Welcome to Beg to Beg to Differ, the Bullworks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I'm

Mona Charon, syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwork, and I'm joined by our regulars,

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal, Damon Linker of the Week,

and Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center.

Our special guest this week is Eric Aileman,

former top diplomat and Pentagon official,

and the host of a new podcast that is the joint venture of the Bulwark and the University of Virginia's Miller Center.

It is called Shield of the Republic and the joint hosts are Eric Edelman and Elliot

Cone.

So we're going to start this week with the political lay of the land.

There have been a large number of polling results recently

that show that President Biden is really losing

altitude, most particularly among independence and Hispanics.

A survey even by the Senate Democrats,

PAC, has found really worrying evidence of his unpopularity and of course this comes in the

midst of the continuing dysfunction. So I want to start with Damon Linker

about the Virginia Governor's race in particular,

because it gives us, I think, a kind of a symbol of what is happening nationally

because you have Terry McAuliffe attempting to paint Glenn

Yunkin as Trump Trump, Trump. attempting to paint Glenn

young can as Trump Trump Trump and meanwhile Trump is not on the ballot has not

interfered too much in the Virginia race and it looks like the Republicans are poised to make a real

...