 Okay, good afternoon everybody and welcome to our discussion event on election 2022 all over except the shouting is a virtual discussion hosted by the Department of Political Science here at Middle Georgia State University along with our School of Education Behavioral Sciences also co-sponsored by the MGA Political Science Student Organization and the Alpha Muse Data chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha which is the National Honorary Society for students of political science. So before we get started just to briefly introduce our department for those of you that are unfamiliar with us. We have lots of programs here offered both on campus and online, including Bachelor of Science degrees in political science and interdisciplinary studies as well as minors in African African diaspora studies, environmental policy studies, global studies, political science and pre law and a certificate in European Union studies. So before we get started today I'm going to first introduce our panelists and then tell you a little bit about the ground rules and give you have an overview of what we're going to be discussing today and go from there. So without further ado, I want to go ahead and first introduce our panelists for today. We have three faculty members for our department that are joining us to share their expertise. And they are Dr. John Hall, who I don't have a picture for at the moment. John, are you there? Yes, you can't see me. I cannot see you. Trust me, I'm waving. Okay. Let's see. Oh, there are now and I can see you. I guess there's some sort of limited number of people I can see. I don't know. Weird. Let's see. So Dr. John Hall is an associate professor of political science here at Middle Georgia State has been here since 2015. His doctorate in political sciences from Auburn University. We also have another colleague of Professor Grace Adams Square, who's an assistant professor of political science here at Middle Georgia State University has been here since 2011. And there are master of arts and political sciences from West Virginia University. We also have our third panelist Dr. Matthew Cavali, who's a lecturer of political science and has been at Middle Georgia State since 2016. His doctorate in political science is from the University of Florida. And last but not least or probably least, I'm not sure. I am Dr. Christopher Lawrence. I'm the chair of the political science department and also an associate professor of political science. And I've been here at Middle Georgia State since 2012 and my doctorate is from the University of Mississippi, also in political science. So let's see. Just to introduce our ground rules, et cetera. So first, we're going to start with some questions been selected by the moderator that. Professor item square is going to be answering those first and then we'll also hear from our other panelists as well. We'll also be accepting some chat questions. So if you if you have questions, please post those in the chat window and we will start to handle those or start to take those after we've answered a few of the questions from. The moderators selected questions so probably about, I don't know 53545 or so will start to mix those in depending on how quickly we're going here. You're certainly welcome to ask multiple questions if you have multiple questions, but we're going to prioritize answering one question. Her responded as possible. And please be courteous and civil to each other in the chat window and also in your questions and things like that as well. I also see joining us. By the way, I forgot to introduce, but I do see that we have our Dean, Dr. David Beek, who's also joined us today. So thank you, David for joining us. And also, I believe I saw at least one additional colleague, Dr. Julie Lester, who's Professor of Political Science has been here for since I believe 2006. And that's it so far. Another colleague said he might be joining us so we may or may not be joining us later we'll see. But anyway, thank you all for being here. And Dr. Lawrence, we have Dr. Dr. Dr here as well. Oh, yes. Yeah, I thought Dr. Decker was going to be joining us. So yes, so thank you Dr. Decker for joining us as well. And Dr. Beat, did you have anything you wanted to say or I really can't improve on the, the excellent menu that you folks have for us today so I will not detract from that but if I will just say this though, if any of you are here for the first time at one of these panel sessions put on by the Department of Political Science, you are certainly in for a treat so please enjoy the robust discussion and information rich dialogue. Okay, great. Thanks. Thanks, Dr. Beek. I really appreciate the vote of confidence. So, so basically, this is just kind of a quick summary of some of the questions we'll be asking. And I will minimize this in just a moment but some of the questions we'll be looking at are what were some of the results the elections we'll talk about some summarize those for you guys. We'll also talk a little bit about the upcoming Senate runoff election here in Georgia where Stacy Abrams might be going next in her career, what Governor Kemp might be doing and now that he's been reelected to a second term, and also to some potential national trends both in terms of the national picture in terms of the Senate and the House of Representatives and how that might play into the remainder of President Biden's term as well as potential effects on the 2024 presidential contest. So those aren't the formal questions but but it does give me kind of a roadmap for some of the questions we'll be asking today. So let me make this content disappear for a moment. I can remember how to do that. There we go. And we'll, so you can see our happy faces and we'll start with our first question. So, so as I mentioned before, a professor I'm supposed to be answering these first should get first crack. So first, how would you summarize results of today Tuesday's elections last Tuesday's election nationally and here in Georgia. Thank you Chris so on the national level what I would say is what was so unusual was the unevenness of the results when we look in terms of Florida. Florida results were announced quickly with wins from Florida Republican Governor DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio winning reelection by huge margins. The Florida Senate race was interesting because incumbent Senator Marco Rubio was challenged by Democrat Val Demings who played a pivotal role in the impeachment proceedings of former President Donald Trump. Demings House of Representatives seat she lost that she had given it up to run for Senate, but her seat was won by a 25 year old Maxwell frost, which is completely aligned with the Constitution and I was so excited, because that is exactly what I teach in the classroom in terms of telling students that they can aspire for this exact position running for their district and so that to run for the House of Representatives, you must be a minimum of 25 years of age and Maxwell frost adheres to the Constitution on the Democratic side in Michigan there was Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She was reelected Democrats in Michigan not only reelected their Democratic governor but they also flipped both chambers of Michigan State Legislature on a trio of high profile Michigan congressional races. Democrats prevailed in Wisconsin and in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Republican candidate TV personality Dr. Oz lost his bid for the Senate to a Democrat. Former President Trump held push eyes over the finish line in a narrow primary victory. However, Oz lacked in favorability, which was a problem that he just cannot overcome with Lieutenant Governor John Finerman with the Democratic Pride Party. Tuesday also provided another reminder that Election Day chatter can sometimes not be on mark. It was conveyed that Republicans would have a red tsunami on Election Day. Instead on the national level, the Republican Party underperformed in Senate and Governor races. However, in the state of Georgia on election night, Georgia was red, and Georgia had a big red celebration for the Republican Party. Governor Kemp was reelected. Secondary of State Brad Raffensburg was reelected. And one of the advantages that Governor Kemp had was the incumbency advantage over challenger Stacey Abrams. So he was able to tout his record. And now we will have to wait to December to see the results of the Georgia Senate race for the US Senate. Okay, great. John, Matt. Great summary there, Grace. Phenomenal with the details and everything the Gray Senate is of course direct to hit it from more of a bird's eye perspective. If I were to summarize Tuesday, I would say, along with what Grace alluded to there, there was not a bloodbath for the Democratic Party. Midterm elections lead to the party in control of the White House losing. That goes back all the way to 1932. So we really started collecting data on this with about two exceptions. If you win the presidency, you're a very first midterm, you are going to lose and usually lose big and Democrats didn't. Not only did they not lose the US Senate, there's a possibility, depending on what happens in Georgia on December 6th for Georgia to actually go for the Democratic Party to gain a seat in the Senate. And that would be huge. The Democratic Party has members like Joe Manchin that are not overwhelmingly what you would consider liberal. They're actually in many instances voting against Democratic policies out of the White House. So having 51 to 49 would be a huge difference maker. Also, the economy, we are experiencing extreme inflation for the very first time in my lifetime when I wasn't wearing diapers in the 1970s. So you have an incumbent who usually loses in midterm elections. You have extreme inflation, which my generation doesn't even remember happening in the past. You have a lot of variables going against the Biden administration and contemporary Democrats and they overcame them. We'll discuss possible reasons for that later. So I will say that's the biggest issue and the House is not yet decided. We have about 19 House seats that are still up for grabs. I did a quick little bit of math. If you just look at the House seats that are still not decided, if you look at the ones that are being led by Democrats and led by Republicans, the Republican Party should take the U.S. House, but they're going to only take it with a very small majority if they do. So I think the big story of the night was the extraordinary success of the Democratic Party, avoiding that bloodbath. At the state level, the Democratic Party has another number of advantages that they can brag about. They flipped to governor's houses in Maryland and in Massachusetts. They also were able to flip several state legislatures. Now, while the Republican Party still controls a majority of governors and a majority of state houses, the Democratic Party came out of the midterm elections exceedingly better off than they could have when we went in. In terms of Georgia, Georgia was classical Georgia. The Republican Party won all statewide elections. The Republican Party still has the governor's house. It still has the General Assembly. The big issue in Georgia, of course, as Grace mentioned, we have a runoff election. Incumbent Senator Rafael Warnock defeated challenging Republican and personal Walker, but he didn't do it enough in order to gain that 50% plus one threshold. So that's the big issue still out there. So anyone here who is listening, who is in the state of Georgia, remember, the elections are not over December 6th. You need to go out and you need to go again and you are going to have much less time to do so. It's going to be a truncated early voting period. It's going to be very, very limited. So we'll talk more about that later and I will stop talking now because I'm going to have to force myself. Well, that was great. Good afternoon and evening, everybody. Thank you for coming out to this discussion today. The only thing that I would really like to add, I think that most of what needed to be said has been said, but I would like to add that what was an interesting summarization is the role of turnout. So now much was made out of that they did not attain the historic levels of turnout that happened in 2018. Now, one thing I want to throw out there to the people in the audience. The historic level of turnout in 2018 was 50%. In midterm elections, abysmally, tend to have a 15% at least drop off from a presidential election. But nonetheless, 50% is a very strong turnout. Now, in this election, I saw some interesting data that was put out by a political scientist named Michael McDonald, who used to work at George Mason, I believe he works at University of Florida now, but he runs a project on elections. And based on his data, the estimated turnout for these midterms nationally is 46.9%, which while that doesn't hit the 50%, that's still well above, I'll tell you the historic norm for midterm turnouts, is somewhere between one third and one fifth. So you're looking at like 33% to 40%. That's the average. So going well above that, I think goes to some ways of explaining why the Democrats performed better than expected and why the Republicans kind of underperformed. The other thing I'd like to say, and this also helps the argument on the Democratic side, is that I saw an article and I have to really double check this and see how accurate it is. But the claim was that the youth turnout was significantly higher than normal. The thing I saw spoke about 27%, which that seems a little high, but nonetheless, the cohort, they always said that ever since the 72 presidential election, they said, well, the young people, young people are going to vote, young people are going to vote, just going to be the young people's election. Of course, election after election, my whole life, the young people never voted. They finally came out in the 2008 presidential election, promoted a lot by the historic candidacy of President Obama, who then became President Obama. But even since then, they haven't done a whole lot till 2020, they came out. But they came out again. That might go some of the way to explaining why the red wave wasn't exactly a red wave. Another thing I'd like to people to kind of think about is that this also says about how polling, if done well, is, but I mean by done well, I mean done scientifically, the way it's supposed to be done. Polling is a pretty strong predictor, but it is a predictor, and it's not always exactly right. And we have a case here where I think in the polls, it seems that there was perhaps an exaggeration of the actual support of the Republican Party out there nationwide. Now, having said that statewide, it's already been said that, you know, the Republican Party picked up everything that went nailed down in states like Georgia and Florida. Of course, the Senate is still up, so that's already been addressed. But anyway, the turnout issue I think was struck me, and I'd like people to think about that at the national level. So anyway, I suppose we should move on. Okay, thank you. So we did have one question from the audience. I felt like it would be an opportunity to sprinkle in since Grace brought up the young representative being elected from Florida. So CJ asks, what are the prospects of changing the minimum age to be elected to offices like the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, etc. Great question. If there are any of my students, which I see a lot of them, you can answer this yourselves. If I were to ask this on an exam, I might actually ask this on an exam. Can we change the minimum age from 25 in the House, 30 in the Senate, 35 with the presidency? Can we do that? Of course we can. We can do that through a constitutional amendment. Do I project that there is enough demand that there's anyone out there that wants to spend the political capital to make that happen? I would argue, no, not at all. But could it happen? Yes. Do I think it would happen? No. That's just my opinion there. First part of fact, second part of it. I would just say that that's a very good question. I certainly want to pull that question to my students, not on an exam, but just as classroom discussion, because I would be curious to find out why you wouldn't want to change those age brackets. Matt, did you have anything to add? I don't think there's a whole lot to add. I would say that if it is true, if we say the youth turnout, let's say that we have turned a corner. And young people are going to be a strong force in future voting and upcoming elections. You might actually see some effort, now whether it would be successful or not, or something else entirely, but you might see some effort at an attempt at reducing those ages, or even altering it about restricting maybe older people in some ways. For instance, promoting up an amendment that would say, I don't know, restrict the upper age that you could hold political office or something like that. That might be issues that might resonate with young people. And we might see some of those. I believe, by the way, that Professor Decker has raised his hand, so we might want to turn to him and take his view. Yeah, yeah. Dr. Decker, did you have anything you wanted to add? Well, I was just, can you hear me? Yes, yes, we can, yeah. With respect to changing, I think everybody already answered that, but it takes a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to propose a change to the Constitution and three-fourths of the state legislatures to do that. So I think changing the requirements for Congress are going to be almost impossible, quite frankly. But I think to piggyback on what somebody else said earlier, there are a lot of articles saying that what really swung this election in a way that people didn't think was going to happen was Gen Z. Generation Z went out and voted. I mean, you have, not only did they go out and vote, Tufts University and their exit polling showed that they're voting 65% for the Democratic Party. So if you have that continue, you'll have a generational wave like you did after the New Deal coalition. Yeah, so that's a great point. And, you know, actually we'll have some good statistics in about a year or so from the Tufts University also does something called the end-solve survey where they look at how university students actually turn out and vote and that sort of thing. And we'll be getting our statistics from MGA that they match up with our enrollment statistics in probably about a year or so. And so hopefully we'll be able to look and see exactly how much MGA students added to turn out last this time around. Last time around, we had a quite substantial turnout, I know, so in 2020. And you actually go on the all in campus democracy challenge website and you can look at that report if you're interested. But in any event, let's, I guess, move on to our second question. So, again, for Professor Adam Square first, who do you think has an advantage going into the senatorial runoff election on December 6 and why do you think so? Thank you, Chris. Just before answering that question, I did want to add one other thing to our discussion that we were having about age and the conversation was focused primarily on Congress and the presidency. I do know that for the last 20 years, it has been discussion about seeking an amendment to the age requirement for individuals who serve on the Supreme Court. I haven't seen any discussion recently since there has been new individuals added to the court, but if there is going to be any age requirement in terms of amendments, that would probably be where it's going to start first. I just wanted to add that. But to this question that you just asked, Chris, in terms of who's going to have the advantage going into the senatorial runoff election on December 6, I would say the advantage right now leans favorable for Warnock and not because of party, but Warnock has that incumbency advantage. And for those of you all that have taken my class, we have really delved into incumbency advantage, name, recognition, experience. And so when we look in terms of Warnock, he has demonstrated he also can work with both Republicans and Democrats in some circles that is not a warming thought, but in a lot of other circles that is considered to be good. He has a record of accomplishments as a current office holder. The urgency, though, for Georgia to win from the national perspective has subsided. Voters may not turn out now that Georgia is no longer crucial to Democrats in the US Senate in terms of taking the lead. Walker though was first to air his first runoff commercial ad. So the key is what party is going to be the most influential with get out to vote. You had to be registered voter by November 7 to participate in the December 6 runoff. Grace, I think you really nailed it there. And again, back to our students. We've covered this a great deal. Incumbency has not just advantages, it has all of the advantages. So I would agree with Grace in a vacuum. I would argue that whoever the incumbent is has advantage. There are some problems, however, if you are in the Warnock camp and that is that this is a runoff election. Republicans outperform their general election output. I think it's like seven out of 10 times in the state of Georgia, with the exception of 2021. But that was extremely different. So when you look at the fact that Republicans do better in runoff elections, then you have to give a little bit of a nod to candidate. There's also that incredibly positive if you're a Democrat, you are elated that you already know you will maintain control of the Senate. That's something that I guarantee the Democratic Party wishes that it could have held off on until after the December 6 runoff election in Georgia. Does that take a little bit of a steam out of Democratic voters in Georgia? I would argue that yes it will. So in terms of who has the advantage, you've had to flip a coin. I always go with the incumbent. But if you're in a runoff election in Georgia, you always want to go with the Republican Party. So we'll see. Forgive me for that non-answer answer. The only thing that I would like to add on this, I don't know if, I think a couple of things. One, I think it will be kind of, I think it will be, this is going to be, I do believe this is going to be a nationalized fight. And both parties are going to, I think even with the Democrats having held the Senate and the most likely outcome, you know, absent some major thing that nobody can find right now is that the Republicans are probably going to take the House. They're probably going to take it by two or three seats, but they're still going to take it. Majority rules on the House. So Kevin McCarthy is most likely going to be the next Speaker of the House. But within all of that, I know that while this is exciting for the political scientists, but I'm sure that all the regular people are shaking their head over this, let's call it as it is, the presidential election has already started for 2024. And so I think that you're going to see an early grounding of this. I'm kind of looking to see if maybe somebody like Governor DeSantis might decide to come up to Georgia to increase his name recognition even further. Because he came out of the elections as he'd been of a Republican superstar right now. And so it'll be, I just think it'll be interesting to see. I do think it's going to be a big fight and they're going to spend a lot of money. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if we saw somebody like DeSantis. I wouldn't be surprised at all. They wouldn't come at the same time if the former president came up here. I think President Biden's definitely coming down. Vice President Harris, I think is definitely coming down even under these circumstances. I think it's going to be a, I think it'll be quite a show. And now the media war won't be as great, mostly because they've run out of time. And to some extent they're short of money. But they'll dig in and borrow what they can and so on and so forth. And as you said, Walker's already up there. I'll close out and say this in terms of an advantage. It depends how much of a public campaign that can be done in this last month. And this is nothing, this has not meant anything against Mr. Walker by any means. But on the stump, Senator Warnock is better. He's a better public speaker. Now, whether he's a better at governing or anything like that, that's a different thing. That's an ideological thing. That's a political thing. But in terms of putting up a political spectacle, Warnock's better at it than Walker is. And that could be decisive given his other advantages. It might make up for what Dr. Hall brought up with regarding the turnout, because if there's one group that you can, that always turns out and stays true, for the most part, it's Republicans. Democrats are the ones you have to, the Dems have to worry about. Oh my God, it's raining half the party stays home, but the Republicans still stand out during the rain. That that's the way they are. So my students might remember I did the whole quality quantity thing into lecture one time. Anyway, I'm going to shut up and so we can move on. You're on target there, Matt. And just adding on to everything that you just said, Ted Cruz was just here for Hershel Walker too. Well, I want to throw one other thing in as a caveat to what was said. While I completely agree with everyone that Republicans historically have the upper hand in runoffs in this state. The last election cycle proved that the Democratic Party was able to elect not one but two Democrats in the runoff, both Ossoff and Warnock one. So, you know, the war may have turned a bit in this state, we'll see, but I mean, the Republic, we didn't even split. I mean, Ossoff and Warnock one. So it was a two for so at least recent history bodes well for the Democratic Party in this runoff. That's a great point. Since I gave such a non answer answer, I will go ahead and guarantee you if we have record breaking voter turnout, Senator Warnock will win if we have record breaking lack of voter turnout. I think you're going to have a Senator Herschel Walker from the state of Georgia. I think it's all going to come down to voter turnout. Let's me forget, by the way, that Senator Warnock won the first election. He just didn't win it enough. Yeah, we also know that there's a lot of money that's going to be spent, which everyone's already commented on. I know that the Democratic Party has said they're going to dump at least $7 million into get out the vote campaign and kind of piggyback on Stacey Abrams organization. And, you know, the fact that she didn't win, I think we also have to point that, you know, one of the reasons why this state's become a lot more competitive is because she did a good job of going out and getting a lot of people that haven't been registered to vote, registered to vote in the last few years. Her organization, Fair Fight, has really kind of even the playing field to some extent in this state. And you've got a demographic shift. You have a lot of move-ins to this state that moved to Metro Atlanta from states in the Midwest. And, you know, people don't check their ideological beliefs at the state boundary when they move into a new state. So this state has been trending more competitive than it has been for the last couple of decades. All great points, yes. Yeah, I think we definitely can see that there's arguments to be made on both sides on this runoff. I think that, you know, definitely the fact that, you know, the Democrats won the last runoff is a good indicator. On the other hand, the trend for candidates going into a runoff that won the first round is not all that great either. You know, when you look at, you know, 2000, you know, certainly, I believe Purdue actually was ahead in that. And the general election then came out behind OSF and the runoffs. So it's entirely possible that, you know, we see that sort of inversion this time around as well. Some of it depends on what happens to those voters that voted for the libertarian candidate in the first round. Do they come out and vote for, you know, hold their nose and vote for Walker? Do they stay home, you know, do voters that, you know, hesitate in the voting booth the first time around to vote for Walker? Do they come around? You know, there's a lot of open questions there that we're probably only going to get answered in a few weeks, definitely. I don't think we're going to answer any of those today, that's for sure. But one question we might be able to answer today, I don't know. How's that for a transition is, why do you think Republicans were able to do so well in the other statewide races when Walker was not able to get elected as well? Well, contrary to national polls, national polls said that Republicans did not come out to vote, which is the complete opposite in Georgia. Republicans did come out and they did vote. And there were Republican last minute ads and interviews that were conducted. And Abrams campaign cut back on ads during the final days and even declined interviews on election day. Messaging, accessibility and visibility helped Republicans sweep Georgia statewide races. There was one Democrat who was able to break through all of that and that was Samford Bishop. So he was able to get reelected again after 30 years in office. Herschel Walker was tied to former President Donald Trump during the debate. And even during the debate, Walker stated that Trump is his friend. But Governor Kemp was able to demonstrate that you can campaign on your own record without promoting a Donald Trump message. So Kemp was able to avoid the real versus fake dilemma that's been going on. And Walker is wrestling with electability. Kemp didn't campaign for Walker, even though Kemp stated he was willing to. But it did not appear that the Walker campaign cultivated or capitalized on the Kemp offer leading up to the general election. Kemp has put that offer out there again for the runoff and we'll just have to see if the two are going to campaign together. John, Matt. Donald Jump in and piggyback off of what Grace said. To put this delicately, we've introduced this a few times. I think Matt mentioned something about this earlier. incumbent Senator Warnock is a brilliant campaigner. He is extraordinary in debates. He is extraordinary in terms of describing the intricacies of public policy to a population that no offense has something of a short attention span. Having said that, there are problems with Hershel Walker, the Republican Party. And this has been seen throughout the vast majority of the year since Donald Trump tapped Hershel Walker to run in the state of Georgia has had problems with this campaign. They have dumped an enormous amount of money and there have been a number of problems, a number of gaps that have occurred on the television. There have been, again, there is absolutely nothing against anyone who takes part responsibly in the funding of a legal abortion. But when you're Hershel Walker and you say that you were against abortion, you're against all abortion, you will have absolutely no support for any form of exceptions for abortion. And then it comes out that you have funded multiple abortions or at least one. That's bad for you as a Republican candidate in the state of Georgia. I do not mean to say that funding on abortion is bad, but if you're a Republican running for U.S. Senate in Georgia, that can be something of a negative. We also have the accusations of domestic violence against Hershel Walker. We have the issues regarding Hershel Walker as a father when you're running for the Republican Party in the state of Georgia. If you are not intimately involved in the raising of all of your children, that can be a problem. Again, these are not judgments that I would make on any human being necessarily, but if you're running for the Republican Party in the state of Georgia, these are problems. There's a very good chance that without Donald Trump picking him, Hershel Walker is not the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in the state of Georgia right now. And as we saw, and we might get to this in later questions, there was a repudiation of a large amount of the Trump presidency in this election. You see a lot of people backed by Trump that did not win in elections that you might have thought they would have earlier in the year. In other words, why don't I think Hershel Walker might not have piggybacked on the Republican success in the state of Georgia in statewide elections is because Hershel Walker has some serious problems as a candidate. And he is going up against a formidable opponent and incumbent Senator Warnock. I think I said all of that is generically politely as humanly possible. And just adding on to that, voters are going to look to see if he can clearly articulate policies. I agree with the above comments. I would only add that as far as what Grace brought up, you could have, what I would say is that with this election, with much of former President Trump losing the election, losing some ground, one thing it could do to help Mr. Walker is that he won't have to feel as bound to Mar-a-Lago as he did before. So why did him and Kemp not work much together? Well, behind that was Mar-a-Lago. I would say that if he has anybody working for him that is politically acute, what they should do is tell Mr. Walker, listen, you go hat in hand to Governor Kemp and you get him out there. Because Governor Kemp, so I made a little bit of a big deal about Governor DeSantis, but Governor Kemp was a little bit of a superstar in his own right within Republican ranks. Now look, this guy a couple of years ago, he told the leader of the Republican Party, the 45th President of the United States, he kind of gave him a middle finger. And two years later, he took him on again through a surrogate in the primary and won. And then he won re-election without any help from him. And he won re-election by a pretty decent, I mean it was, it was not close. Especially when you consider how close the election was four years ago, where he just scraped by, I mean he just barely beat Abrams. But this time around he had a comfortable victory. So in his own right, and I kind of wonder on this too as well, I wonder if Governor Kemp hasn't maybe promoted himself to a national level as a Republican, a bit of a Republican star. And what we could see maybe in this time around is maybe the beginnings of a rupture of, you know, a couple years back everybody would have just said, well, if Donald Trump says I'm going to run for re-election, the party's all going to walk behind him and they're going to march and that's what's going to happen. But I'm not sure that's the case now. I saw a telling interview with Tom Cotton and he spoke in the interview, he said right out, he said Donald Trump's not the leader of the Republican Party. He said the Republican Party doesn't have a leader. And so that almost seems like there's a run. So we might see this happen in the next month. So I think it'll be interesting to see kind of what Kemp and DeSantis and Cruz and some of these others in the party. And I'm going to shut up because I believe that Professor Lester has her hand up and it has something to say. Yeah, Julie. Yeah, I just wanted to weigh in real quick and kind of bring this back to the state level. And one of my favorite quotes from James Carville is the economy stupid. That's why Kemp did so well in Georgia. Taking the national picture, whatever's going on, are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? Look at Kemp's regime over the last four years and Georgia has had a powerhouse economy. And a few days before the election, I mean, he was at Savannah touting the new, was it the Hyundai factory that's going to be down there by Savannah. And actually there were Democrats there as well. Touting this bipartisanship. So when we're kind of looking at things statewide, it really, I would argue, we really need to look at the influence that the economy has had in a positive way on how Republicans did. I agree with Julie there. I think we have a six and a half billion dollar surplus in state coffers right now, which will be the source of some of the promised tax reductions. Temporary property tax reductions have not cost a couple of billion dollars to taxpayers. But the given administration is that he is shepherding a powerful economy. And he did stand up to one of the most powerful Republicans in recent history when the president asked him to basically participate in felony voter fraud and he refused to do so. And that was an extraordinary stand that Governor Kemp made. But yes, he has a robust Georgia economy. And that's always fantastic to have. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the economic message is one where Julie makes a good point about the Georgia races, particularly Governor Kemp coming down to the economy. But also I think that also emphasizes the difference in the campaigns that Kemp and Walker were running. Walker was running is basically Joe Biden is ruining the economy at the same time as Kemp is running. We have the strongest economy ever sort of thing. You can't really simultaneously, as Republicans, you can't simultaneously make both arguments. Which argument is it? Does the economy suck or is the economy good? You can't sort of say, well, the Georgia economy sucks except the parts that Biden touches. It just doesn't really work. And so I think that kind of heightened some of the problems that the Walker and his messaging has. It's just simply that he's trying to run a campaign that is very distinct from the campaign that the Republicans in Georgia were running. The statewide Republicans in Georgia are basically running on, we've been successful, we've recruited all these businesses, whatever's going on in Washington, whatever is kind of irrelevant. And Walker is trying to run this campaign based on essentially trying to run a national campaign, which if you're running for national office, okay. But at the same time, it doesn't really work when your electorate is the same electorate. And so maybe that's something that helps him in the runoff is just simply the doesn't have to sort of contradict a message that's coming out of the rest of the Republican Party. That might have been part of what was making him look a little bit out of step with the other Republicans. Of course, some of the other things were, for example, having a UND rally down the block from the other UND rally. Which UND rally are we going to have? They're both in the same town. Why aren't you all in Kennesaw on the same stage as opposed to one group a mile down the road from the others? That makes no sense, right? Who thought this was a good idea? And again, maybe that helps him a little in the runoff if he's not being seen obviously, literally not on the same stage as the rest of the Republican Party. So in any event, I guess we'll definitely see what happens there in the next few weeks. But onto the governor's race. So normally at this point you usually talk about the person who won, but I think in some ways perhaps the more interesting story is the person who hasn't won. And that would be Stacey Abrams. And what is next for her? You know, obviously she has built a lot in Georgia in terms of the voter turnout machine. Arguably, you know, certainly a lot of Democrats would argue without her. Ossoff and Warnock wouldn't have been elected. So does she focus on that sort of thing in the future? Does she run for a house seat if there's a vacancy in the next few years there? Or somebody decides to retire or something like that? Does she join the Biden administration in some capacity? You know, I don't know if there's a vacancy at the moment, but I'm sure there could be for a talented person. And I can't imagine Biden turning down an offer from her to join his administration. Or does she find something else to do, work for the DNC? You know, try to run the national turnout campaign for the Democrats or something like that. What is the next step for her in national or Georgia politics? Grace, do you want to start with that? Well, I would say that although in Georgia polls showed Abrams trailing camp in votes and favorability during their race, Abrams has a lot of favorability in the black community for her get out the vote and her voting registration efforts. And that she was on the precipice of becoming the first black female governor of a southern state. Democrats statewide and nationally marvel at her fundraising efforts. Abrams has intellect and policy know-how to work in the White House administration. But she may find and I'm just being hypothetical right now that the position may be too restrictive. Abrams is grassroots. She enjoys working with the community, connecting with the underdog and uses her influence to accomplish that. It is definitely been documented and said in interviews with her that her long range goal is to become president of the United States. Now, some may raise the eyebrow to that, but Florida Governor DeSantis has the same position. So Abrams is looking for opportunities that are going to keep her on that trajectory. Matt, John. Great answer, Grace. Again, when it comes to what is next for Stacey Abrams, my honest answer is I don't know. I think Grace identifies a perfectly valid long term goal and that is being president. She has mentioned that when it comes to get out the vote drives Stacey Abrams is a machine. We've mentioned tonight the possibilities of the two U.S. Senate seats in the state of Georgia being Democratic may not have been possible without Stacey Abrams. I would go so far as to say they wouldn't have been. She has shown the ability to get out extraordinary voter turnout. I think, again, as Julie mentioned earlier, she ran into a buzz saw, which was the extraordinary economy of the state of Georgia, which is of course going to be an advantage to the incumbent. Going forward, maybe she's tapped as a vice presidential candidate by President Biden. Maybe President Biden doesn't run in 2024 and she runs in the primaries, maybe in terms of going after a house district. I know she lives in Atlanta. I don't specifically know which of the districts she lives in, but for her to run in the house, you would have to try to unsee that an incumbent Democrat. Maybe she just stays in the and then continues to grow her voter turnout efforts. She has had an incredible career up to this point. I think her future is bright. I think she can somewhat do whatever she wants to do, or maybe she'll just continue to write. She's also a prolific author, which we sometimes forget. I can't guess what she's going to do, but I have a very good feeling that we have not seen the last of Stacey Abrams. Anyone who can generate that much support in the state of Georgia can somewhat at least try to do whatever she wants. I won't make any predictions. And just adding on to what Julie said there, Kelly Loeffler did replicate Stacey Abrams get out the vote effort for the Republican Party. So Stacey Abrams is having influence on both parties in terms of what they're doing. The only thing I think that Stacey Abrams is perhaps in the short term, I think she's going to wind up doing something organizationally with the National Democratic Party. And that could be a stepping stone to a higher level run as far as 24 goes. That's actually not an impossible thing because I know that President Biden has said that he wants to run for reelection. But President Biden has also said that he's placed a condition on it himself, which is based on his health. Now this is nothing against President Biden in any way whatsoever. But President Biden is about to become the first octogenarian president of the United States. He turns 80 years old. Here I believe it's either this month or next month. He turns 80 years old. And obviously we have advances in medicine and that sort of stuff today. So it's not like in the days when Mitterrand was hobbling around France in the 80s and stuff. But it's not entirely impossible that President Biden particularly, I will say this, just to be a little speculative a moment. Let's run a counterfactual. Let's say something happens that President Trump, former President Trump, ultimately either can't run or doesn't run in 24. Well a lot of the impetus for President Biden seeking the second term is to offset former President Trump. If former President Trump either removes himself or is removed because of some of the stuff that's going on. From contention, you might see Joe Biden step aside and that opens the door for all kinds of people including Ms. Abrams. That's a very good point. We're kind of entering an uncharted territory with a president who's openly kind of courting speculation about his future. Usually you don't see presidents do that. And where the era parent is not obvious. I think a lot of people would say that although Kamara Harris certainly has a lot of strengths as a politician, she hasn't really unified the Democrats behind her in a lot of ways. And so I think a lot of Democrats smell weakness there. Now whether or not that's realistic or not, I don't know, and whether or not going up against her would alienate some powerful constituencies in the party, I don't know. But like I said, it's a very good question. But certainly the way I think of it probably is I think that it makes sense for Abrams to kind of look at organizational things. That's been her strength so far. And then if there is the opportunity in 2020-24 to take it. But to kind of wait and see, I don't think there's anything. And certainly nothing obvious is going to come up right away unless, like I said, there is an unexpected vacancy in Congress or something like that. Let's see. By the way, I do want to remind our audience that we're still happy to have your questions as well. We haven't had that many, but we're happy to have them. So going back to our questions that we drafted earlier, we've talked a bit about Stacey Abrams and even a little bit about Brian Kemp. But how do you think that Brian Kemp's second term as governor might differ from his first term as governor? Well, when we look at Kemp's second term, we heard Julie talk about this. It's going to depend on the economy. It's predicted that there will be 18 additional months of high inflation. And currently Kemp has enacted reduction of the gas tax and bonus to educators. Voters will be looking to Kemp to keep Georgia economically viable. Kemp campaigned on reducing crime. So Kemp might financially help law enforcement agencies with their recruitment efforts to increase their ranks. One of the problems Abrams highlighted was the closing of hospitals, especially in rural areas. So Kemp may put his efforts in maintaining the viability or restoring medical availability to citizens in rural areas. Those are great points, Grace. I would argue just overall, when we ask what will a second Kemp administration look like, what might come? I think you can define it more by what is not coming. And that is you are not going to get any pushback on the 2019 abortion. I'm going to call it an abortion ban. It's not technically a ban, but if you have a heartbeat bill, you're going to pretty much ban about 97, 98% of abortions. So you will not get pushback on basically the Dobs opinion that put abortion back in the hands of states. You're not going to get Georgia joining the rest of the majority of states in this Republic who have expanded Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. So you won't see pushback against abortion bans. You won't see Medicaid expansion. The Kemp administration has mentioned relatively consistently criminal justice reform in the state making it harder for judges to issue bail without cash payments to those who are accused of crimes. For all of my students, we've discussed several states that are going the other direction liberalizing bail reform laws. Also, you will see more tax cuts, the one-time property tax cut that the Kemp administration has referenced. Also, the tax returns that the Kemp administration has talked about basically a little over $2 billion of tax cuts that Kemp is probably going to enact. The open carry gun reform that the Republicans in the state of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, was quite outspoken about possibly repealing that. That's not going to get repealed. So I think you're going to see the state of Georgia going in the same direction in terms of the Kemp administration's policies. Again, I think it's going to be more defined by what you will not see in terms of change as opposed to what you will see. And I think Julie's got her hand or Matt. Yeah, Joe, I guess if you want to go ahead and then. Okay. I didn't want to butt in where I wasn't supposed to butt in. Something else to think about too, not just about Kemp, what's going on in the general assembly. You have new leadership in both chambers. If you haven't heard, David Ralston has resigned from speaker position in the house because of health issues. And he was a speaker for since 2009. So it was at 13 years and he was known for while he was a Republican, he was known as being very bipartisan. He actually worked a lot with Stacey Abrams whenever she was in the house in Georgia too. So that's important to recognize. And there was kind of a fight earlier this week about who's going to take over. You had the more conservative Republicans in the state legislature trying to kind of co-op that position. But right now it looks like John Burns, who's again a little more probably bipartisan kind of in the spirit of Ralston will be most likely the new leadership in the leading the house. And then in the Senate, of course we had the lieutenant governor's president and then the pro Tim was actually Butch Miller, but we know that he left because he ran for another office and lost in the primary. And it's looking like John Kennedy, who's actually from the Macon area will most likely be elected to that position as well. And again, he is has a reputation for being again a little more willing to reach out bipartisan efforts. So we have to when we think about camp, we have to also think yes, we do have a Republican controlled legislature, but we know that the Democrats, of course are going to stand up and fight and think about how the leadership of those two chambers have changed after many years and how that's going to influence what comes out of the state legislature. I think it's going to be a very interesting session this year. So stay tuned. The only thing I have to add on just to return a moment to camp is Brian camp has earned a lot of political capital in this election. And as as has been pointed out, beginning with with Grace's presentation, he's going to spend that capital. And I would just add on that I think that again, I and I could be misreading this entirely because I'm wrong all the time. But I think that camp has earned a seat at the national level of Republican Party politics. And and I think that he might be a leading force in a, you know, in a movement of that party beyond beyond where it's been the last couple years. And he's not the only one in that. But I mean, I, you know, I, does that mean that Brian camp is going to run for run for president 2024. No, I don't think that he may or may not. I don't. But I think that he's going to be a part of, I think you're going to see him on more interviews, nationwide interviews. And, you know, I think I think he's I think he's he has earned a place of, you know, he came in and 18 just by that, by that much. But he has much like DeSantis down in Florida. He's built up a convincing win. And, you know, one thing a guy used to go to grad school with he used to say that he used to say you really don't have to think about politicians about money, despite what people say. But the truth of the matter is politicians pursue power and Brian camps a politician and he's going to pursue power. Great points. Yeah. Just to add to what Julie said, you know, you know, Senator Kennedy, who actually is named John F. Kennedy is actually some of our senators. He's actually a senator from my district. So hopefully middle Georgia will get some some advantages from that and then in the future, if nothing else. So let's see. Again, I want to invite you to ask any questions you might have in the chat. We have about 25 minutes remaining, but not to say we're running out of questions because we certainly aren't. But if you do have additional questions you'd like to ask, feel free to do so. So let's turn out to talk a little bit more about national politics. Some of which you may have already alluded to a little bit in your opening statements, but nonetheless want to give you opportunity to add anything you might want to add here. Looking at the national politics, were there any outcomes that surprised you or otherwise you were found unexpected? I probably would just echo what we have been talking about in terms of the Democrats showed impressive strength in much of the rest of the country. The GOP put up candidates who really lacked discipline in several races. I do expect the Republicans will regroup and revisit Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. These were some states, especially when we're thinking about Michigan that went to former President Trump as he was gaining to reach his presidency at the neglect of Democrats in 2016. So it was a surprise to me to see that loss in Pennsylvania and Michigan since there were so many Trump supporters. Great points, Grace. There were a lot of surprises. I think at right out of the gate is one that we haven't quite mentioned yet. The chair of the DCCC loses in the New York 17th. So I look at that as somewhat of a surprise with the loss of Maloney. I wouldn't necessarily say no, I will say it's rare to lose party leadership in any election. I would also point to, more specifically, again, as we've mentioned, Ron DeSantis. I think what Ron DeSantis, Governor DeSantis did in Florida, cannot possibly be overstated. I think for the first time I have an answer when students ask me, who do you think will be running in 2024 for the Republican Party? I have an answer now, Ron DeSantis. I would go so far as to by God guarantee that. He won Florida by 19 points. He won Miami-Dade County. I don't necessarily know if Florida is a swing state anymore. I'm going to have to call that one a red state. Governor DeSantis was an impressive force. And he will be an incredible powerhouse in the 2024 presidential elections. I think he's going to do very well in the primaries. And this is evidenced by the fact that Donald Trump has basically started to speak ill of Ron DeSantis. And that's not necessarily intelligent to do when you see a governor this by God successful and this popular. But I think Donald Trump knows that if he's going to run in 2024, he will have to beat DeSantis. Also, just in general, we've mentioned the lack of a red wave. We've mentioned that it was surprising that the Democrats did not get taken to the proverbial woodshed. I think we should also point out going into this election, especially after the controversies of the many of the made up controversies of the 2020 election and the election deniers that were on the ballot. I was surprised to see that a lot of election deniers lost a lot of the more extreme candidates lost a lot of the fear we had of armed vigilante is going to the polls to make sure there weren't any irregularities in voting, which we don't really have anyway. Didn't occur. We had no real violence. We're used to no violence. That's the norm. But going into this election, I think a lot of us had that realistic fear. So I take from this election one of the biggest surprises is something of a return to normalcy in American politics. That being said, I'll stop talking because this is just a good point to stop talking as any other. I'd like the way in. You know, we've been giving all the love to Brian Kemp and to Ron DeSantis. How about let's give the little shout out to Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro? Yeah, I mean, these are two people in very swing swing states that both run ran really ran away with both of their races. And, you know, Josh Shapiro won in a walk and everybody thought Gretchen Whitmer was going to have a really, really close race and she won basically by 14 percentage points, I think, or something like that. So the other thing too, those are two swing states that in 2024 are going to have along with the governor of Wisconsin who got reelected. They're all going to have Democratic governors. So in some ways it looks like the Democratic Party is kind of rebuilding the blue wall that everybody said got torn down in 2016. So, you know, shout out to a couple of Democratic governors who kicked butt on Tuesday night last week. Great point. When winning back the house and the Senate in Michigan, the Minnesota Senate, the Pennsylvania House, there were some significant victories outside of these that we've been discussing. Great points. Well, the other thing too, I think sometimes the media gets ahead of its skis when they talk about governors who, you know, are hot at the moment like DeSantis and Kim. If that were the case, we would see, we would have seen people like President Chris Christie or President Scott Walker from Wisconsin, you know, so anything, anything's possible. But, you know, I wouldn't be to use the term we've heard lately by other people. I wouldn't be measuring the drapes for the Oval Office yet if I was DeSantis or someone like Brian Kemp or other people or Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro for that matter. But I definitely think Gretchen Whitmer is an up and comer in the Democratic Party. You haven't heard the last of Gretchen Whitmer, I don't think. Well, all these were really great points. As far as on the question about surprises to me, well, I'll go back. I thought the Democrats performed better than I thought they were going to perform nationally. The Republicans did not perform as well as I thought they were going to perform nationally. The big surprise to me was, I know I began with this was the turnout. I have to admit that I guess because I'm a curmudgeon fellow, I suppose in some ways, but I really kind of thought that 18 was a blip on the radar scope. And I thought that we might have high turnouts and presidential elections from now on, but maybe that maybe 2020 had some power for predictive power for the future. But I thought that the midterm election, we would go back to our historic norm and we didn't. And another big thing, and I mentioned it before to the young folks, again, my whole life, I always heard it's all about the young people and it never was. And then all of a sudden it was, so shout out to you kids. You proved us old people wrong. So anyway, there's one that he hasn't been mentioned up here, but I thought was an interesting outcome was the Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, taking on the celebrity, Dr. Oz. I don't know if anybody else on here. I used to watch his TV show every now and again. And I have to say that in an age of celebrity, and we do live in an age of celebrity, it was kind of interesting to see that at the end of the day, celebrity doesn't guarantee political victory. Of course, we're also seeing that here in Georgia, right? With Herschel Walker. He's a celebrity, maybe not of the renown of Oz, but, and he, you know, as John Hall pointed out here, technically in this election, technically Warnock did beat him. Now he just didn't beat him by enough to avoid the runoff, but, but nonetheless, but I thought Fetterman was was an interesting outcome. And it's completely anecdotal, but I read an article and I don't know how true it is, but apparently when he takes in the Senate in January, former Lieutenant Governor at that point, Senator Fetterman will be the tallest man to ever be. A senator. Now I realize that doesn't really mean anything, but it's just kind of interesting to me. But this dude's like seven foot tall. I'm like, he must be a giant to meet in real life. But anyway, I thought that was just kind of interesting. It doesn't mean anything politically, but I thought it was an interesting outcome. It surprised me. Well, there is that old saying that height is an advantage in politics. So I guess he is the proof that the anecdote is true, I guess. You know, I don't know who, I don't know who was the tallest before. I don't know if it was Abe Lincoln or. I'm going with Lincoln. Let's see. Probably got time for a couple more questions. So let's, let's go to the doozy, I guess. So at least based on the results we have so far, the magnitude, the size, the Democrats losses in the House and Senate were less than would have been expected based on the historical trends and midterm loss. Why do you think Democrats were able to do better than expected despite Joe Biden's low approval ratings and somewhat poor economic indicators? Were there any particular groups of voters you think that were critical to the outcome? I'll speak to that. Either Grace or I, Grace, you want to go first? Yeah, let's go first. Yeah. You go ahead. Well, you know, it's interesting when you have half the population being told they're having a civil liberty taken away from them, they tend to get upset about that. It's called abortion. And young people back to Gen Z again, one of the exit polls that I saw, you know, they are very strongly pro-choiced on abortion. So, you know, you have, I think the media about a month ago got this idea in their head that, you know, the quote unquote abortion issue had peaked. And, you know, people weren't going to go out and vote on abortion because it was all about the economy. And if you look at the exit polling, strangely enough, a large number of people thought that their civil liberties being taken away from Trump, their gas prices. So, you know, I think one of the reasons why that's not the only reason that I think a lot more people voted based on that than people thought they were going to. So that's one of the reasons why I think it was kind of, I think it was being underpulled with respect to what people thought about that, that Dobbs decision. And you haven't seen that. I mean, this is the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, you haven't seen the end of that because if you thought abortion was an issue in 2022, buckle in because 2024 it's going to be even more of an issue. Grace? My response was going to be verbatim to what you just said. And I'm even echoing what we've heard earlier, the youth vote. It was discounted and the youth came out. So there's nothing else I can add to that. That's a great. I agree with both points. I want to make sure we get the youth vote that incredibly important cohort 18 to 29. I think Matt mentioned this earlier, 27% voter turnout, second highest in generations. Think about it. 27% voter turnout. And that's one of the second highest in history. I think we need to remind ourselves how low this bar is regarding the youth vote. That's 27% voter turnout. Over, I think half of Georgia did not turn out in general. That's something that desperately needs to change if you are a supporter of incumbent Senator Warnock. Having said all of that, I think one of the major variables here that is difficult to operationalize the data is still coming out from the polls. But I think the Trump factor is being reduced in terms of its significance. You have a number of Trump supported election deniers. It's important to note at this point, and I try to cover this in a completely unbiased way in class. Allegations that the 2020 election were fraudulent. They're a lie. There's a word for that. We call those lies. When you are an election denier, you are lying to the public as loudly as you can. We have seen this in several polls so far. A lot of Republican voters are getting tired of it. You don't appear like a serious candidate when you question the legitimacy of an election that occurred in 2020 and are open to accepting the election results provided that you win. When you have candidates claiming in advance that if I don't win, it's electoral fraud. That is not an attractive message to American voters that can stand the test of time. So I think one of the biggest factors here is that Donald Trump does not control the Republican Party as much as he has. And whether that continues, we will see. But I think that was a big issue. You can see it in Georgia. The Trump administration showed how you can stand up to the Trump administration or to now Donald Trump. Ignore him. Let him talk. Let him speak. Let him do what you're doing. Have one of the most robust economies in the country and win. But yeah, I think that was the biggest reason for the discrepancies there and the ability of the Democrats with literally every possible variable imaginable. First midterms with Democratic President Biden and an economy that is experiencing the worst recession since the 1970s. And yet you still do incredibly well. I would place that on the dwindling effect of Donald Trump. John, that's so well stated. And some of that blowback even went on to Stacey Abrams in trying to link her as being a election deny her as well. Great point that you mentioned that. And since you did, I'm going to jump on it. Having absolutely nothing to do with the question we're on. It's important to note the distinction between a contested election or an election where the results need to be checked. Most states have requirements. I think in the state of Georgia, if it's a half a percentage point, we have a state mandated recount. Reaccounts are normal. There were a lot of variables at play with Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp. We forget that he was the acting secretary of state. Now, unlike the federal government, which we've learned in class, we're not talking about foreign policy. At the state level, the secretary of state is nominally in charge of elections. And in, I don't have data on this, but in many instances, I would assume that the active secretary of state running for governor might refuse themselves during the election. That didn't happen. There were a lot of variables at play. These were not generic references to voter fraud by the Abrams camp back in 2018. Those were very, very different than the literal blind accusations of voter fraud in only the states that Trump lost. All of the other states were perfectly valid, the states that he lost. That, I think, is wearing on Americans. I think it's wearing on the Republican Party. And I think that was a major factor. Matt, you're muted. Sorry, I hit the wrong button there. I structurally, so the interesting thing about this economy is that, so we're at least according to regular measures of whether or not you're in a recession, we are in a recession. We're in a recession with very high inflation. I mean, inflation that we haven't had since the Ford and Carter years. But there's a big, I would say there's a difference between this in 1975 and 1978. In this particular economy, we have full employment. And to some extent, I think structurally, the full employment has pushed somewhat against the inflation. And so it, you didn't have the, as strong of an economic effect, which the predictive effect would have been negative on the incumbent party as happened in this particular election. Now, that is a little bit speculative. That's going to require, that would require actual more in depth analysis, particular statistical analysis of aligning the public opinion polling, the voting patterns with the, with the economic indicators. But just as a broad view, I think that that is somewhat explains, helps to explain why the Democrats didn't do as bad as you would have thought that they would. As the incumbent party in, in a, in what is numerically a recession. But I think that that unemployment, that those low unemployment numbers are somewhat working against it. So it's a very odd economy. And you know, go, go back to whether when it comes down to economics, you know, Harry Truman used to say that, that what I really want is a one handed economist, because all I've here here for my economists is on the one hand they say this. On any other hand, they say that. So no matter what they say, was that that's, that's a little political economic analysis there for whatever it's. Well, I need to, I need to jump in here for just a minute, because I beg to differ with the statement about we're in a recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research has said we're not in a recession. And in fact, most economists say we are not in a recession. So I don't know if you should be throwing the R word around. I mean, it is true we've had an economic downturn, but the definition of recession from an economics point of view, we're not in a recession. Well, Jim, I'll tell you the, the, the there are different definitions, but the definition that's accepted in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has not said we're in a recession. That is not true. That is not what they said, but here's the definition. The definition is a two quarter. Two quarters of economic growth that's negative, which hasn't been the case in the United States. Well, it's not, it's not negative. It's not negative. That's, that's a depression. Okay. Well, you know, it's a decline in economic growth for two, for two quarters. That, that's the definition of economic growth for two quarters. Well, we, we could discuss that another time, Jim. Well, you can discuss whatever you want to, but the facts are the facts. Well, I think, you know, getting back to the point about the economy, I think that, you know, we're definitely in a weird economy for like a better term. I think, you know, as Matt suggested, right, it's a very unusual to have an economic downturn and full unemployment at the same time and inflation at the level we're saying that at the moment at the same time. I do think that one thing that might have had an effect is the, not so much the objective immediate indicators so much as the trend, right? I mean, I think that, you know, in the weeks leading up to the election, right, gas prices were trending down. Some of the other, I think some of the inflationary indicators have been trending downward a little bit over the last couple months. So yes, the economy wasn't great. And usually by midterms tend to expect poor economy, poor performance for the incoming president in terms of his party for midterm elections. But the trend lines were favorable. And so even if the objective, you know, I guess this is a, you know, you're talking math or economics, right? I mean, the value of the function versus the first derivative of the function, which probably just lost all of our students, but or the slope versus the value. Yeah, that could be part of what's going on here. I don't know. To the extent that people do perceive the objective economy in line with the numbers, which is a whole different debate. I guess we could have some other time. So we have arrived at about 627. I'm not sure we have enough time for one more question or not. I don't know if you all feel like we want to answer one more question or if you feel like we've beaten all the questions to death. I don't know. But I'll give you, I'll give you a question. Maybe just give you a minute to give you a short answer. How about that? How do you think the elections outcome is going to affect Joe Biden's ability to deliver on his political agenda? Oh, you chose that question as well. I thought you're going to go with question number nine as the last one. I think we've kind of tackled nine already to some extent, so. Oh, okay. But if you want to answer nine, we can answer nine. How do you think that the elections going to or how do you think the outcome of this election might affect the 2024 election? How about that? We'll go with that one. Well, you're kind of right. We did kind of answer, but I just wanted to just kind of throw in a few other things and kind of enhance what everyone has said. First, Biden may consider running for reelection. We've heard that the choice is now the presidents to make in the midterm election results will probably resolve any doubts that he may have had about running for reelection. If Biden chooses not to run, there are plenty of Democrats willing to step up. And we heard some of those suggestions tonight. Second, Florida Republican Governor DeSantis had a landslide victory. We heard that and has a large following in his state and nationwide. Third, the midterms weakened the influence of Donald Trump. And we heard that we've seen a lot of internal Republican finger pointing as to who is to blame for the Republican midterm losses and opening the door for additional candidates to consider running for president. But this is contingent on the upcoming announcement. The former president Trump is scheduled to make. And then a lot of our young people get their news from social media. So many students have gleaned their interest towards Candace Owens, who is a conservative influencer and announced that she's giving up on Donald Trump after the Republican candidates. He adores for the midterm elections failed to win their seats. Democrats did well in the gubernatorial races and that will shape how the 2024 presidential elections are administered. And you just heard a few minutes ago that Michigan looked good. Josh Shapiro, we heard about him winning in terms of the Pennsylvania governor's race. So yes, the Republican incumbent Brian Kemp trounced Stacy Abrams in a rematch for 2018 face off. But Governor Kemp has already demonstrated that he can withstand the pressure from Donald Trump to distort election results. And we can't count out Liz Cheney. We can't overlook Texas Governor Abbott and how Republican candidates won every statewide race in Texas. Great point, Grace. I noticed we are now over time. So I will quickly say this. How will this all affect 2024? The pessimistic traditional view is that we are injuring into two years of complete stagnation that the Biden administration will literally get nothing done because he will not have the house. Having said that, important to point out, as I often do in these discussions, President Biden has quietly had one of the most successful administrations in recent memory. And one of the major pieces of legislation that he was able to pass his infrastructure bill was done with bipartisan support. So optimistically, the Biden administration will work across the aisle as it did with the infrastructure bill and will still be able to pass meaningful legislation for the republic. As a mystically, we're about to enter into two years of gridlock and nothing is going to get done. And we are about to bring back that very rare debt ceiling war that has only existed under the Obama administration. And we'll see it again under Biden. So I'm hoping for the optimistic appraisal. And one last thing can't stress is enough of this return to normalcy, this repudiation of candidates who continuously say without any proof that the 2020 election was fraudulent and thereby questioning the legitimacy of our federal government. I think we're going to return back to some degree of normalcy. And I'll stop there. Matt, closing thoughts? Sure. I think when it comes to 24, what these midterms showed is that the gate is wide open. And so there's no prior to these midterms, you know, I would have said that absent absent something that prevented him either because of health or the legal issues that he has ongoing and so on. I would have said that if the former president announced that he was going to run for a nomination that he'd run away with it. May or may not win the general election, but he'd have to he'd have to Republican nod. I am no longer confident in saying that. I think that it's that that on that side is wide open. And on the Democratic side, it could also be wide open depending upon what happens with President Biden. Obviously, if President Biden does run and I would expect that the party will support him at the end of the day. But if he doesn't, that could be wide open too. To John's point, President Biden has some success at working behind the scenes. He's a good worker with the phones and with the meetings and bringing people up to the White House and sending out his his confidence out down to Capitol Hill. I wouldn't even with a Republican House, I wouldn't necessarily discount President Biden's ability to to govern under under those things. Would he be able to get something major done? Maybe not, but you know what I think he could probably get a lot. I think it potentially he could get some he could get significant amount of small things done in the next two years. Even because you have to remember something that he is particularly behind closed doors. There's a lot of them on Republicans, particularly in the Senate who who he's friends with quite frankly from their years together. And of course, in many of the ones that are currently in there now are staffers and stuff when when when he was a senator. So he has he has embedded relationships in a way that more recent presidents, including President Trump, President Obama, President of Second President Bush and President Clinton really didn't have. But so if anybody if anybody can govern behind closed doors in a split control government, I would I wouldn't bet money against Biden. I think he I think he he has some chops in that area. So we see what happens. Okay, great. Thanks. So, Julie, John are sorry. Jim, do you have a closing thoughts or anything else you want to add? Give you about 10 15 seconds just to see. I just wanted to say if you all that are joining us tonight enjoyed these conversations and want to learn more. Sign up for classes with us next semester and future semesters because we have these engaging conversations. Absolutely. Good point. You know, if you're particularly interested in hearing more about the Georgia Legislature, we've got the state local government class coming up in the spring. Dr. Decker is going to be teaching a class in LGBTQ politics in the spring. We've got speaking of that. I've got a comment for you. Sure. Absolutely. The Senate announced this afternoon that they have the votes to pass codifying same sex marriage into federal law. It's already passed the house. And so Biden has said he will sign that into law. So I think we're going to see a federal law codifying same sex marriage. Excellent. Excellent to hear that. Passing no political judgment whatsoever in the merits of that. But nonetheless, but in all seriousness, good news for that proposal. And yeah, and let's see. And also we have Dr. Cowley's teaching class introduction to Africa and African diaspora studies, which desperately needs some students. So please sign up for that class if you're interested in that topic as well. Let's see. So just some administrative housekeeping and things like that. If you're a guest, if you're logged in as a guest. So if you're not logged in under your MGA account and want to ensure you get extra credit, if you're here for extra credit, do contact your professor and let them know what username you were logged in under so they know. If you're logged in on your MGA account, we can figure that out. But if you're not on your MGA account, your screen name might not be who you really are. So make sure that's clarified or forever hold your peace on your extra credit opportunity. So I'd like to thank our panelists. I'd like to thank Professor Grace Adams Square, Professor John Hall, Professor Dr. Matthew Cavali and also our other guests. Dr. David B. Ardeen, of course. I'd like to thank him as well as Dr. Decker, Dr. Jim Decker and Dr. Julie Lester. There will be a recording of this posted later on if you're interested in reviewing it for whatever reason or if you want to share it with colleagues or friends or fellow students. And I'd like to thank you all for coming out. We'll have another series of these events in the spring, but this is the last one for the fall. So try and stay warm out there and have a good Thanksgiving break with your families, hopefully, and good luck with final exams and the holidays and all that good stuff. And hopefully we'll see you all either in class or at the next set of these events. Hopefully starting up again, probably in January or February. So thank you all again and good night. And young people, keep the momentum going and keep voting. There's that upcoming runoff election and we need you. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Don't forget about the runoff election on December 6th. Yes. See you Matt. Thank you all. See you great. See you Julie. See you James. Good night. Thank you for attending the meeting. Good night everybody. Good night everybody.