Hey, everyone, it's Reed. Before we get started, I just want to say thank you again for helping us get past 30 million downloads here on the Lincoln Project podcast. You have us at the top of the charts. And I cannot say thank you enough.

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Want to say thank you. And now on with the show.

Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host Reed Gaelin. Today, I'm once again joined by comedian Peloton enthusiast and co-host of LP TV's. We're speaking Maya May. Maya, welcome back.

Thank you, Reed. I'm excited to be here because we're almost done with all this. I know. I know. So we're back together again for another round of Q&A. And are always thoughtful and in size of members of the Lincoln Project community have provided us some questions.

Our questions are taken from social media, emails, town halls. So to those of you listening, if you do have a question, don't be shy about asking. You may hear it on a future LP podcast. So Maya, let's get into it.

All right. Our first one is from Rory Peters. And he says it seems like the Georgia runoff polls are favoring Rafael Warnoch. And all reports have been saying that early voting numbers have been incredible.

I don't want to say I'm feeling confident about a war not going, but I am feeling better about a war not going than I was on election night with that said, how could Warnoch blow it?

It's sort of like the the optimistic fatalist. I feel good. But how's he going to screw it up? I think Maya that first, there's a broader point. I think to Rory's question, which is we should not forget that we are a 50 50 country.

Election day, November 2022 was a good night. It was a good night for democracy. It bought us time and space, but it was a battle in a very long fight. And the fact that Herschel Walker, who has, as we've said before, is fundamentally unserious as nearly as a human being, but certainly as a candidate for the United States.

And it came as close as he did to becoming Senator elect Herschel Walker from the state of Georgia tells us we have a lot more to learn about just what's going on.

And I want to ask your opinion on that. But I think as far as this race is concerned, I think there was also candidly Maya also want to get your sense of this was that there were probably Republicans who didn't like Walker, who just went Republican down ballot because they probably weren't stacey Abrams fans.

And that's something that we should just recognize. There are a variety of reasons behind that too. But that would be my guess in a runoff, right? There's going to be a whole bunch of people who were very excited about participating in the general.

You know, okay, maybe now the Democrats have control of the Senate. Does that depress democratic turnout a little bit? Who knows? Does that get otherwise sort of Brian Kempi Republicans, the governor who was reelected to say, I don't, you know, I never really liked this guy. I'm not going back for him.

So I think that Senator Warnock in this context should win. I think the early vote piece is important because that early vote has shown such strength amongst not only democratic voters, but also young voters.

And we've seen just crazy lines and people showing up. So I feel cautiously optimistic that tomorrow night, you know, Senator Warnock will be reelected.

And I think that's a very good thing. But again, I think there's a lot of signal in this noise. And I think we have to pay attention to it.

I think as the votes came in and it was so incredibly close that people went into a state of panic read or they're like, oh my god, is this where our country is at? Is it this 50 50?

But I think the third party candidate, the spoiler who said that he couldn't spoil anything because it's already spoiled.

The exams chased something or another. He got somewhere around 89, 90,000 votes.

And so I'm actually in a way glad that this went to a runoff because it allowed Democrats to spotlight the absolute hypocrisy of the Republicans.

To elevate somebody like Herschel Walker to a place where he is a spokesperson for the Republican party, but a spokesperson for apparently people of color in the Republican party.

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