23 Comments

We need one more Georgia podcast to wrap-up 2022. I would love to hear your focus groups' & Greg Bluestein's thoughts on Stacy Abrams.....so what went wrong there?

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No!!! I look forward to the Focus Group every week. I will miss having something awesome in my Saturday feed. A favorite plus subscriber perk, though I don't begrudge non subscribers of this excellent content if you go in that direction. Thank you. You made the elections tolerable for me!!!

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The Hershel-despite-Hershel voters are the GOP equivalent to Gabby Johnson's genuine frontier gibberish.

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God bless Sarah Longwell! I could certainly not bite my tongue if someone told me to my face that Walker's buffoonery was inconsequential. But Sarah's job isn't to tell her interlocutors that they're wrong. It's to listen to them.

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I hear you are going to lift the paywall for this podcast (f/the Secret Show). Has The Bulwark thought about offering a student discount or tiered membership? 5$/mo for access to all podcasts & the current tier keeps the ability to comment and has the weekly TNB? You could even have a higher tier with swag and more intimate chats or a substack chat? I’ve been seeing different versions of tiered systems as my favorite Twitter people expand to substack.

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Kemp cutting ads and supporting Herschel Walker just make me want to gag.

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A buffoon who abused ex-wife and girlfriends is dangerous. For these voters to dismiss that history is disheartening.

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I have lost even more respect for GOP voters. They will vote for a 'buffoon' if it has an R after it's name. This is especially confounding given that none of them indicated any interest in voting for the chief buffoon in 2024. That leads me to believe if the chief buffoon beats DeSantis in the primaries Georgia GOP voters will once again rationalize their way to more buffoonery.

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Q: "Who knows what it would be like to be suffering the slings and arrows he did as President for four years?"

A: Barack Obama knows, except in his case it was for EIGHT years, he stayed the bigger man time after time, and emerged from it all with more respect than ever.

Too bad that the guy asking never reads The Bulwark.

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These focus group participants seem normal and almost smart. And yet, they hold completely skewed views that is stunningly bad.

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"...even Democrats name their dogs Herschel"

Thanks for the fun and engaging chat. Bulwark podcasts are great for getting me through my long (for me) walks.

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"The brain is a tool to help us get what we want"

I see a bumper sticker in your future.

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Thanks Sarah! Love listening on Saturdays! I am frequently floored by the way some voters, when asked, form an opinion on the spot (or 5 minutes earlier), and they just cobble together ad stuff. Even though I did this at one time, it still scares the crap outta me now that I follow politics! And WTF do people think elected federal officials are gonna do about crime? Or even state ones?

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Herschel Walker did not beat Rev. Warnock on Election Day at all, much less by “double digits.” I’ve listened to this three times and cannot find a context for this statement by the guest.

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I think these voters call Walker a buffoon, rather than dangerous, because there's no evidence that the general public is at risk. They can dismiss these accusations because, quite frankly, they aren't affected. He also hasn't been convicted of these things so they can also be dismissed as he-said/she-said situations. On the other hand, the buffoonery casts doubt on whether he'll follow his party's lead on voting and, perhaps, embarrass the state, though perhaps that ship has sailed with MTG.

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It is deeply frustrating to hear people say crime in Atlanta is the most important thing influencing their vote for a senator. Civics lessons, people.

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Certainly the infamous 1994 Crime Bill affected states, cities and even neighborhoods.

Maybe it's not a huge stretch to tie issues like assault weapons ban, hate crime legislation, the violence against women act, sex offender registration etc. to crime in GA?

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That would be true, if anyone really believed that these empty headed, irrational bigots actually supported any of these programs. They don't.

I know the people in this roundtable; many of them sound like my neighbors. Trust me, their talk of crime is completely about getting "those people" (i.e., Black people) in line. They want to allow cops to be rough with people to send a message. They are the kinds of people who can always rationalize a cop shooting an unarmed suspect. The kind of person who equates Jan. 6th with a riot that resulted in broken windows at the CNN building (a building, by the way, which was and is basically empty now, since CNN moved most of its people to NYC).

Only someone who doesn't live here in Atlanta would be surprised.

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“Crime in Atlanta” voters aren’t so different from folks who worry about “Chicago people”...

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I get that it's code, but it's not even a factually relevant code. Governor? Sure. Mayor? Absolutely. Senator? Uh...I guess in theory they could get more federal funding for police/crime programs. But that's a bit of a stretch, IMO.

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Wonderful episode.

Btw, we are rationalizing animals. Not rational animals.

That explains why we will ignore the abortion stance (or what have you) of someone we like but bring up someone else's stance as the reason for not liking them.

The brain is a tool to help us get what we want.

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