Hello listeners and welcome to Politico's nerdcast. I'm your host Scott Bland.

Coming up this week, it's debate night in America. Well actually that's coming up next week,

but we're going to preview it this week and we have two political reporters who are at this point debate experts.

We're joining us on the show to talk us through all the matchups and what they think is going

to happen on those two Democratic presidential debates next week.

And then we're going to talk to another couple of reporters who were on the road

reporting out a story about sentrists who used to fear Elizabeth Warren who are now kind of

coming around to her as she gains a little bit of momentum in the 2020 presidential race.

And a quick reminder, as always, we are recording this a little bit before noon

eastern on Thursday.

This week, that's June 20th, so it's all up to date as of then.

All right, let's get started.

I want to welcome our guests first,

National Political reporter, Elena Schneider.

Elena, hi, thanks for being here.

Hey Scott.

And if Elaine is talking to Bates, that means, of course,

we've also got morning score newsletter author

Zach Montelaro. Zach we just can't quit you. I snuck in again to two.

All right let's let's dive right in Zach you've been preparing for this moment for weeks.

You've been studying the candidates, you've been studying their polling and their fundraising

and everything, and we finally got the rundown of who, not just who made the stage, but who's

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