Welcome back to the re-education.

The topic today is the upcoming midterm elections in America and why I'm rooting for divided government.

My guest is Ben Jacobs, a prolific political reporter based in Washington,

whose recent work has appeared in Vox and New York Magazine.

I know there's a lot of stake in these midterm elections.

From our economy, the safety of our streets, to our personal freedoms,

the future of health care, Social Security, Medicare, it's all important.

But we'll have our differences. We have our difference of opinion. And that's what

it's supposed to be. But there's something else at stake. Democracy itself.

You just heard from President Joe Biden making the Democratic Party's closing argument for the

midterm election. It can be summed up as follows. We know you are worried about

crime and inflation, but democracy itself is on the ballot. A vote for a Republican is a vote

against our national civic creed, our system of government, our core values. You know what?

In the spirit of steel manning, I'm going to play a more articulate version of this argument.

Here is MSNBC host Chris

Hayes from last week spelling out the closing message from the Democrats. And so the pitch from

Democrats is basically, if you care about democracy, if you care about having this feedback mechanism

in which the people you elect are accountable to them, to you,

you've got no choice but to vote for us.

And that on its face sounds almost anti-democratic itself to say you don't have a choice.

But it also happens to be true.

Earlier in this segment, Chris Hayes played a recording

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