Hello and welcome to the Bill Press Pod Reporter's Roundtable. I'm Jason Dick, editor-in-chief at CQ Roll Call, sitting in for Bill. Here in Washington, D.C., it's about 9 o'clock in the morning on September 16th, 2022. It's been quite a week here in Washington. In the Senate, bipartisan negotiations

on a marriage equality bill continued, but a vote was punted until after the midterms.

Speaking of which, we're finally done with primaries. Thank you, New Hampshire, Rhode Island,

and Delaware for wrapping us up. We're going to talk about

who's in a better position for electoral gains with less than two months until Election Day.

The economy is always front and center in these kind of elections. President Joe Biden helped

evade a nationwide railway strike, but there's also a mix of other news on inflation, poverty,

and health insurance. Another big topic for the midterms?

Abortion.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham introduced a 15-week abortion ban, and that's just

the latest fallout from the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade earlier this summer.

Here to discuss these topics and more on the pod.

Today is Melanie Mason, National Political Correspondent

for the Los Angeles Times. Good morning, Melanie. Good morning. Gabe de Benedetti,

national correspondent for New York Magazine, an author of the brand new book, The Long Alliance,

The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Morning, Gabe. Morning, Jason.

And Elena Trine, congressional reporter for

Axios and co-author of the Axios sneak peek newsletter. Hello, Elena.

Good morning. Hello. Well, as I said, it's been one of those kind of crazy news-filled weeks.

The Congress, both chambers were back after,

after the, you know, like the last bit of the recess ended for the house. The house put in a grueling two days, two full days after being off for six weeks before heading home. But a lot of

what was going on was, you know, people were,

...