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.

But I can't ask you for one more favor. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell people that are interested in the pro democracy movement.

Tune in here what we have to say, share it with your friends, share it with your family. Want to say thank you. And now on with the show.

Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Gail. Today, I'm joined by Matt Bennett, co-founder and executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way.

A national think tank that champions modern center left ideas, as well as co-founder of Shieldback, a group which was dedicated to defending moderate democratic members of Congress in 2022.

Prior to his time at Third Way and Shieldback, Matt worked on a variety of campaigns, including those of Michael Ducakis and Bill Clinton, where he also served as deputy assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs.

He has a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania and a jurist doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Matt, welcome back. Thanks. Great to be here. All right, man. So last to talk about here, let's talk about 2022, the election as we're recording this, we're a day away from the Senate runoff in Georgia.

My feeling is the election night was good for democracy, bought us some time in space, but we shouldn't over index on the success that democratic candidates had.

I think that's exactly right. I mean, look, the fact is we dodged a huge bullet. It is now pretty much impossible for mega forces to steal the presidential election, at least in ways that they were preparing to do so before 2020, because they didn't get the offices they would need if they were going to do that.

You know, they had these crazy election deniers running for sector estate and governor in swing states. They got pretty close. They got terrifyingly close in the Arizona governor's race, but they didn't win.

And so democracy to some extent is safe, but man, they did better than they should have.

That's something that I think when I talk to folks who aren't neck deep in the stuff like you and I are every day.

I said, these people in a normal time should have lost by like 30. Right? Like these people, they mean the idea that they won their primaries was scary enough.

But as I talk about, you know, as we're staring down the barrel of Georgia, you know, a rainy day, the wrong direction, you know, a couple thousand people decide not to wait in line.

You know, we could be calling her show walker Senator elect. And the idea that even in his close erase is that that someone who's, as I've mentioned before, so wholly unqualified could come that close.

I think is concerning and one for all of us to remind ourselves that, you know, look, yes, we all did what we needed to do.

And it was probably as good an outcome as anybody could have expected, but the fight is far from over.

Look, we need hats that say make secretaries of state obscure again. There is no reason that Americans should be engaged in thinking about secretary of state races outside of their own state.

And even inside their own state for that matter, but we do because we have people who are unbelievably unfit for office running for these what turns out to be quite important positions because very prominent people have called fundamental constitutional issues into question.

And there are people that came very close to becoming governor of their state who if they had had an meeting in the Oval Office in the Bush White House, you know, 20 years ago, that would have been a scandal to your point.

We have defined deviancy down in the words of the late Dan or Patrick Moynihan for the Republican party in just breathtaking ways.

...