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