Transcript of Nate Silver's chat with his staff @ FiveThirtyEight.com, April 12

[....] So, first up: How would you describe the political environment right now? (And does that even matter for what happens in a year and a half?)

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Cloudy with a chance of landslide. An anti-Trump/GOP landslide, that is.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): President Trump’s approval numbers, at least right now, are bad. George W. Bush in 2006 or Barack Obama 2014 bad. That is not good for Republicans.

harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Yeah, the environment is not Republican friendly. It often isn’t friendly to the president’s party in the lead up to a midterm, but this is really bad. The president’s approval rating is just 41 percent. That’s the worst ever at this point in a presidency. Then there’s the generic ballot; an average of the generic ballot polls so far has the Republican Party down 6 percentage points. That’s the worst ever for the majority party in Congress at this point.

Now, does that matter? Things shift, but it’s certainly a poor starting position for the GOP.

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): God I want to say something contrarian here. But I don’t think I can, really, given, ya know, reality [.....]