The “Little Ditty About Mitch and Elaine” Edition

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On this week’s Slate Political Gabfest, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao’s conflicts of interest, partisanship in state legislatures, and YouTube’s radicalizing recommendation algorithm.

Here are some of the links and references from this week’s show:

• Michael Forsythe, Eric Lipton, Keith Bradsher and Sui-Lee Wee for the New York Times: “A ‘Bridge’ to China, and Her Family’s Business, in the Trump Cabinet”
• Tucker Doherty and Tanya Snyder for Politico: “Chao Created Special Path for McConnell’s Favored Projects”
• Johnathan Rauch for the Atlantic: “How American Politics Went Insane”
• Timothy Williams for the New York Times: “With Most States Under One Party’s Control, America Grows More Divided”
• Kevin Roose for the New York Times: “The Making of a YouTube Radical”

Here are this week’s cocktail chatters:

• Emily: Christine Cole Biederman’s forthcoming piece about Backpage.com in Wired
• John: “Chuck Jones’ 9 Rules for Drawing Road Runner Cartoons, or How to Create a Minimalist Masterpiece”
• David: Tina Jordan for the New York Times: “When the World’s Most Famous Mystery Writer Vanished”
• Listener chatter from Ben Hopkins @benhopkinsmusic: “O’Donnell’s Laws of Cartoon Motion”

For this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Emily, David, and John consider how they would remake the U.S. government if they could keep only two of the following and had to reconstitute the others with a national convention:
• The states and the idea of the federal system
• The Constitution
• The Supreme Court
• The presidency
• The House of Representatives
• The Senate
• The Electoral College

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Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank. Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap.