The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for November 1st, 2018, the most important election of our lifetimes since the last election edition.

I'm David Plotz of Atlas Obscura. I'm in Washington, D.C. In New York,

are Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine. Hello, Emily. Hey, David. And also with Emily at

CBS worldwide headquarters is John Dickerson of CBS this morning. Hello, Joe. Hello, David and David.

Yes, that you've tipped off our listeners to the fact that there are not one, but two Davids.

You can never have enough.

We had David French on the other week, so we're making a habit of having Davids on.

And that David, the new David is not David French.

It's David Axelrod, who's the director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, host of the Axe Files on CNN. David, welcome back to the Gab Fest. Good to be here. And we have you here because, of course, it is an incredibly big political week, and we wanted somebody who brought gravity and intelligence and wit.

And we found you.

In lieu of that, you asked me.

So I appreciate it.

So on this week's show, because it's such a big week, we're really just going to focus on two topics.

First, two highly complicated and charged topics.

First, the synagogue murders in Pittsburgh by an anti-Semite galvanized by alt-right rhetoric,

the attempted assassinations of the president's political opponents by a deranged supporter of his,

the president's own violent rhetoric and winking at violence.

And so we're going to talk about have we crossed into some terrifying new territory in American political life.

And then, of course, we're going to talk about the midterms there. Tuesday, the very

consequential election that we're facing. What does it look like to experts like David and

John? What might happen? And how should we as citizens deal with the the policy of distraction of

...