As a campaign reporter, I hear it all the time: “Hey, what’s actually happening with the elections?”

It’s said with a sense of regret, and a little shame, like promising your partner that you will set up that dentist appointment as soon as this episode of “House Hunters” is over.

News, political news especially, is gushing in an unstoppable stream of alerts and BREAKING chyrons and (yes, already) presidential campaign speculation. It’s easy to be surprised when you’re told that you live in a competitive district and the polls close in five minutes or that there was an upset in an election you didn’t even know was happening.

Why not be informed, instead? That’s my mission in The Trailer, The Washington Post’s new political newsletter that’s all about campaigns and elections — the one in November, and the one that will officially begin with the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3, 2020. (See, you already learned something.)

I’ve been a correspondent at The Post since the summer of 2015, and I covered politics for 10 years before that. The beat has taken me to 49 states (apologies to Hawaii), to party conventions, to diners, to churches and beyond. I try not to spend more than a week at a time in Washington, because the story is usually somewhere else.

In The Trailer, our new newsletter that will begin this month and be delivered on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings, I will report on every development in the midterms and elections further down the horizon. Here’s what you can expect:

  • In-depth reporting on key races and upsets that Washington might not see coming
  • Breaking news about polls, campaign moves, ads and strategy
  • Analysis that will demystify, debunk or simply explain the controversies being launched into the news cycle
  • Interviews with candidates and Q&As with me, led by readers
  • The occasional joke about where someone is or is not running for president

My goal is a newsletter that will ground you in the electoral news of the day, with no distractions or bogus narratives. Please subscribe, and we’ll get started.