Welcome to Current Affairs.

My name is Nathan Robinson.

I'm the editor-of-chief of Current Affairs Magazine.

We are privileged today to be joined by one of the most insightful political analysts in the country,

a refreshing counterpoint to the punditry and wankery of the Ezra Klein-Mad Iglesias, variety.

If you want deep, data-rich political analysis from the left,

you should turn to the Edgermanum newsletter,

which is available on Substack, and it is published by my guest today, who is Joshua Cohen, who is also written for Mother Jones and The Nation.

Joshua Cohen. Welcome to Current Affairs.

Thanks for having me on, and you pronounced that perfectly the first time.

Did I? Oh, thank you.

Yes, you did.

All right, listen, I want to get, When I want to understand what is happening in Washington, what is actually happening,

I turn frequently to your substack.

And so I want you to, if you could, explain to us, let's start with the events of last week or so. We had a major series of

elections in which Democrats triumphed, including Zeran Madani in New York City. And then we had

the end of the government shutdown.

You published a take recently, and I just want to read the tweet that you wrote to a

company it, where you said, by folding on the shutdown, the Democratic Party revealed

themselves to be even worse than just cowardly and inept.

They've shown that they are completely controlled by unelected centrist pundits.

And you wrote an overview of the punditocracy.

...