jordan you spent some time down in the
state of georgia in the last few days if
this week was about pennsylvania next
week tuesday is going to be about the
state of georgia big governors race down
there big senate race and of course all
the statewide races what did you find
talking to some voters of both parties
well i'm really excited about this it's
the first time that on morning joe we've
had morning joe focus groups and over
the last couple of years since 2016 i've
done hundreds of these groups with a
british polling group and so one of my
partners on that project we teamed up
and we surveyed the local electorate and
we have a group of democrats and a group
of republicans and we fine-tuned it
using a deeper survey with this great
device called question pro and so then
you're going to get to see the result of
that these groups of democratic voters
sitting around talking about their world
view and then republican voters and
let's start out now with the republican
voters we talked to in atlanta georgia
this weekend
it's a crap show right now
i think with all the political or with
all the
social media that we have you can see it
at a click of a button we really are i
think right now as a nation a joke
and that's unfortunate because we are a
powerhouse we do help other countries
other nations around the world
and uh we're just we're a laughingstock
i think unfortunately sarah i see you
nodding i'm embarrassed
i cannot believe
who is the head of our country
um is not the head of our country at all
he's not a leader he's a puppet
i worry about his mental stability he
hasn't done what he said he was going to
do
so i really
want to take these democratic voters and
say are you happy now
are you happy now i really feel like
covet 19
was a big
catalyst in dividing people politically
with democrats for supporting
the vaccine mandates and the mass
mandates and then republicans were the
opposite when it really didn't
necessarily have to be that way from a
health issue
a lot of it started when they started
pulling down all the statues the stuff
about removing everything from history
and i think a lot of that started in my
opinion started splitting it more and
more it was more of a race thing
who's right and who's wrong and who they
want and the you know to be taking care
of their sides i mean does anyone really
care that much about statues i care
about history yeah the history because
you even got stone mountain here and
they're wanting to take away that whole
carving and everything and there's been
a lot of stuff out there at stone
mountain
i do not think we are headed in the
right direction um
i am
38 years old i'll be 39
and up until the last four years of my
life i've never been called a racial
slur now all of a sudden individuals are
comfortable with doing that a lot of
things are excused that shouldn't be
excused you know growing up in new york
i wasn't really exposed to a lot of you
know racism or anything of that nature
so when it comes to politics down here i
feel like it's kind of everywhere now
you look left and you look right you
don't know who feels what way i don't
think that america is progressing in the
way that it should be and
a lot of the times i think that i should
leave it's gotten really divided because
people have either not learned or
forgotten or just feels better not to
assess the credibility of stuff and it
just feels good to sit in a group of
people like this and say
screw them you know screw the other it's
you know i don't i don't want to hear
what they have to say and it's really
hard
to empathize i think we've just lost
that empathy for the other it's kind of
hard to say we're going in the right
direction because on one end yes on
another no i'm hopeful
um
you know in the past four years you know
being prior military
i kind of felt like
you know those folks who came back from
the vietnam war or whatever and being
black and coming back and your country
hating the years that i put in in the
military it seems like it was
for nothing to come back and it's like
wow you know what what what did i do you
know and i i saw the
clan flags and you know that that stuff
is very
you know disrespectful you know to
people who served or even just regular
americans you know and uh
so i just kind of feel you know i don't
i don't know like
i sometimes i regret joining the
military i don't even want to call
myself a patriot
because it seemed like that that word
was demonized you know and now i just
i'm just a veteran you know that served
my country and
but it's kind of hard to determine you
know what
the future is like
wow fascinating i mean that's just the
tip of the iceberg you spent so much
time we're going to hear much more from
that
but elise what were you as you sat with
them for the totality of that day and
you spent a lot of time with voters
there is a um
disgust i think
among both sides about the way the
country is going for different reasons
but about where we're headed well
republican voters really focus on the
dysfunction and on what they see as joe
biden's mental state frankly and what
they called his incompetence and then
democratic voters especially since our
group was reflective of the atlanta
electorate was primarily
african-american and they focused on
racial division and how it really
impacted their life and how the
temperature had gotten raised over the
last few years especially and how they
felt that there were a couple of more
than a couple of really relevant
observations that both focus groups made
the republican focus groups
they want to remove our history one
woman said talking about statues being
taken down we're a laughingstock i'm
embarrassed president biden's mental
status they're referring to that the
democrats were also i mean there's a
couple of universals here especially the
woman who talked about being called a
racial slur for the first time in her
life and saying finally now around me
people feel comfortable using it and
they it again it gets back to the
license of language
that many people hear on cable tv
talking about things like the
replacement theory and feeling free to
use that language on the sidewalk
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you