analyst. and the host of way too early, jonathan lemire. white house bureau chief of my politico. and host of the circus, john heilemann. good to have you all. polls open in less than an hour in georgia, where one of the most consequential primaries of the midterms is taking place. there are several state and congressional races on the ballot, but the ones we re closely watching are the republican primaries for governor, secretary of state, and senate. the new york times describes the background of today s races like this. quote, georgia s got everything. disputed elections, rapid demographic change, celebrity democrats, a restrictive new voting law, an open criminal investigation into donald trump s meddling in the 2020 election, a deep rural-urban divide and unending drama between the trump wing of the republican party and the local gop establishment. that s a lot. former senator david perdue, whose loss in the state two years ago helped give democrats control of
greg blue jnbluestein, those voters you talk to all your time. you spent most of your career covering georgia politics. you know the points of view. joe is right, if you re surprised to hear about 2,000 mules, you maybe don t live in a part of the country where that has become sort of the guiding story line about what happened in 2020. that s a movie that s out right now. what were your impressions of what you heard? were you surprisd by anything? no. this is rhetoric we hear from fervent donald trump supporters and democrats. exactly right, a lot of democrats don t feel abrams did anything wrong by not conceding the race. she will point out she didn t try to actively undermine and allege that she was the governor. you know, she knows she s now not the governor. she didn t try to overturn the election results, she just didn t concede.
that s kind of how he started to think about it. when you flood the zone with endorsements like he has, and he s talked about this, about, you know, some of these folks are going to win and some are going to lose. however, how big of a loss it is, how public of a loss does actually matter. because when you look at what s happening, and most likely happening, in georgia, as greg pointed out, especially with kemp, it shows that sometimes when donald trump operates by pettiness, it may not work out, right? this is his endorsement in the kemp race and kemp/perdue race. he was pissed at kemp for not overturning the election. when you look at raffensperger, he was pissed at raffensperger for not overturning the election. even in alabama, what he un-endorsed mo brooks. you see the leader of a party saying, if you don t do what i say, if i don t think you re strong enough, i m not on your side. it seems the pettiness of donald trump will be tested today, whether or not that is the right