scripted question, not to give Nikki Haley undue amount of attention, but nonetheless, we'll give her some attention because it's probably the last attention she's gonna get for a while. Sorry, that's not a little mean. No offense if you're a Nikki Haley fan. But she announced this week that she no longer felt bound by her previous pledge to support the Republican nominee. So those of you that may have been living under a rock during the Ten Dwarves phase of the nomination contest, right? There was a rule basically that to participate in the Republican debates, you had to agree to support the eventual Republican nominee and the RNC set that rule. And basically, if you didn't do that, you didn't get to show up, but of course Donald Trump refused to do that. And so he never went to any of the debates, but everybody else agreed to that. Now she said she's not gonna follow that rule anymore. What, if any effect, do you think this might have effect on the race going forward? Do you think that this might potentially mean that her supporters might not end up supporting Trump in November or is this just kind of a nothing burger and kind of a last gasp of a campaign that was pretty much already over anyway? Not to put too fine a point on it. Really quickly, and I can answer this fast. And I'm glad you mentioned that point about President Trump not agreeing either. Former Ambassador and Governor Nikki Haley saying that she's no longer bound to support whatever the Republican nominee is, I think it will have exactly no effect whatsoever. I think it's also, again, important to point out that when it comes to expectations that we're putting on former Governor Haley that former President Trump himself did not agree to do this either. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind in terms of perspective, but no, I don't see any Nikki Haley supporters as a result of this turning around, especially in the general election and voting for President Biden. Well, I could be very, very wrong. I don't think in terms of the bandwidth of the American voters such as it is, I don't think this is something that will really impact the election at all. Well, keeping in mind, I could be wrong, but I'm not. We can all be wrong, we can all be wrong. So, but yes, I agree that it's not. So at the end of the day, and I'll even expand my response to this beyond Haley to some of the talks about people defecting from Biden because of the Israeli Hamas war and various other things. At the end of the day, at this moment in time, there's no credible third party or strong independent candidate in this election cycle. This is not 2016. Now, could one emerge? It's possible. I suppose it's, I don't know, RFK Jr. might somehow all of a sudden start resonating, but he hasn't resonated up till this time. And at the end of the day, the vast majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters and the vast majority of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, and what I mean by vast majority, I mean well in excess of 90%, they're gonna stick with their guy. At the end of the day, on election day, they are gonna stick with their guy. Among the independence, and what I mean by independence is I mean the true independence. I mean the roughly speaking nine to 12% of the electorate that are actual independence, true independence that are split-ticket voters and down-ballot drop-off voters, and all of that, those folks. In other words, the people that will probably actually solve the election. That's gonna come down to turnout and that's gonna come down to which way they go as to which one. You know, at the end of the day, if you went back to 2020 and you said, well, in the Democratic, the Democrats had a love fest between Biden and I'm blacking out his name right now. The Sanders, Bernie Sanders. And you had the Bernie Bros. And I'm telling you at the end of the day, because they studied this, they looked at this, what happened to all the Bernie Bros? They voted for Joe Biden, that's what happened to him. You know, overwhelmingly. And all the people that, and the vast majority, if you went back to 2020, the vast majority of the so-called never-trumpers at the end of the day, they went out and they marched in line and they stuck with the boss. And that will most likely happen again because, you know, there's a long debate about this, well, why do we only have two parties and there's lots of reasons why? But at one thing at the end of the day is people will usually say, well, I may not like everything that Joe Biden or Donald Trump stands for or has done or whatever, but I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican or in general, I'm neither, but I support more the issues associated with this guy or I'm responding to a macro effect like the economy, the economy, we're either in good times and I'm gonna reward the incumbent or we're in bad times and I'm gonna go against the incumbent to come as far as could be a Mofi arena called that retrospective voting. But however they're gonna do it, whether they're proactive or reactive, they're gonna stick with their guy. And I imagine that that's gonna happen this time. So that was a little bit of a long-winded answer, but I noticed there were some questions in the chat about people defecting from Biden. So I wanted to, I don't wanna say quell that, but just to say that at the end of the day, people are gonna stay. Now, will a small sliver of them possibly defect by not showing up? Yes. And this election is so close at this moment in time that that small sliver, that small reduction in expected turnout could be enough to dictate the winner one side or the other. And you wouldn't think that would be, but it is. It could come down to a less than 1% difference in a small handful of states. And there you go. Listen, Joe Biden won Georgia by I think it was 13,000 votes. 13,000 votes is nothing. 13,000 votes is that 13,000, that's the size of Blackley County population, right? That's nothing. That could have went either way. And it could still go either way this time around. It'd be the same thing around the country. So it's gonna be exciting. Just remember everybody, no matter who wins, don't start pulling out guns and shooting at each other. We don't want that. We don't need that. We went down that road once. We have to the 1860 election. We went down that road. We don't ever want to go down that road again. And we don't ever want to see that ever happen again. Okay. So on that semi-optimistic note. Okay, Nicky. Well, thank you very much for your, well, things like that. So I'd like to thank our panelists for participating. So, and also our faculty guests and student guests as well for your insightful questions as well. So I'd like to thank you all for coming. Please do follow us on social media. I can see our various social links on our slide here. MGA PaulSide is what we're at pretty much everywhere. So Twitter slash X. Facebook.com slash MGA PaulSide and YouTube.com slash MGA PaulSide. We do have some upcoming events as well. Our next scheduled event is gonna be at the end of this month. We're gonna be talking about the Georgia legislature as we're expecting that's about the time that what is known as sign a die when the legislature adjourns for the year will be taking place. So I have a pretty good idea then of what the general assembly has done and what it's expected to do and how it's going to impact your lives. And so we'll have some discussion of that. Also, of course, come to our website and find out more about our classes and our programs where registration does open next week for the fall. And we've got some interesting classes that I'm sure that you would be interested in taking. So we'll have information posted about those. And of course, you'll also find that information in the schedule classes and things like that as well. So thank you all for coming out. One other thing is that we will be getting a video of this posted as well as a video of our previous event. We weren't able to get that cleared for some reasons. So we're gonna have to post an edited version without Dr. Matroff's comments. So that has taken a little longer than I was expecting to get that edited. But because of his affiliation with an external entity, they don't want him on tape saying things without their permission. So it'll be mostly just me talking to Dr. Hall apparently. But when we do get that edited down, we'll get that posted along with this one, which will be a little bit easier to edit because I won't have to edit out half the video. So keep an eye out for that on our YouTube page. And thank you all and we appreciate your attendance and hopefully we'll see you soon at one of our upcoming events and have a good remainder of your evening and a good week. Thank you all very much.