The Daily - Plexiglass and Civility: The Vice-Presidential Debate

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

During most campaigns, the job of the vice-presidential candidates focuses on boosting the person heading the ticket. Proving their suitability for the top job is secondary.But this year is different. The president is 74 and spent much of the past week in the hospital, and his Democratic rival is 77. So it was vital for their running mates, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris, to show in Wednesday night’s debate that they would be capable of stepping up if necessary.We speak to Alexander Burns, a Times national political correspondent, about the candidates’ strategies and whether anything new emerged four weeks before the election.Guest: Alexander Burns, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: The back-and-forth between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris was more civil than the unruly presidential event, but featured sharp exchanges over the coronavirus, China policy, job creation and health care.Here are six takeaways from the night.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. With the vice presidential debates just days away, all eyes are on the number twos. After a chaotic presidential debate last week. Mike Pence and Kamala Harris are set to face off in what is being considered one of the most important VP debates in history. And the president's hospitalization with the coronavirus. President Trump's illness is a stark reminder of the stakes for the debate.

They would be second in line behind men who are in their 70s. The vice presidential nominees faced off on Wednesday night in Salt Lake City. The important question is going to be, who do you trust to take over the presidency? Should one of these people at the top of the ticket be unable to do it? We watch, as usual, with national political correspondent Alex Burns. It's Thursday, October 8th. Alex, good morning.

Good morning. Good morning. That was a regular old debate, and therefore it was very refreshing. It really was. It was much more of an actual exchange of views and an actual clash over records than we got from the presidential debate last week. an actual clash over records than we got from the presidential debate last week. It was much more normal as just a viewing experience, as a political experience. And I think it's not going too far to say that it's probably more useful to the average voter rather than the kind of just barroom fight that we had last week. Right. And less emotionally traumatic. Right.

You know, we had a lively debate on our team about whether we were going to cover the vice presidential debate. Vice presidential debates are always a little bit up in the air in terms of their importance and their influence. But then events changed how we were thinking about it because they seemed to very much change the stakes of a vice presidential debate. They really did. I mean, if you ever needed a reminder about the stakes of choosing a number two in a world where no matter who the next president is, it's going to be a guy over 70 and perhaps quite close to 80, we really got that over the last week with President Trump's infection with the coronavirus. So what exactly were the stakes going into this?

I mean, last week you told us that the presidential debate was about Donald Trump needing to change the subject away from the pandemic. This was before, as you said, he tested positive for COVID-19. And it was about Biden trying to seal the deal, given his lead in the polls. What was this debate, the vice presidential debate, about? You know, clearly there was no way tonight that Mike Pence was going to be able to change the subject from the coronavirus. Just the last week has made that totally impossible for Republicans. So I think the task for him was, can you stabilize the Republican ticket in an atmosphere of really extreme chaos on the Republican side, where you have the president ill, hospitalized, out of the hospital, blowing up COVID relief talks, popping off about different

potential medical treatments. This is not a recipe for success for the party. So can Pence deliver a different kind of message trajectory for the party for the close of this campaign? And what about Kamala Harris? You know, I think for Senator Harris, it was a somewhat different task. I think unlike Joe Biden, she's not really in a position to close the deal overall with the American electorate. She's not the top of the ticket, even though at some point the expectation is that she probably might be. So for her, it's, can you really hold the course? Can you keep the focus on the administration and its failures on the pandemic and not give any ground on the stuff where you know Mike Pence is going to

come after you? So it's a little bit boring to put the challenge for her in these terms, but just can you hold steady in a race where you're already winning? Good evening. From the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, welcome to the first and only vice president's debate of 2020. So let's talk about what happened as the debate gets underway. Please welcome California Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence. So you have the candidates take the stage on what was a pretty typical debate set, with the exception of two big plexiglass reminders of the events of the last few days in the White House and the president's health. These are shields that are set up on either side of the two candidates in order

ostensibly to protect them from infecting each other, although there's some question as to whether, because of the nature of how the virus is transmitted, they would serve anything like that purpose. The two campaigns and the Commission on presidential debates have agreed to the ground rules for tonight. I'm here to enforce them. The moderator Susan Page sets up the event and makes it quite clear from the outset that they plan to have a different kind of event than the debate last week. We want a debate that is lively, but Americans also deserve a discussion that is civil. So Page says there are going to be nine themes and she starts with the obvious one, the big one. Senator Harris, the coronavirus is not under control. What would a Biden administration do in January and February that a Trump administration

wouldn't do? Would you impose new lockdowns for businesses and schools and hotspots, a federal mandate to wear masks. You have two minutes to respond without interruption. Thank you, Susan. This is the moment, I think, the lead-off question where Senator Harris probably got as close as she did throughout the night to that moment that a lot of Democrats were clearly hoping for. Well, the American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. She really aggressively prosecuted the case about the administration's failings on the pandemic in a blunt, memorable way.

And here are the facts. 210,000 dead people in our country in just the last several months. Over 7 million people who have contracted this disease. One in five businesses closed. And here's the thing. On January 28th, the vice president and the president were informed about the nature of this pandemic. They were informed that it's lethal in consequence, that it is airborne, that it will affect young people,

and they knew what was happening and they didn't tell you. I think that set the table for the rest of the debate in an important way because it set Pence on the defensive. Before there were more than five cases in the United States, all people who had returned from China. President Donald Trump did what no other American president had ever done, and that was he suspended all travel from China, the second largest economy. He was awfully selective in his defense of the administration's record and how it has handled the pandemic. With that time, we were able to reinvent testing. More than 115 million tests have been done to date. From the start, it's pretty clear that Mike Pence is going to try

not to address head-on just how dire the condition in the country is. Alex, Pence did something quite interesting in his defense of the Trump administration. He turned to Kamala Harris and said, The difference here is President Trump and I trust the American people to make choices in the best interest of their health. You don't trust Americans when it comes to their public health in this pandemic. We trust Americans. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris consistently talk about mandates and not just mandates with the

coronavirus, but a government takeover of health care, the Green New Deal, all government control. We're about freedom and respecting the freedom of the American people. This is a line of attack that I think in a lot of situations Republicans have found successful for them. It's a cousin of, you know, the line that you often hear from Republicans about taxes, that we should cut taxes because you can spend your money better than the government can. Just this distrust of government. From all the public opinion research that we have done at the Times and that we've seen in this campaign, it's actually not a winning hand on the coronavirus, that the American electorate does want to see government take bigger steps. And in a situation where the majority of the country

thinks that the federal government and president have mishandled the pandemic, I just don't know that it scans for voters to claim that criticizing the government is actually criticizing the American people. Let's talk about respecting the American people. You respect the American people when you tell them the truth. Alex, were you surprised in this moment or anywhere in the debate that Harris didn't use this as an opportunity to talk about President Trump contracting the virus, to accuse him of being reckless and endangering other people's health at that White House event or at the rallies he's held, or to talk about the way in which he has,

since he was infected, downplayed the danger of the virus. That never came up at all from Kamala Harris. It didn't. And it's definitely a pretty notable omission. I think there's a lot of sensitivity on the Democratic side about not wanting to do or say anything that might be seen as a low blow against an ailing president. the irresponsibility of the White House, holding these maskless rallies, these big gatherings where people are clearly not following public health guidance without making it sound like the president got what he had coming to him. But I do think that is the implication that Democrats were concerned about, that there are a lot of ways to make the case that the president has mishandled the coronavirus without getting potentially into the territory where you

seem to be taking advantage of the president being sick. So then we get to an exchange about the economy. And I want to talk about what happened there, because it was a very interesting set of exchanges. But America, you just heard Senator Harris tell you, on day one, Joe Biden's going to raise your taxes. It's really remarkable to think. I mean, right after a time where we're going through a pandemic that lost 22 million jobs at the height, we've already added back 11.6 million jobs because we had a president who cut taxes, rolled back regulation. This is where it gets a little more directly contentious between the two of them, where you start to see Vice President Pence try to be more on the offensive, more assertive. And if the entire COVID section is really about the vice president

struggling to defend a record that is widely regarded as a failure for this administration, the economy is really the one remaining point of relative strength for the president and the Republican Party. We literally have spared no expense to help the American people and the American worker through this. Pence makes the claim that the administration has spared no expense to try to put businesses and workers back on their feet. That is obviously not true based on what we've seen the last couple of days with the president blowing up talks on the Hill for additional COVID economic relief to individuals and businesses. But that is the claim that the vice president makes. Well, I mean, we saw enough of it in last week's debate, but I think this is supposed to be a debate based on fact and truth. And the truth and the fact is Joe Biden has been very clear.

He will not raise taxes on anybody who makes less than $400,000 a year. He said he's going to repeal the Trump tax cuts. Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking. I'm speaking. It would be important if you said the truth. Joe Biden has said twice in the debate last week that he's going to repeal the Trump tax cuts. That was tax cuts that gave the average working family $2,000 in a tax break every single year. Senator, that's the math. That is absolutely not true. Democrats have made a very deliberate choice not to try to have a fight in this election about universal tax increases.

Joe Biden has pledged over and over that he will not raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. that he will not raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. So trying to really shift the argument about who should be paying more in the direction of people who are very affluent and big corporations. That's how Joe Biden thinks about the economy, which is it's about investing in the people of our country as opposed to passing a tax bill, which had the benefit of letting American corporations go offshore to do their business. But they have both in the past expressed openness to broader tax increases and a full rollback of the Trump tax cuts. And that's the space that Pence really tries to go on the attack. Is he only going to repeal part of the Trump tax cuts? If you don't mind letting me finish, we can then have a conversation.

Okay? Please. Okay. It's also where you see Senator Harris sort of turn these moments somewhat to, I think, her advantage in highlighting that the vice president is talking over her and saying quite firmly, I'm still speaking. I would like to finish. It's the kind of line drawing that we did not see Joe Biden particularly attempt last week, let alone succeed in against a very different kind of adversary. We'll be right back. Okay, so Alex, next up in the debate is climate change. And Vice President Pence, I'd like to pose the first question to you.

This year we've seen record-setting hurricanes in the South. Another one, Hurricane Delta, is now threatening the Gulf. It felt like that quickly became a set of appeals to swing states. Do you believe, as the scientific community has concluded, that man-made climate change has made wildfires bigger, hotter, and more deadly, and have made hurricanes wetter, slower, and more damaging. You have two minutes uninterrupted. Thank you, Susan.

Well, first, I'm very proud of our record on the environment and on conservation. This is just one of the most enormous gulfs between the two political parties, and between these two tickets in particular, that you have the Trump administration that has largely rejected climate science generally and the specific policies that past administrations have developed to fight climate change and the Democratic ticket, which is promising to put climate change at the front of their agenda. Now, with regard to climate change, the climate is changing, but the issue is what's the cause and what do we do about it? President Trump has made it clear that we're going to continue to listen to the science.

Mike Pence tries to take this global crisis of an issue, and he's asked. Vice President Pence, do you believe that climate change poses an existential threat? As I said, Susan, the climate is changing. We'll follow the science. And turn that vast issue into a much narrower subject, which is fracking. But the both of you repeatedly committed to abolishing fossil fuel and banning fracking. And the development of certain kinds of energy resources in specifically the state of Pennsylvania and a couple other general election swing states. And this is a place where there is some political peril for the Democrats. Right. With regard to banning fracking, I just recommend that people look at the record. You yourself said repeatedly that you would ban fracking.

You were the first Senate co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. But Senator Harris did say during the primary that she wants to get rid of fracking, that Joe Biden has said that over the long term he wants to get rid of fossil fuel. I don't know that it is the slam dunk issue that Vice President Pence imagines it to be in the context of a conversation on climate change. I think voters are very concerned about their own economic well-being, but we also see on a pretty convincing scale, really acute concern about the implications of global warming, the natural disasters it creates, the hardship that it will create in people's lives and their children and grandchildren's lives. And so when we see Pence take an issue of that size and narrow

it down to essentially the size of central Pennsylvania, it does tell you something about the ground that he is and is not willing to fight on and the vulnerability that the administration has on the overarching issue. Well, I do want to talk more about the political risks to Democrats when it comes to fracking, because during the primary, our colleague Shane Goldmacher reported here on the show that with Pennsylvania being such a key swing state and with many voters in Pennsylvania being so opposed to a ban on fracking, that if a Democratic candidate were to oppose fracking, ever really, it would drive voters who might have otherwise supported that candidate to Donald Trump. And so it seems like what you have here is Mike Pence being very aware of that reality and very aware of the polls in Pennsylvania and trying to convince Americans that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are those kinds of Democrats. I think that's exactly

right. I think the context of the last week is important, that we saw Joe Biden, after that first presidential debate, take that train ride from northeast Ohio into central Pennsylvania through a number of towns in Pennsylvania that are the kind of places that used to vote Democrat, voted Republican in 2016, and where Biden is trying to get back some of those working class, blue collar, white voters, especially women without college degrees, and cut into President Trump's margin in more conservative parts of the state. The fracking issue is the kind of thing Republicans turn to in those places to try to say, you know, whatever your reservations may be about President Trump. And however avuncular and charming you may find Joe Biden, he's going to come and take your job. Well, we also heard Kamala Harris respond to this. So first of all, I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact. Saying very, very clearly and over and over again, we will not ban fracking. Joe Biden will not end fracking. He has been very clear about that. So it's not like she wasn't taking the political risk seriously, right? Not at all.

And I think one of the patterns that we saw throughout the debate was really a total willingness on the part of Senator Harris to disavow the furthest left positions that she took during the Democratic primary. That's not necessarily abnormal. The top of the ticket sets the agenda. That's always the case. And Joe Biden has always campaigned as a centrist. But I do think that it's an important signal about what kind of administration they would have and what kind of vice president she would be. You didn't have a moment of, you know, Joe and I see this differently, but, you know, his opinion is the one that matters right now, that she was very emphatic about trying to reassure voters in the middle that whatever the other folks may be saying about us, no, we're not these radical figures.

So, Alex, the debate then turns to the Supreme Court and a very pointed question that not for the first time in this debate does not get directly answered by either candidate. Right. The question goes first to Mike Pence. Vice President Pence, you're the former governor of Indiana. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, what would you want Indiana to do? Would you want your home state to ban all abortions? You have two minutes. I was stunned that Pence totally ignored that question on the first round.

He talked about a completely different subject. Let me say, President Trump and I could not be more enthusiastic about the opportunity to see Judge Amy Coney Barrett become Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Or at least not the subject of abortion, just long tribute to Judge Barrett. She's a brilliant woman, and she will bring a lifetime of experience and a sizable American family to the Supreme Court of the United States. Mike Pence is the most prominent Christian conservative in the country. Overturning Roe and restricting or banning abortion has been a lifelong cause for him.

And when he eventually did get around to sort of partially addressing the question, he was actually asked, I'm pro-life. I don't apologize for it. He just said he's pro-life and he's proud of it. He's never hidden that. That's not an answer to the question of whether you would ban abortion. And it's the second time in two weeks that we have seen a member of the Republican ticket back away from the implications of overturning Roe. In the presidential debate last week, when Joe Biden said that Roe versus Wade was on the ballot, the president cut in and said, you know, essentially, no, it's not. What do you know? There's nothing happening there. What do you think that's about?

Well, it's just an amazing thing to me as a political reporter because religious conservatives are such a foundational part of the Republican coalition. But as a large-scale political decision, it makes a lot of sense. Banning abortion is not popular. Most voters want abortion to be either always legal or mostly legal. And the idea of just straight up saying what you probably do believe in your heart, that yes, of course you would love to see abortion banned in most or all cases, is not a political winner, especially in an election where you're already losing women by just titanic margins. When you speak about the Supreme Court, though, I think the American people really deserve

an answer, Senator Harris. It's during this period that Mike Pence poses a question to his opponent, kind of bypasses the moderator. Are you and Joe Biden going to pack the court if Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed? I mean, there have been 29 vacancies on the Supreme Court during presidential election years from George Washington to Barack Obama. Presidents have nominated in all 29 cases. But your party is actually openly advocating adding seats to the Supreme Court, which has had nine seats for 150 years. And we don't get an answer from Senator Harris. Let's talk about that.

You once again gave a non-answer. Joe Biden gave a non-answer. Joe Biden gave a non-answer. I'm trying to answer you now. We've not gotten an answer from her. We've not gotten an answer from Vice President Biden. Would they try to restructure, add justices to the Supreme Court if Republicans go through with this appointment, which to all appearances they are prepared to do? And if you haven't figured it out yet, the straight answer is they are going to pack the Supreme Court if they somehow win this election. Men and women, I got to tell you, people across this country, if you cherish our Supreme Court, if you cherish the separation of powers, you need

to reject the Biden-Harris ticket. What do you think Mike Pence was up to there? Because I saw that as an interesting way of signaling to conservative voters, perhaps in a way he didn't in his answer on abortion, that we are your people when it comes to the sanctity of this court and of issues like abortion. And so this is why you need to be voting for us. I think there are two parts to it, and I think that's one of them. I think on top of that, the hope among Republicans is that the idea of adding justices to the Supreme Court will just sound radical or kind of outlandish to some of those moderate voters out there who have generally not voted for Democrats, but who are leaning that way this time. And it's part of, I think, the larger story that you are seeing Republicans

try to spin about the Democratic ticket, that despite all outward appearances that Joe Biden is this mainstream, relatively centrist, you know, bipartisan-oriented guy, he is actually secretly preparing to do some really drastic stuff. Alex, why won't either Harris or Biden answer that question about whether they will add justices to the court if they can? You know, the stated rationale for not answering is that they want to keep the focus on the Barrett appointment at hand and what they see as an illegitimate Republican process to rush through a justice at the 11th hour. And I think they're right that if they were to say, we do want to add justices to the Supreme Court, it would change the focus away from that. But part of this is also, you

know, they have internal Democratic Party politics of their own. There are a lot of Democrats who feel pretty strongly that the president has gotten away with stacking the judiciary in ways that cannot be tolerated and that they are going to need to do something drastic. Joe Biden has never said that he's for that. In fact, during the Democratic primary, he said he was against it. Senator Harris told me in an interview, actually, that she was absolutely open to doing that. But we've not heard her reiterate that recently. So I think for them, there is this balancing act of they don't want to alienate moderate voters. They also don't want to send a demoralizing signal to their own party that if they did end up with a very right-wing Supreme Court, they would unilaterally disarm is the way I think a lot of folks on the left would see it. Finally, Alex, the debate ends exactly where the last one ended, with the question of the integrity of the election.

President Trump has several times refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of integrity of the election. President Trump has several times refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of power after the election. And the moderator, Susan Page, actually builds off of where the last debate concluded. If Vice President Biden is declared the winner and President Trump refuses to accept a peaceful transfer of power, what would be your role and responsibility as vice president? What would you personally do? With President Trump refusing to say that he would accept the results. So tell us about that exchange. You know, it doesn't go a whole lot further than the exchange that we saw

in the presidential debate last week. Well, Susan, first and foremost, I think we're going to win this election. You know, Vice President Pence is much more agile as a communicator than President Trump, but we didn't see him go further than the president in reassuring the American people that, yes, of course, we have faith in the results of the election. And of course, we will abide by the results. Right. I have every confidence that those same Americans that delivered that historic victory in 2016, they see this president's record. They see this president's record. I think he has made it clear at other times in the past that he doesn't want to go as far as the president in withholding support for the basic transfer of power that Americans expect to see. But the president's not said that.

And the president is Mike Pence's boss. start to finish in this debate, and I think really bookended quite effectively with his opening answer on the coronavirus, his closing answer on the legitimacy of the election. We just saw that Mike Pence is not putting daylight between him and his boss. And now Hillary Clinton has actually said to Joe Biden that under, in her words, under no circumstances should he concede the election. So let me just say, I think we're going to win this election. President Trump and I are fighting every day in courthouses to prevent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from changing the rules and creating this universal mail-in voting that will create a massive opportunity for voter fraud. And we have a free and fair election. We know we're going to have confidence in it. And I believe in all my heart that President Donald Trump is going to be reelected for four more years. You know, we didn't hear from Senator Harris some big dramatic denunciation of the vice president's answer or of the president's conduct. The way we have heard from her and other Democrats in other settings, what we heard from her instead was this very specific encouragement to people that they got to get out and vote.

has a deep, deep-seated commitment to fight for our democracy and to fight for the integrity of our democracy and to bring integrity back to the White House. And so we believe in the American people. We believe in our democracy. And here's what I'd like to say to everybody. Vote. And I do think that that is really where the conversation is among Democratic leaders at this point, That, you know, if the president is going to make these far-fetched claims about the election, that the way you blunt the impact of that in the days after November 3rd is that you build a big enough lead that he cannot plausibly question it. And finally, for real, I think it would really disappoint listeners if I didn't acknowledge the fly that was sitting on Vice President Pence's hair for, I believe, over two minutes straight during the debate. I mean, I don't know about you, but I ended up reaching for my computer screen and thinking it was a fly on my screen and smudging it and realizing it was actually his.

And I don't know that there's that much to say about it, but I just want to acknowledge that it happened. It was a really remarkable cameo appearance. I do think the fact that so many people, including us, are talking about it tells you something about maybe how memorable the rest of the debate was and how likely it is to sort of endure in the minds of the electorate. But yeah, the fly moment is going to be with us for a long time. Alex, thank you very much and have a good morning. Thank you. The second presidential debate is next week on October 15th, a town hall style debate

in Miami. We hope you'll join us then. Good evening. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. New York's attempt to crack down on coronavirus hotspots produced an angry backlash on Wednesday as hundreds of Orthodox Jewish men in Brooklyn staged demonstrations in which they set fires and burned masks in protest. And I don't care who in government thinks that they can stop us. They won't let them try. The protests were a response to new rules announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo

that would severely limit how many people can gather at houses of worship in neighborhoods where the outbreaks have emerged, many of which have large Jewish populations. To the extent there are communities that are upset, that's because they haven't been following the original rules. And that's why the infection spread, because they weren't following the rules. And the rules weren't being enforced. During a conference call, Cuomo defended the new rules and said that they would remain in place for at least two weeks.

and said that they would remain in place for at least two weeks. And President Trump has returned to the Oval Office over the objections of aides who had wanted him to remain isolated in his White House residence while recovering from the coronavirus. Aides who are expected to come into close contact with the president have been advised to wear personal protective equipment, including a gown and gloves. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.