the question now is what does that mean for the party, how avoidable is this, how is it tied to the current legislative agenda, and what do democrats have to do in the next year to avoid blistering midterm losses. fernando mandy is a pollster based in florida and he joins me now. first let s start on the kind of provocation here, which is that all of this stuff is basically the nature, the structural means that you ve got each parties bases around 40 45%, and the independents kind the swing against two evers empower. so you end up with what these numbers look like. when you think about that as a theory? you know chris, i think there is some truth of that but fundamentally what makes this different in the historical aberrational stance, maybe those patterns were consistent. i think facing right now the problem with the covid-19 pandemic, which is according to
they re doing it as the president s approval rating, which is the best predictor of future electoral performance, has gone to about 45%. that s about what you saw with barack obama and bill clinton. the question now is what does that mean for the party? how avoidable is this? how is it tied to the current legislative agenda and what do the democrats have to do in the next year to avoid blistering midterm losses. fernando is a democratic pollster based in florida. let s start with the kind of provocation here, which is that all of this stuff is structural and it doesn t really matter what the party does. that basically, the structural polarization of american politics means you ve got each party s base is around 40, 45%, then the independents tend to swing against whoever s in power. what do you think of that as a theory? chris, i think there s some truth to that, but fundamentally, what makes this