Hello, everyone. This is JVL coming to you live from the abattoir that is the Texas Republican Senate runoff.

We're going to get to that in a minute. I'm here with my best friend, Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the bulwark, guys. It is great to be with you.

I had assumed that we're going to begin this show by sort of vamping for a little bit

and talking about politics in the day and we're going to have to wait for the polls to close

and all this time. No, no, no. John Cornyn, he gone. He gone. I just want to redo one little

thing from the New York Times Needle. They have a new thing here where they look at on track to vote.

So they do like an actual campaign, you know, benchmarks for what they have.

Anyway, Ken Paxton is ahead of pre-election benchmarks by 26 points.

26 points. 26 points.

Say it, J.V.L. What is it? What happened to John Cornyn?

Got slonged.

You got slogged.

And I have so much to say, but I want to throw it to you guys, my best friends first, to tell me what

you think this says about the very fine people of Texas. That it was a close, close thing.

On the one hand, there's John Cornyn. He's been in the Senate for six terms. He's a serious guy.

He's well liked.

He pulls through for Texas all the time.

No scandals.

And the other guy, there's this criminal.

And they looked at these two and they said, again, ahead of benchmarks by 26 points.

They said, we want, oh, he's a criminal. Give us that guy.

Gary, get it. Sarah, aren't you take it? Why you take the first swing? Well, part of it is that this is, it's, it's criminally easy to diagnose what's happening here. And by criminal, that's right. Smooth criminal. Yeah, look, I can't believe that taking a selfie of reading Art of the Deal and saying he was willing to nuke the filibuster didn't get John Cornyn over the line.

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