welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Monday November 15th

2021 I am John Puffhorts the editor of commentary with me as always executive editor Abe Greenwald

hi Abe hi John senior red of Christine Rose and high Christine and associate editor Noah Rothman

high Noah hi John so the talk of the pun to talker see is this horrible for Joe Biden Washington post ABC

news poll according to which Republicans if the election were held today Republicans would have

a ten point advantage on the question of who should control congress or would you vote for a

Republican or a Democrat in your district this ten point margin and in favor of the Republicans

is the largest in recorded history apparently and just to give you comparison points in 1994 when

Republicans took the house by 52 seats the margin was Republicans plus six in 2010 when they won 63

the margin was Republicans plus seven analysts say that should should this number hold

till the election we're talking about a 60 seat shift in the house toward Republicans and a five

or six seat shift toward Republicans in the Senate Armageddon for Democrats so let's try to unpack

what on earth is going on here so Noah start unpacking okay then sort of a broad broad opening there

right I'll I'll I'll give you a topic as please as they said I'm coffee talk I'll give you a topic

the democratic competency argument is neither an argument nor displays competency

discuss discuss that just that's a reference that dates all of us unfortunately

um so do you think listens that we're lucky and listen to this podcast don't find that reference to

contemporary so please go on so um in the effort to compartmentalize the existential threat that

is looming for Democrats the Washington Post conducted a series of interviews with democratic

operators people close to Joe Biden all the you know unnamed sources but nevertheless folks in the know

and all of them seem seem to believe that these problems are sort of entropic they've sort of

been imposed on them by forces outside their control and fortunately they will be mitigated by

...