Hey, good morning. I'm Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels. It's Thursday, December 21st. Happy solstice. It is the shortest day of the year. Thank God. So we are going to finish this day out easily. Here is what's driving the day.

At the top of Playbook, we have an inside look of what's going on at the Washington Post.

You may have heard about these buyouts, 240 offered to the folks that work there.

We spoke to reporters at the Post who tell us that the rollout of this has been, quote, messy,

that they feel like it was set up to be the Hunger Games or Game of Thrones, and that management

hasn't handled it in a way that at the end of this, when the bios were all set and done and

announced that the morale will be so low, that it's

going to take a lot to pull the post. And more importantly, the reporters and editors left there

up. I don't want to give you too much information because I want you to head a playbook right now

and read it, but definitely some really, really interesting stuff there from one of the nation's

top papers. And in the Golden State, our political California

team teamed up with Morning Consult to look at the California Senate race. As you guys know,

it has current House members going head-to-head, Representative Adam Schiff, you have Representative Barbara Lee, and also

Representative Katie Porter, who are taking each other on. What the polling found was that Schiff,

who is the 12-term Democrat, leads with 28% of likely voters. Former L.A. Dodger star Steve Garvey

is in second currently, 19 percent, Katie Porter

and third with 17 percent, and Lee, notching at 14 percent. Statistically, that's a three-way tie.

And joining me now from L.A. to chat about that new poll is senior California political reporter Melanie Mason. Melanie,

welcome your first time on the pod. Yeah, glad to be here. Thank you so much. You know, one of the

most interesting things about California is it feels kind of like its own many United States. Like,

there's all these different places that represent different parts of this country,

the different constituencies, and also the fact that you guys have hot, heated races almost every

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