GOP Gerrymander Backfires with Shock Loss… in Georgia!!!

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2:55Ben Meiselas:A Republican gerrymander just backfired in their face. Democrats flipped another seat blue. Guess where? In Georgia, a House district, House District 121 just flipped blue. And it was a House district at the state level where MAGA Republicans in Georgia worked to gerrymander the heck out of this thing to make it go even more red. But it went blue. Let me tell you what went down here. So a Democratic candidate, Eric Gisler, won Georgia's House district seat 121. This isn't federal level. This isn't Congress. This is the state House district in Georgia. And this guy, Gisler, won by about two to three points.

3:49Ben Meiselas:This was an area that Trump won by plus 12 in 2024. But get this, Eric Gisler has run for this seat before. You know when he ran for this seat before? Last November. So pretty freaking recently. And guess what the result was? Last November before Donald Trump destroyed the American economy. Gisler lost 61 to 39 against a different candidate, a Republican by the name of Marcus Wiedauer, 61 to 39. So to recap, Eric Gisler lost 61 to 39 last November. And now in December, on December 9th, he won by like 51 % to 49%. He won by like two points as Greg Blustein, who does a great job, local journalist there, one of the best.

4:48Ben Meiselas:He goes, in a stealth upset, Democrat Eric Gisler flips a GOP-held Georgia House seat spanning parts of Athens and Ocani County. Gisler won 39 % of the vote last November. He captured 51 % tonight to defeat a Republican backed by Brian Kemp. So maybe he doesn't consider himself MAGA per se, but when you aid and abet Donald Trump's agenda, which has destroyed the lives of people in Georgia, I consider that MAGA. And he was also endorsed by other GOP leaders. This comes on the same night where there was a massive GOP loss in the Miami mayor's race, where previously in the 2021 election, the current MAGA mayor Suarez won by 67%.

5:37Ben Meiselas:And now the Democratic candidate, Eileen Higgins, beat the MAGA Republican candidate in Miami, 59.3 % to 40.7%. So she won by about 20 points when the prior Democrat in 2021 lost by 67 points. Let's talk about what the gerrymander backfiring was all about though in Georgia. Zachary Denaini, he explains it as such, a Republican gerrymander just backfired in Georgia Despite splitting Athens, Georgia, into three conservative-leaning districts, Democrats flipped a Trump-plus-12 Georgia House District seat 121, turning one of those engineered red seats blue tonight. So, you look, how did Gisler do it?

6:30Ben Meiselas:Clark, a 28-point shift. Oconee County, an 8-point shift. That's big. But take a look right here at the University of Georgia campus precinct. Gisler outperformed Kamala Harris by 45 points. Let me repeat that. Gisler outperformed Kamala Harris by 45 points in the UGA campus precinct and by 28 points countywide. And Zachary Danini He talks about how we flagged a Yale polling data showing Trump's growing weakness with young voters. And we saw that dynamic play out at the ballot box again tonight or last night when this major flip from red to blue happened. And we've been covering here that these young voters, the 18 to 29, they have seen the rug pulled by Donald Trump.

7:28Ben Meiselas:They know that they've been defrauded. They know that Donald Trump has sold their futures out to AI, to data centers. They can't afford rent. They have no future in buying homes. Donald Trump lied to them about everything. He promised that things would be affordable on day one. He lied. Things are less affordable. And now Donald Trump continues to tell them they're living in a golden age. Donald Trump has also used the Department of Education not to help the education of the youth, but to engage in punitive conduct, attacking the youth, destroying their futures. And Donald Trump hates young people, and he is someone who's destroying young people's lives.

8:09Ben Meiselas:But here's what I want to highlight to you. How did Eric Gisler win this? What was his message? Affordability, affordability, affordability. So here was an interview that he did. It got about 174 views before I pulled it. We do our research here at the Midas Touch Network. And during this interview with the Athens Politics Nerd, shout out Athens Politics Nerd. We see the work you're doing, Politics Nerd. Keep up the great work over there. I love politics nerds. I'm a politics nerd. Gisler was talking to this politics nerd about, you know, lots of people who held their nose in Georgia and voted for Donald Trump, they thought that they were getting affordability.

9:01Ben Meiselas:But watch how Gisler describes what actually happened here. Play this clip. A lot of people who pulled the ballot for Donald Trump last year, they didn't sign up for this. They voted for lower prices. They voted for lower taxes. They voted for traditional national Republican values, smaller government, all those kind of things, they're not getting that. I mean, I just read that we passed the national debt, passed$37 trillion in August, passed $38 trillion last week. That's a trillion dollars in two months, right? They're not getting a small government. I don't think they voted for militarized cities.

9:46I don't think they voted for extrajudicial killings off the coast, or not even off the coast, 2000 miles from the coast in Venezuela. Right. So I think the MAGA wing of the Republican Party are overplaying their hands. And I think the only way we get past it is for them to start losing elections.

10:04Ben Meiselas:And then Gisler Gibbs, this, this needs to be studied by democratic candidates because look, this Gisler guy, he's not flashy. He's not wow, wow, wow. You know, he's not doing a shtick, right? This is a guy from Georgia who's like, look, I'm running for a state office. I'm going to try to make your lives better. And let me explain to you what's happening here and what people are telling me. He's like, here's what people in Ocani are saying to me. Here's what people in Clark are telling me. Here's what's happening to our school districts. Here's what's happening in our communities. Just listen to what he says here.

10:39Ben Meiselas:Play this clip. This is a state government position, right? If you pay attention to what's been happening at the state level for the last several years, there's a lot of things that have not gone well, right? You know, we mentioned the abortion ban. I think most voters agree that that's not the right way to do it. We never expanded Medicaid. I think that's still possible. It gets a little weird because of this new bill that came out. I think it's still possible to do it. It's harder to do, and you don't expand quite as much, but it's still possible. And without it, we've seen rural hospitals closing all around the state.

11:13We're looking at 750 ,000 Georgians are about to be priced out of insurance in January. That's a crisis. That's on top of the, I think it's 1.2 million Georgians who don't have any insurance at all right now. You put those two together, that's 2 million out of 11 million Georgia citizens that have no access to health care. The SNAP stuff is 1.4 million Georgians. Would it be 1.4 million Georgians that were dependent on SNAP for nutritional assistance if the minimum wage had been raised a few years ago? Probably not, right? People would probably be able to make ends meet a little bit better. And we talked about how many Georgians are about to go without insurance.

11:56Those of us who have insurance through an employer, it's not that great either. I don't know about you, but I'm paying a pretty hefty premium every month and a$5 ,000 deductible. So, I mean, I'm paying thousands of dollars every year just to have insurance and then thousands of dollars on top of that if I use it. It's crazy. You look at car insurance. Georgia has one of the highest car insurance rates, premiums, in the southeast. Higher than all of our neighbors. Housing. I mean, I've almost lost the question that you asked me at this point. Just going on. Things on your platform that you are really passionate about.

12:32Housing. I know that's a big issue here in Athens. It doesn't seem like it's as big as one in Oconee, but the truth is housing prices going up and the supply not keeping up. Supply and demand, economics one-on-one, right? If you don't have enough houses for the people, then the prices of those houses are going to go up, right? We're seeing that in Athens. We need more supply at the end of the day. At the state level, we can pass incentives for local governments to change their zoning or maybe incentivize them to approve more dense plans, housing plans. People don't think that's impacting Oconee County, but you think about it, why do most people move to Oconee County?

13:12You probably know, right? It's the school system. It's one of the best school systems in the state, if not the country. People like to move there, and who moves for school systems? It's young families. Well, if things keep going the way they are in Oconee County, young families aren't going to be able to afford there, to live there. And I think a lot of people out there don't even see it coming, but it's there. It's on the horizon.

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14:45Ben Meiselas:Remember, a-hole is only a naughty word if you wipe for a limited time. our listeners get 10 % off their first bidet order when you use code MIDAS10 at checkout. That's 10 % off your first bidet order at hellotushy.com with promo code MIDAS10, M-E-I-D-A-S-1-0. Now, you contrast that to what Donald Trump has been saying. And Donald Trump says that, you know, it's everything's an A++ plus with the economy and things are great. Here we have on CNN, Phillip is fact checking him and say, Americans aren't giving this guy an A. Play this clip. Now, many Americans would disagree with that grade that he gave himself.

15:25A Fox News poll found 76 % of voters have a negative view of the economy. Now, that's six points higher than how they felt at the end of the Biden presidency.

15:35Ben Meiselas:That's really saying something. And then from Donald Trump's speech in Pennsylvania at a small casino. He did at Mount Airy Casino. He did it like a wedding reception area. That's what Trump's been reduced to. No offense. I'm sure it could be a nice wedding venue, but this is where Trump's rallies are and tiny wedding venues. Here's what Donald Trump says. He goes, they said prices are high, but they're going down substantially. Play this clip. You know, and I said it the other day and a lot of people misinterpreted this. Oh, he doesn't realize prices are coming down very substantially. But they have a new word.

16:11You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability. So they look at the camera and they say, this election is all about affordability. Now, they never talk about it. They never talk. Thank you very much. They say I'm not allowed to run. I don't know what the hell that's all about, but that's okay. He said four more years.

16:33Ben Meiselas:You see the new hat? We have four more years. Now, you'll also recall in Georgia, back when the blue tsunami hit in early November, do you remember that in Georgia, two of the statewide Georgia Public Service Commission positions flipped? And it was one of the first times you saw a major statewide race flip like this in like decades. This was a big, big deal. And they were both nearly 30-point shifts. So the Public Service Commission C2 shifted from an R plus 2 to a D, Democrat plus 25. C3 flipped from an R plus 2 to a D plus 26. That was on the Tuesday in November when that blue tsunami hit as well.

17:24Ben Meiselas:And folks, you know, I'm certainly no Marjorie Taylor Greene fan, even as she's reinvented herself as this anti-Trump crusader. I think a lot of it is BS, but I'm glad she's speaking out about Donald Trump. But she added to the toxicity in our politics. And I'm no Marjorie Taylor Greene fan. But she knows Georgia. I mean, she's won a lot of elections there in her congressional district. And she sees what's going on there with Republicans. Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about how Donald Trump bragging that the economy is doing well is the worst political move. And she talked about those Georgia statewide races back from the Tuesday in November where the blue tsunami hit.

18:09Ben Meiselas:Here play this clip. And so I think it's absolutely the worst move and it's the worst political move to have the House in recess and for us to not be here working. Do you believe right now, as we talk about, you know, the situation that's taking place here with the shutdown, Do you believe that Republicans as a party right now are unified? Are Republicans fractured somewhere in between? What are your thoughts? Well, it seems like Republicans in Washington, D.C. may be unified, but I don't think they are across the country. I think there's a lot of disenfranchised 2024 voters. And and I think that was clearly obvious in Tuesday's election.

18:53Now, there's pushback against me saying that, saying, well, we knew Virginia and New Jersey and New York would go Democrat. And of course, that's true. I said the same thing, but I'm from Georgia and we lost two statewide public service commission seats and we lost them heavily. Democrats won those seats at 60 percent. Republicans only got 40 percent. There's other races in Pennsylvania and Mississippi proving the same thing, that voters are not happy. But really, I'll push everyone to pay attention to the true financial hardship that Americans are facing right now. And this is this is very much affecting my children's generation who are 22, 26 and 28.

19:37And that generation is looking towards the future with very little hope. And so for me personally, I ran for Congress in 2020, criticizing Democrats and Republicans almost equally that Congress and Washington, D.C. always fails the American people. And I think the alarms are blaring right now.

19:58Ben Meiselas:Now, finally, as I talked about this Miami mayor's race, where it was the first time in 30 years that the mayor's seat flipped blue. Here was Eileen Higgins at the debate with Gonzalez, the MAGA Republican candidate, Emilio Gonzalez. And this was a pivotal moment where Trump's endorsement of Gonzalez came up. And that proved to be the dagger that destroyed Gonzalez's campaign because Trump is toxic right now. Play this clip of what went down with that debate. With the thing that has gotten you a lot of attention, the fact that you were endorsed by Donald Trump. Was that something that you sought?

20:44Ben Meiselas:It was something that came to me quite by surprise. I literally was resting, reading. My phone went off, and I thought, gee, what happened? Somebody died. What's going on here? And it was just people telling me, hey, you've just been endorsed by the president. I do know that the president, because he's a resident in the state of Florida, and there's talk of putting a library here in Miami, he follows events in Florida. He follows events closely. And so I wasn't surprised, but but it wasn't something that, you know, I called up there and said, hey, can you do this for me? All right. And given that Miami is a city of immigrants.

21:22Ben Meiselas:Yes, sir. You know, when you accept Donald Trump's endorsement, when you when he tweets out and puts out on there that he that he believes in you because you agree with his vision when it comes to migrant crime and the rest of it. I'm curious, do you support the president's policies when it comes to rounding up immigrants? 60 % of the residents of the city of Miami were born outside of the United States. The vast majority of the people who are being detained, who are being picked up, do not have criminal records. Are you supportive and will you help Donald Trump enforce that policy? Well, you just said it.

21:53Ben Meiselas:I support rounding up people who commit crimes. The president says that I support putting down migrant criminals. I cannot in good conscience take fight the federal government and defend a rapist or a murderer like happens in other cities. But the majority of the people being picked up right now are not rapists. Yes, but the majority, what you're talking about is a federal issue. This is a federal issue that has to do with Homeland Security. This is not an issue that has to do with the mayor of Miami. Now, mind you, I know who to talk to. I've been the immigration director. I can advocate for our community, which I certainly will.

22:30Ben Meiselas:I plan on adding an immigration services staff member to help guide us through this. But this is not a topic that you want to just take on the president for. It's ludicrous. The president sees Florida as very important. He sees Miami as very important. And he has backed me because he feels that I have the leadership qualities to bring the city forward. I want to bring Eileen in on this. On the issue of immigration policy and the next mayor of Miami, he's absolutely right. Mayor of Miami does not have say over a federal immigration policy. But there is a sense that if Donald Trump is supporting you, that there is a tacit agreement with the policy.

23:08Ben Meiselas:Are you concerned by what's happening in the city of Miami? I'm very concerned with what's happening in the city of Miami for two reasons. First of all, they said they were going to go after criminals. But guess what? They're going after everybody. Every time I am out in our neighborhoods, people are telling me the story of someone they know, a friend, a relative. that has had something happen to them, including going to Alligator Alcatraz. So in addition to being inhumane and cruel, it's also bad for the economy. Two weeks ago, our federal government, the president, eliminated TPS for Venezuelans.

23:43It's almost 100 ,000 people who have TPS from Venezuela in Miami-Dade County. So I was speaking to a gentleman, has a health clinic. He received notification from the federal government that he had to fire 27 people. because they lost their work status.

23:59Ben Meiselas:Do you think he should have rejected the endorsement? He's the president. I'm very glad the president did not endorse me. There you have it, folks, tying it all together. Do we see a theme here that we are reporting? Massive Democratic overperformance, massive MAGA Republican drops. This bodes quite well for the midterms. And I think there's an overwhelming momentum of people are sick and tired of this Trump regime. They're sick and tired of the pain. They're sick and tired of the authoritarian fascist behavior, the ripping away of our democracy, the stealing of our health care, the taking away of the future of people right now and from future generations.

24:49Ben Meiselas:We'll keep reporting on it here on the Midas Touch Network, as always. hit subscribe, help us get to 6 million subscribers, and thank you so much for watching. Love this video? Support independent media and unlock exclusive content, ad-free videos, and custom emojis by becoming a paid member of our YouTube channel today. You can also gift memberships to others. Let's keep growing together.