Happy Thanksgiving!

Today's show originally aired July 10, 2023. 

In Hartwell, a rural Georgia lake community, pastor Grant Myerholtz convenes a growing "Baptist" congregation in an unusual way (for a baptist church, anyway): he chooses inclusivity. In an era where churches big and small are seeing declines in attendance, his Mt Hebron Baptist Church has grown from a dozen to more than a hundred. 

Featured in ⁠a Washington Post piece⁠, Grant joined me last summer to let me learn more about him and his church.

Were that there were more Rev. Grants and Mt. Hebron Baptist Churches. 

UPDATE: Grant messaged me this past spring with a photo from Hartwell Pride and the following update:

"Hey Ron just wanted to share a picture from this years pride in Hartwell…we had about 20-25 from the church to attend this year to support. We fully left the southern Baptist Convention..instead of open doors we just took them off..hope you are doing well and thanks again for having me on the show with you…hope you are doing well."

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is the first to officially announce his run for Georgia's Governor's office in 2026, and it begins the conversation about potential combatants (right and left) plus it has me wondering if what Democrats need is a candidate who'll inspire voters with a vision for a future Georgia that's better connected.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has made a LOT of noise about incoming Rep. Sarah McBride sharing bathroom and/or locker room space with her, and what's so puzzling about it is Mace's past stated support for LGBTQ rights and an aversion for discrimination now to mis-gendering McBride and making a lot of noise about where the two would wash their hands - because women's restrooms have stalls, after all.

Is she just drawn to the spotlight? Her former staffers vehemently say "yes." Is she perhaps driven by hyper partisanship brought on by her district being gerrymandered redder? I'd vehemently say "of course."

Back in Georgia, state Senators, too, are fixated on trans women - this time in collegiate sports. As one Lambda Legal attorney put it: Republicans are pushing for a solution in need of a problem. Even worse, they're doing all of this at the expense of the mental wellness of untold numbers of youth in the process.

Incoming (and again) President Donald Trump promises tariffs and mass deportations and - the way columnist Jay Bookman sees it - it's going to be a "bumpy ride" for Georgians to endure, economically.

He joined me today for a wide-ranging discussion, beginning with his latest op-ed at GeorgiaRecorder.com - covering tariffs, taxes, deportation, root causation of migration, trans attack ads and more.

I also briefly skimmed over traffic guy Doug Turnbull's op-ed in the AJC foreseeing what a second Trump term - along with poor swings at mass transit expansion in the metro - means for traffic in and around Atlanta.

New Georgia House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugely let it be known she's not well with Senator Jon Ossoff. She unleashed on him while on WABE's "Politically Georgia" podcast earlier this week, but I must admit, I felt the need to finger-wag a bit in her direction. I mean, is this necessary? Why is she picking a fight with a U.S. Senator up for re-election in two years? What concession(s) has she come to based on one person's characterization in a two-person conversation? Not cool; not the time.

While I'm offering my thoughts to state party leadership, I shared, today, a list of objectives I'd like to see the new state Democratic Party chair implement.

My guest today is Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg from The Appeal. She's covered recent strife between Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and council over a pre-trial diversion program it appears he tried to undercut for reasons no one can (or will, in his office's case) explain. Council went ahead re-upping with PADI despite the mayor's curious end-around antics, even with a new in-house diversion center now in the picture.

MSNBC has been hemorrhaging audience share since election night, which isn't altogether surprising except - now that liberals and progressives are re-evaluating how their messaging should travel and be delivered, this may be a permanent dip. Well, it can't help that "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mike Brzezinski shlepped to Mar-A-Lago to "kiss the ring" last weekend, and admitted as much on Monday morning. "Why wouldn't we?" Mike responds.

She then timelines this "political warfare" back a mere five years, and a couple of former US Senators gathered in Athens yesterday to wax nostalgic about their early 21st century tenures compared to today's divisiveness. They're all wrong, or seem to forget a few things that I, for one, did not.

Before going there, though, a little attention is warranted for current "mean girls" Nancy Mace and - sigh - Marjorie Taylor Greene, who've decided to pick a fight with incoming Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride over ... bathrooms. Because of course. How is the left to be civil with that?

Back to Athens, where former Senators Heidi Heitkamp and Saxby Chambliss sat for the Isakson Symposium on Political Civility at the University of Georgia yesterday. Never mind that Saxby ran a repulsive attack ad tying Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to a decorated war veteran who'd lost three limbs in Vietnam. Max Cleland deserved better than to have been 'swiftboated.' Tell us, dear Saxby, how woeful political discourse is now vs. how much more civil things were when you were flinging mud, sir.

Whole lot of 'ugly' coming out folks after Donald Trump's election win. Locally, people have been getting racist text messages. Then there's two of his Cabinet picks - both with prior sexual assault claims dogging them. The anti-woke Pentagon pick is pretty noteworthy, no? Then, no big deal, but the nation's future top attorney is sweating a House Ethics panel report. Totally fine. Birds of a feather, right? Hey, whatever became of Billy Bush, anyway?

Here in Atlanta, two suburban (and blue!) counties rejected transit initiatives. Why? Bill Tory says voters didn't see immediate gratification. I believe we've lost our appetite for 'vision.'

Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg - who I believe Democrats should rally behind for messaging, going forward - spent time at Harvard talking with students there offering his party a route to 'salvation' - local action. He also addressed the steady stream of disinformation ruining political discourse and believes it'll take Sen Z tackling it to help solve it.

I'll be honest; I had a guest lined up today and a late cancellation (no worries! We're re-booking) so today was a lot of me "winging it," but I'm not unhappy with the result. Your opinion may vary. :)

Instead, the over-arching theme for this episode: "the American voter doesn't want to hear the truth."

We can't handle reasons why student loan forgiveness triggers white working class voters - even more so when they're informed loan forgiveness assists students and graduates in marginalized subsets of the population.

We can't grapple with the real reasons immigrants are on the move to our southern border. How our economic polices (sanctions, embargoes) are part of the problem. That our cozier, first-world lifestyle impacting climate change impacts lifestyles in at-risk countries elsewhere.

We altogether avoid a true reckoning of our nation's history on bias and oppression and how it continues to impact our economy, educational outcomes and crime.

So how do Democrats work to craft their messaging to be truthful to voters when voters (to borrow from 'A Few Good Men') "can't handle the truth?

I overheard an NPR News segment yesterday featuring Paul Begala, Adrianne Shropshire and Waleed Shahid discussing this, actually. I came away particularly impressed with Shahid, a former staffer for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and DNC delegate for Bernie Sanders in 2016. He spoke of Democrats "delivering real economic results to working-class Americans and not shying away from real societal changes that are happening around us that we can't just pivot away from.." He added, "we need to humanize trans Americans. We need to contextualize trans Americans. We need to do the same thing that we did in the struggle for gay rights, which is fight these battles and persuade not just in election season but in the years before election season. And I think we lost to the oldest playbook in human history, which is divide and conquer. "

Bingo.

Ezra Klein, on 'Pod Save America' earlier this week, also provided some sobering words for the party, honing in on Democrats losing ground in America's big cities, and the Biden/Harris triangulating on immigration woes, crime in the cities, and so on. Again, there are some hard truths voters need to hear, but - I repeat - the American voter doesn't want to hear the truth.

Gerrymandering Georgia's map "played out just like Georgia Republicans intended" - as the Atlanta Journal Constitution deftly points out. The term isn't a sexy one, but as much as American voters hate government and "Congress" in particular, when can we have a discussion on eliminating what makes them so unpopular?

Pete Hegseth is Donald Trump's pick for defense secretary, much to the shock to this inside the Pentagon, Congress and in the retired ranks. That hasn't stopped some Trumpers from trying to compare his lack of qualifications to that of Pete Buttigeig. Wait'll you hear how one conservative pundit self-owned on that comparison, though.

Trump's also openly calling for r̶e̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ restitution for "victims" of DEI initiatives at colleges and universities. On to discuss this and the mood of the black electorate after the 2024 election is Dante King, author of "The 400-Year Holocaust," and producer of the forthcoming docuseries "Diagnosing Whitensss and Anti-Blackness."

Jon Stewart began ⁠Monday's The Daily Show with some clarity⁠: Democrats didn't run on 'woke' ideology; they had it affixed to them by Republicans while actually running ads that sounded quite the opposite. I'll add: running from marginalized communities (like trans people) is a show of weakness & to expect loyalty from such community afterwards Is political folly. ⁠Kentucky Governor (D) Andy Beshear said as much, himself: ⁠stick to your values. Oh and maybe stop letting your opponent(s) define you by caricaturing you.

See, I'm starting to openly ask what happened to radicalize young white male voters? My leading theories are: DEI, immigration and trans rights. That doesn't mean Democrats have to capitulate, though; they have to communicate, and be better at it.

Meanwhile, everyone's marveling over the influence of one Joe Rogan. Yeah, me, too. As in "how'd this untalented, not wise dude become "⁠the Walter Cronkite of 2024?⁠" Worse, still: how did Democrats lose the self-professed progressive who's pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-trans rights, for universal healthcare, and loathed Trump's immigration policies? "Cancel culture."Another right wing caricaturization that Democrats, themselves, don't have policies or platforms endorsing, but whose opposition attaches to them.

Anyhow, ⁠NPR's "On The Media" delved into the "man-o-sphere"⁠ that he leads, with the likes of other reality TV nobodies like Theo Von.

Yesterday I channeled my mental and physical energies into re-arranging my bedroom and closet. I had to take my mind off the nation's descent into depravity for another four-year reign, somehow, and while I'm happy with the results, I awoke today knowing I needed to "keep going" - doing my part to help us regroup and refine and retool for 2026 and beyond.

I came across Dr. Jack Zibluk's op/ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and reached out to him. He's a UT-Chattanogga communications and journalism professor living in the very corner of northwest Georgia - Marjorie Taylor Greene's Congressional district - who ran for a Georgia House seat, and came away with some "first impressions" as a political newcomer that he shared in the op/ed and in our conversation as well. Do listen, but the summation is: better messaging, lean into facts, do better not to alienate working class (and white) voters.