Everybody welcome. I'm three things today. I am the host of this program. Next up, Mark Elprin.

I'm the editor-in-chief of the live interactive video platform two-way, and I'm fired up about the reported monologue and our guest.

Tell you about our guests in just a minute. I'm fired up at the monologue because everybody's talking about the midterm elections, what's going to happen in the midterms, what's happening now

that could influence that. And I think I've solved it for you and for me. A lot of talk to

Democratic and Republican strategists this week. And I think I got it figured out at least as much

as anybody can. So excited to share that. We later in the

program, we're going to be joined by my MK Media colleague, Maureen Callahan. She's kind of a genius

about everything. You know her work at the Daily Mail and here on this network on her show, The Nerve.

We're going to break down the award season, talk Oscars, talk Justin Baldoni, Blake

lively, and so much more. Looking forward to visiting with Maureen. But first, we'll start with

some political, my reported monologue on why Republicans are now sweating the midterms. This has been

a kind of an evolution leading up to the big election that they had in Texas

over the weekend where a Democrat won a state legislative contest in a very Republican district,

a district that President Trump had done well. Up until that point, the conventional wisdom

was that Republicans were probably going to

lose the House, but maybe had a chance to keep the majority. They've got a narrow majority now,

and that they'd probably keep the Senate. So control would switch in January to Democrats,

controlling the House, Republicans controlling the Senate. That was the conventional wisdom before.

Okay.

And then this election happened.

And people started, even before that election, because the president's poll numbers,

because of some other factors we'll talk about, people started to say, no, any chance Republicans

...