When I call up Jonathan last from over at the bulwark, I think I know what to expect,

and it's usually not optimism.

You know what, hedge funds, they have a lot of people who do, like, risk management,

and their job is to, like, sit around and think about all the ways that everything could go terribly wrong.

That's you.

I feel like that in an alternate life.

That could have been me.

So I'm the guy who sits around thinking about tail risk.

JVL, as his friends call him, is the king of worst-case scenarios.

Like just a few months after January 6th, he predicted Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president four years later.

So it struck me that a few weeks back, JVR.R.

wrote this article about this year's midterms,

and he titled it, Dear Panicrats, you're going to win.

So I asked JVL to come on the show and explain himself.

I just think objectively, Democrats are likely to do well in the House and that it's not impossible

that Republicans could try to steal that election. And we can talk about that if you want.

But that even if they did, that's a fight Democrats should welcome.

So I just want to, I want to clarify what you're saying there.

You're saying you wrote this piece after the Supreme Court said,

gerrymandering is cool.

And you were like, yeah, this is happening, but stop panicking.

Just looking around at the objective reality, $4.50 is the national average for gas,

...