Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for April 14th, 2022, the double Bazelon edition.

I'm David Plotz of Citicast here in Washington, D.C.C.

That sharp intake of breath came from, of course, Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine

and Yale University Law School in New Haven. Hello, Emily.

Hey, David.

We'll explain what double Bazelon means in a second.

I know. Terrifying term. We will explain.

And also with us, of course, is John Dickerson of CBS Sunday morning in New York.

Hello, John. Did you hear that

blast that came from opening my LaCroix? I didn't mean to have it be that loud, but it's probably

the best thing I'll say I'll show. Scary. This week, how bleak are Democratic electoral prospects,

we will talk to an up-and-coming political data analyst Simon Bazelon,

who is Emily's son.

It's true.

And wrote an amazingly interesting piece this week about Democratic Senate prospects.

Then the inflation numbers are terrible.

What can Washington do about them, if anything?

And then we'll discuss Jonathan Hates's fascinating and

unsettling Atlantic article, why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely

stupid, which I feel like lots of things have been uniquely stupid, but this is a really

persuasive. Well, we'll talk about the article in a minute. Plus, of course,

we'll have cocktail chatter. Democrats are sleepwalking into a Senate disaster. It's a piece on slow,

...