I'm just anxious to get started because as anybody who's done something like this before knows the worst part is the anticipation and the buildup and you really just want to get rolling.

Hello, nerd casters. I'm Scott Bland, your host. And here we are tonight's the night that

Politico is co-hosting a Democratic presidential primary debate with PBS News Hour. And we're in Los Angeles this week talking to folks involved in the making of the debate.

Today we've got political reporters Ryan Liza

What's your favorite color and Laura Barone Lopez?

I always say purple but it's probably black.

As well as Tim Alberta, Tim is the chief political correspondent for Politico magazine who will be moderating

on Thursday night.

I am going to be co-moderating along with three of these superstars at PBS,

Judy Woodruff, Amna Navas, and Yamish,

Yamish Alsendor, trying to find out who these candidates for

President really are and tell us all something new about them after almost a year of watching

them on the trail.

You know, this is, I've covered a handful of

presidential campaigns now this is certainly a different spot for me to be

sitting in because typically I am out on the trail, you know, running between high school gymnasiums and pizza

ranch restaurants and you know watching them work small crowds and then climbing

to the backseat of a car with them for a few minutes if I'm lucky and you know that's the way I have covered campaigns in the past and this is certainly a little bit of a different situation for me to be under the bright lights, magazine

writers and print journalists in general aren't usually the ones put in this position to be

asking questions in front of a nationally televised audience.

So I'm just going to try and keep up with the PBS folks and not screw it up too badly.

One big thing about tonight is how we're making this different from other debates.

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