The following program may contain explicit language.

It's Tuesday, August 4th, 2020, from Slated's The Gist,

Dime Mike Pesca.

The Feep Stakes is a horrible word, and I don't think I'll ever use it again

or ever before.

It's one of those words or phrases they force you into, like sweater weather

for dad and grads.

The choice of a pick of vice president is less consequential this time

than it usually is, and usually it's not really consequential at all.

You can't convey any of this as a pundit, however,

because once the host primes you with that exciting speculative question,

hey, what's your opinion thinking?

It's hard not to respond as if the stakes are high.

The Feep Stakes, if you will, and I most certainly won't, I think, are established.

So there's not a lot of evidence.

In fact, there's almost no evidence that the presidential selection affects anything.

Some stats show that Sarah Palin maybe hurt John McCain a little bit.

But in this case, this year, people are really quite invested in a particular choice,

or really a genre of choice, not because they are trying to convince us

that this will affect the election, but because the people being asked

are often people with an ideology, which is fine.

You get tapped to be a pundit for a number of reasons.

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