Oh man, so every time that I tell my friends and family that I am playing Bernie Sanders on the mock debate stage,

they ask me for an impression and I'm sorry I'm going to tell you what I tell them, which is absolutely not.

Hello, nerdcasters.

I'm Scott Bland, your host.

And you're listening to the first episode of a special daily series

we're doing ahead of Thursday's Democratic presidential

primary debate which PBS news hour and political are co-hosting. To help us with

this episode we've enlisted several of Politico's 2020 beat reporters.

I'm Elena Schneider and I cover Pete Buttiges.

My name is Holly Adderbine and I cover 2020 and Bernie Sanders.

My name is Zach Montelero.

I'm a campaign reporter here at Politico.

I am Tom Styer for the mock debate and I'm about

two billion dollars poorer than he is. My name is Alex Thompson. I'm the Warren B reporter.

Natasha Kerecki, I'm a political correspondent. I cover Biden slash Iowa slash Midwest.

My name's Eugene Daniels and I cover the Andrew Yang campaign.

I'm Mark Caputo and I'm playing Amy Klobishar in the mock debate.

We had mock debates to prepare Politico's moderator Tim Alberta along with the PBS News Hour team.

And in this episode we're peeling back the curtain a little bit on the process of preparing for this debate.

Let's kick it off with your first question.

Good evening.

A kind of fun.

...