from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, October 18th.

Happy to have Errol Lewis back with us, political anchor for Spectrum News New York One,

host of their podcast, You

Decide, and a New York magazine columnist, will talk mostly about the crucial races for Congress

in the New York City suburbs on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley and the one in New Jersey

between Tom Kane Jr. and Democrats, Sue Altman. As you know, control of Congress may be weirdly in historical

terms runs through the New York area this year. This week, Errol moderated a debate between two

candidates in the Hudson Valley District, New York 18. That's Newburgh, Kingston, Poughkeepsie,

Middletown, Newport's all around there, very much a swing district.

Freshman Democrat Pat Ryan is the incumbent running against Republican, Alison Esposito.

Errol also has a New York magazine column that just came out urging Democrats not to panic about the

state of the Harris campaign. Some per media media reports, are. One theme will discuss

on the congressional races. Candidates from both parties seem to largely be running toward the

middle as fast as they can. But where is the middle? And what positions are they holding onto

that actually make them different from the other candidate and different

from the other party. Errol always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC. Great to be with you, Brian.

You want to start with your New York Magazine column on Democrats panicking over the Harris campaign?

Who's panicking as you see it, and why? Oh, yeah. Listen, there are a lot of people,

and I'm sure it includes a lot of your listeners, Brian, who obsessively follow this stuff.

They get, you know, caught in this loop, this doom loop, where every half-point change in the

national polls, you know, things that are really irrelevant to the final outcome.

Or, you know, they might be of mild interest to super nerds.

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