Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Gelen. Today, I'm joined by

political consultant, friend of the Lincoln Project, and an old friend of mine, Matthew

Dab. Matthew is the founder of Country Over Party and author of the upcoming book,

Revelations on the River, which will be released this coming November, but is available

for preorder now. Matthew, welcome to the show. Great to be here. Thank you for having

me. So Matthew, you and I go back longer than probably either of us care to remember.

Probably darn near. Well, let's say if I go back to George W. Bush in 1997, we're talking

almost 25 years, which is crazy town. It is crazy town. So Matthew, today I want to

talk about how we're going to win this in 2022, what we all need to do and how we're

going to come together. And some of the challenges and opportunities we face along the way,

but first, let's talk about Texas. You're sitting there on the front lines. You have a front

row seat to what's happening. So let's just get into this. So in Texas, now we have SBA,

which just took effect on September 1st, which obviously is the six week abortion ban

with the added vigilantism. If the first part wasn't bad enough, we added the second

part. The voter suppression bill that Abbott just signed, we've got the Annie mask mandates.

We have the hangover from the power grid failure, this winner, Ted Cruz running to King

Koon. I mean, for someone who lives down in a beautiful part of the world in a beautiful

part of Texas, how do you see it from the front row? Is it as crazy to you as it is to

the rest of us who are just watching it from a distance?

So I would add two more things to that, which is the governor called a special session

to do redistricting here in two weeks. And at the last minute, he decided to add two more

items to the call on redistricting. And the two items are a ban of transgender folks in

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