From New York Times, I'm Michael Obaro. This is Adelaide.

Today marks the unofficial start of the campaign for the midterm elections, the first major

referendum on the Biden era of government, and a test of how much voters want to reinstall

the Trump wing of the Republican Party. My colleague, politics reporter, Asad Hrenden,

is covering the election for a Times podcast, The Run-Up, a show I hosted in 2016, and

offers us a guide to the campaign.

It's Tuesday, September 6th.

A stead. Welcome back. Thank you. I appreciate it. I like the name of the show. You are now

hosting. It's a great name. Great show. It's destined to be a. Yeah. No, no, no. I

too like the Dave and understand that they're big host shoes to fill. So I'm really excited

and I'm excited to do this. I consider them more than filled. That's one of us. I'm very

nervous. So as that, I want to dig in with you on the stakes of this year's midterm,

just in order to do that, I want you to help us understand the landscape as we head into

the run-up to the election. Until quite recently, I think it has felt to most people like

this was going to be a terrible midterm for Democrats. Totally. I think up until maybe

just a month ago, the conventional political wisdom, which I think had some real validity

was that Democrats were going to have a really tough time this year that there would be a

Republican wave. And just explain why that would be. Yeah. I mean, when we think about

midterms, I think the first thing we should say is that there are some real structural

rules that govern how we think about these elections. Midterm elections are almost

always a referendum on the White House or the party in power. So it's your first chance

as a voter to weigh in on the recently elected president. And in this case, the Congress

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