What if we just open?

Nurdcast or the long sigh?

Maybe it's time.

Hello listeners, and welcome to another episode of Politico's Nurdcast. I'm Scott Bland, your host. Hello, primary between Elizabeth Warren and Pete Budajaj, who are competing for the top spot in Iowa,

and also competing over who is running the most transparent influence-free campaign.

We'll break down what they've been saying, why they're doing this, and critically just how much it might matter as we barrel toward Iowa.

But first, we've got something of a Nightmare Before Christmas scenario brewing in Washington.

A long December.

Impeachment has tensions running high,

but there's the small matter of keeping the government open

and not furloughing federal employees over the holidays. Maybe this year will be better than last.

And there's a big trade deal and a big prescription drug bill in the House that has sewed

some division among

Democrats so a lot going on not very much time to do it and all this with inter-party

tensions running higher than perhaps ever. So we're going to talk to a political

White House reporter and our Congress editor to figure out

whether and how this can all actually happen in the next week or two to keep the wheels of government

moving.

Quick note before we get started, we are taping this on Thursday, December 12th,

so if anything notable or breaking happens after that, it will be covered next week.

All right, and with that, we're going to jump right into that first segment the nightmare before Christmas and with us to talk about it we have

Political political White House reporter Nancy Cook. Nancy, thank you so much for being here.

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