You ready?

I was born ready.

Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isger asking which

vice presidential debate did a vice presidential debate just happen because there's already more

news, Sarah. It's already receding. It's already so far in the review mirror. I don't

know if I can see it, but because we're thorough and because we care about American civics,

we are going to talk at least a little bit about the vice presidential debate. We've got a lot

to cover. We're going to talk about what are the political implications of the president

apparently, possibly backing out of the next presidential debate. We're going to talk about

any lingering questions or hangovers related to the campaign on the vice presidential debate.

We're going to give you a preview of the Amy Coney Barrett hearings. We're going to talk about the

court packing debate and why I think the Democrats politically are smart not to commit one way or

the other on this. And then we're going to end by asking a question that so many of us have asked

for so long, Sarah, what's the matter with Texas? We got some problems this week, man.

You got some problems down there in the Lone Star State, but we're not getting ahead of ourselves.

Let's start with the big news. I remember we finished a dispatch live last night and let me just

use that as an opportunity to say I'll remind everyone this wonderful marvelous podcast is, but

the smallest portion of the fantastic offerings of the dispatch found at the dispatch.com. So check

us out. But we got off a dispatch live last night, which for those who don't know it's a members

event that we hold live video analysis of the debate. And there was kind of an assumption that the

president was going to make some news probably today that kind of stomped all over any lingering

effect of the VP debate where frankly Mike Pence did pretty well. And I didn't know it was going

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