The Daily - The V.P.’s Search for a V.P.

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Warning: This episode contains strong language.Although Vice President Kamala Harris has officially been a presidential candidate for only about a week, the race to become her running mate is well underway.Lisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The New York Times, takes us inside the selection process.Guest: Lisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: What’s more exciting than a veepstakes? A surprise veepstakes.Take a look at the leading contenders to be Ms. Harris’s running mate.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, what Vice President Kamala Harris is looking for in a running mate, and the challenge of making that choice in record time. My colleague, national political correspondent Lisa Lair, takes us inside the selection process. It's Tuesday, July 30th. So, Lisa, we turn to you to give us as much insight as possible into a pretty unusual situation, which is the search for a running mate by Kamala Harris, a presidential nominee who, up until a week ago, was herself the running mate.

So she was the thing that she now needs to go out and do fine. That's exactly right. Harris is trying to replace herself in a way on the ticket. And this is so, so unusual. I mean, not only is it unusual to have a woman who is vice president picking her own vice president, but the timeline is just extraordinarily short. Her campaign has said that she's likely to make this decision by August 7th. So that's about, what, 10 days from today or so?

In total, I think this will be about a two, three-week process. And that's just incredibly short to make what's likely to be arguably one of the most consequential decisions of her candidacy. And should she win her presidency? consequential decisions of her candidacy and, should she win, her presidency. Right. And we should say, and you and I know this, we've covered many presidential campaigns and vice presidential searches. Traditionally, this is a process that takes months and months and months. Oh, yeah. This is a process that goes on for quite a long time. Aides and candidates, generally, they start thinking about it during the primary process before

they've necessarily even won the nomination. For example, in 2016, when Hillary Clinton ended up being the nominee, there was reporting that showed she began discussions with her aides about this as early as March, before she even finalized that she had won the primary against Bernie Sanders. And then, of course, Tim Kaine wasn't announced until four months later in July. So this was quite an extended process. And there's vetting and there's interviews and there's trial balloons. And this is a whole serious process that goes on for a really long time. And now the campaign and really the entire country is hyper-driving this in about two weeks.

Right. And we should add that this rapid timeline is dictated by when Democratic delegates are holding a roll call vote to confirm their presidential and vice presidential nomination. But I'm curious, what kind of risk that timeline may introduce into the traditional vetting process for a running mate, a vetting process that takes a long time because it's supposed to take a long time to really vet somebody. Right. This is a process that is designed to mitigate as much risk as possible. And of course, that's impossible in a presidential campaign, given how events can overtake the best laid strategies. But the more time they have to investigate someone, the better. ticket in some way, either because they're unprepared or because there's some skeleton in the closet. So they collect reams of information from each candidate from their legal documents, financial documents. Sometimes they get private investigators to dig into their background. There's a series of interviews with aides, with the candidate themselves.

They vet their policy positions to see where they agree and disagree with the candidate, what they've said in the past. So this is a really deep dive. But this year, it's more like a little polar bear plunge. Right. It just cannot be what it has been in the past, given this timeline. So let's talk about, given those accelerated circumstances, what we understand to be Kamala Harris's criteria, as best we understand it, for a running mate. What she's looking for and what has emerged as her priorities when she picks a number two.

as her priorities when she picks a number two? Well, to start with, I think we should establish here that it's a little more difficult this year for us to get as in this process as it's typically been. Because it's so fast, it's been really tightly held. She doesn't even have a full campaign team. She's inherited the Biden team. Right now, her staff is still figuring out what roles everybody is going to have in this new operation.

So this isn't the sort of normal process where there's a ton of leaks and it all comes out and the circle is really big and we can really get in there. You're saying, Lisa, that this is a hard journalistic undertaking and that we should give you some patience here. Yeah, I think this is, look, VP is always a hard journalistic undertaking because it's something that the campaign wants to announce on their own time and you're trying to figure it out before they're ready to tell you. However, there's usually a lot of people around who hear things, who want to talk. It's a major, you know, Washington rumor mill thing. And what do political people love more than gossip? I have to tell you, not much. But this year, the circle of gossip is a lot smaller, and that makes it

much more speculative than it even normally is. But that being said, we can tell from the names that we've seen coming out one way that certainly Harris and her team are thinking about this. And we are sort of relying a little bit on our own understanding of how this process has worked in the past, which is this idea that you have to balance the ticket. Well, just explain that concept. Well, part of this means doing a careful assessment of what your candidate is and isn't and thinking about how to fill those gaps. So, for example, if you had a candidate who's an older man, you probably want to go with someone younger. If you have a candidate who is from a

liberal state, maybe you want to go with someone from a more conservative state. And the goal of this is to obviously broaden the appeal of the ticket. You don't necessarily want to double down on what you have. You want to find a way to bring more voters into the fold. So let's run this exercise through Harris, which is what we know is part of what her aides and the people around her are doing.

Harris is, of course, a woman. She's, of course, from this very, very liberal state, California, and she's, of course, aides and the people around her are doing. Harris is, of course, a woman. She's, of course, from this very, very liberal state, California. And she's, of course, a Black woman. So what does that mean? And we see what that means from the names that we're hearing are sort of in the top tier of people who are being considered. It means her staff is looking at someone who's maybe from a less liberal state, probably a battleground state. It means they're looking at someone who's maybe from a less liberal state, probably a battleground state. It means they're looking at men. And it means really that what they're looking at is white men. Right. Which is interesting, of course, because that description is quite literally the inverse of what Joe Biden did when looking for a running mate back in 2020 to balance his ticket. He said

by the end of that selection process, I am going to pick a Black woman. Right. And look, they're dealing with really different concerns here. For Biden, it was a question of representing the entire country and more importantly, the entirety of the Democratic Party, which is a really diverse party of which Black voters are a backbone of that party. So his team and the president felt that they had to encompass the entirety of the coalition that they were hoping to win over to get into the White House. For Harris, this is a really different calculation. And part of this calculation is a question of what America is ready for. Is America ready for a ticket that has two women or has two people of color? And the

answer from a lot of Democrats that we hear is no, that that is too risky of a ticket and America will not go there. That one historic first is about as far as the country is willing to go and is the sort of risk that they are willing to take here. So according to that logic, even picking a female running mate

from a battleground state, and here, of course, I'm thinking about someone like Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, probably doesn't make sense if you're focused on balancing the ticket. That's an active debate in the party. And so there's plenty of Democrats who say, let's go big, and that the party should just go for it. Go for two women, do something that would really make a statement about what they think the future of America could be. But then there's a counterside to this. And I think that counterside includes many of people who are in the Harris campaign who say presidential campaigns are about winning, and they're not necessarily about making a statement. And that, as you say, might just

be too risky. We should say that President Trump has made a very different calculation. His strategy, what he thinks is going to win this race, is picking a running mate who is very much himself, looking in the mirror, J.D. Vance, a kind of mini version of Donald Trump, a MAGA, hard right, Republican, and another white dude. That's exactly right. As Trump often does, he threw out the conventional wisdom, you know, on vice presidential picks and doubled down on, as you say, himself and picked in Vance a guy that could really carry the mantle of MAGA Trumpism into a new generation. And frankly, the first few weeks haven't gone all that well. Vance has had a tough debut. He's had a number of awkward public appearances.

I had a diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they're going to call that racist too, but it's good. I love you guys. He's gotten blowback as Democrats have brought out comments that he made years ago. We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. Most centrally, these attacks on childless women and whether they should have the same voting rights as people with kids. You should have more power. You should have more

of an ability to speak your voice in our Democratic Republic than people who don't with kids. You should have more power. You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our Democratic Republic than people who don't have kids. And he's faced criticism not only from Democrats, of course, but even some Republicans who have questioned whether Trump made the right choice here and whether Vance was experienced and tested enough to really be an asset to the Republican Party ticket. For Harris, that means that she is now picking someone with the awareness of the weakness that Vance has brought to the Trump ticket. And she's going to be really looking for someone

who can draw out and highlight those weaknesses and really, if at all possible in her mind, make them more politically detrimental. So in that sense, despite the short timeline, Harris actually has a fair amount of information and perhaps most importantly, an advantage in her effort to select a running mate. We'll be right back.

Lisa, assuming that Vice President Harris has made this untrumpian calculation that balancing the ticket is the best course and that that is her advantage, she's going to exploit it. Talk us through the top contenders who fit that bill, who would balance the ticket according to your reporting and how they help her balance a ticket and what might keep them from getting the job if they don't. So there's a top tier of contenders here who are about five different candidates. And the easiest way to think about it is there's two from swing states and three from non-swing states. And that's a really important distinction because as we know, the presidential race is won or lost in this handful of crucially

important battleground states, about seven of them. So the two from the swing states are Josh Shapiro, who's the governor of Pennsylvania, and Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona. And actually, up until just a few hours ago, there was a third swing state contender, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina, but we just reported tonight that he withdrew his name from consideration. As they say, this is a fluid story. Yes, a very fluid story, at least for the next nine or 10 days. And then in the non-swing state category,

we have Andy Beshear, who's the governor of Kentucky, Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, and Pete Buttigieg, who's the transportation secretary, of course, I'm sure a lot of listeners know from when he ran against Harris in the Democratic primary in 2019. Got it. Okay. So that is a very long list of white men.

Correct. Some from swing states, like you said, some not from swing states. Let's start with the contenders from those battleground states. So why don't we start with the senator on the list, who, of course, is Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. My parents were both cops, and they taught me about public service. Part of what Kelly brings to the ticket is this really compelling personal story. I spent 25 years in the United States Navy as a combat pilot and as an astronaut.

He's a former combat veteran, a former astronaut. He married Gabby Giffords, who at the time was a congresswoman from Arizona. Gabby was injured, shot in the head in 2011, and she suffered a serious traumatic brain injury. And she was shot in an act of political violence several years later in her district. He stood by her side. He's helped her convalesce. He's become an advocate for gun control through that process. So we formed an organization to try to make communities and help communities become safer, you know, safer from gun violence. Also someone from perhaps one of the swingiest of swing states, a deep purple state, that's at the forefront of the political map, not only because of its demographic composition, which includes a lot of Latino voters, but also because it's a border state. When it comes to border security, you know, I've been focused on this. And on immigration, yes, we need comprehensive immigration reform. And he's someone who's really developed a real expertise in

immigration, in the border. You know, when I got to Washington, D.C., one of the first things I realized was that Democrats don't understand this issue. And Republicans just want to talk about it and complain about it, but actually not do anything about it. They just want to politicize that. And that's an area that's seen as a weakness for Vice President Harris. So he could help balance the ticket in that way. So he balances the ticket in both a biographical and a policy way, it seems. That's exactly right. And part of his drawback is actually related to his biggest strength here, which is that he is someone who's known for winning these tough races in these purple states. So pulling him out and putting him on the ticket should Harris win means that

Democrats would have to deal with an open seat in Arizona in a couple of years from now, actually in the midterm elections of what would be the first Harris term. And of course, an open seat is always a harder race to win than a seat where you have a relatively popular incumbent. So the risk is that Harris might pick Kelly and take someone out of the Senate she might need if she were to become president. Exactly right. And they could risk losing that seat in Arizona.

Got it. That leaves us with the other swing state contender on the list, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. Right. So I got a message to Donald Trump. Stop shit-talking America. This is, this is the greatest country on the face of the earth. Let's start acting like it. What Shapiro brings is he's someone that has confronted Trumpism very head-on. He keeps talking us down,

and he keeps trying to rip away our fundamental freedoms. And that's something Democrats really like to see. We had an historic win. He defeated this really conservative MAGA Republican in what was pretty much a blowout election for such a swing state in 2022 to become governor. By way of background, before I was governor, I was attorney general. I sued him over the Muslim ban. I sued him over so many different

things and one nearly every time. And before that, he was attorney general in Pennsylvania, where he confronted the Trump administration. He was involved with lawsuits over the Trump administration's election denialism in Pennsylvania. So he's someone who's really gone after MAGA Republicanism. But despite those high-profile fights against Trumpism, in office, Shapiro has really governed as a bipartisan figure. He's worked across the aisle with Republicans. I'm going to ask you all to turn your attention here to the northbound lanes of I-95.

In a most high-profile incident, after a section of I-95 collapsed because of a fire, he worked with the legislature, with the unions, with contractors, with the federal government to really rebuild that in about two weeks. Right, it was seen as an unusually good example of effective government in a country where government is not seen as effective.

Exactly, it was really praised. It got him a lot of good press, and it sort of put him on the map as this political figure who could be more than just someone going after the Trump administration. Okay, so what would be the drawback of Shapiro? Because so far, it seems like he very much lives in Harris's wheelhouse, fellow prosecutor, good at going after Trump, but balancing the ticket in terms of gender and battleground state appeal, why might she not pick him? The challenge for Shapiro really stems

from his personal biography. Governor Shapiro is an observant Jew who identifies himself as a liberal Zionist. There is no moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel. He's been outspoken both about his faith and about some of what's been going on in Israel and Gaza. We can't allow peaceful protest to be an excuse for anti-Semitism or Islamophobia on these campuses. He's spoken out against the campus protests, but he's also spoken out against AIPAC. But at a time when the war in Gaza has really divided and roiled the Democratic Party,

there are some concerns about how he'll be received by some parts of the party's liberal base. And some Democrats are worried about whether America is ready to elect a Black woman at the top of the ticket with a Jewish man. And I think a lot of Democrats wish this was something that they didn't have to talk about. But the reality is, based on many of my conversations, they believe it is something that they have to be concerned about. Okay, let's focus now on the non-swing state contenders to be Harris's running mate. Well, so first up on that list is Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky. We have been through a lot together.

A global pandemic, tornadoes, flooding, windstorms, ice storms. Yet here we stand on the biggest, best economic wind streak this state has ever seen. What he brings to the ticket is he is a popular Democratic governor from a deep red rural state. Obviously, that's a very unusual position right now in American politics. And so there's some thinking that he could help Democrats with this demographic that's been a consistent problem for them for many years now, which is rural, working class white voters. You have someone who can really go toe to toe with attacking Trump and Vance with this important demographic.

Listen, J.D. Vance is a phony. He ain't from here. He is not from Kentucky. And he's really proven himself pretty deaf in the past two weeks or so as this attack, Doug, particularly when it comes to Vance. I mean, he first says that Donald Trump is like Hitler and now he's acting like he's Lincoln. I mean, the problem with J.D. Vance is he has no conviction, but I guess his running mate has 34.

But what works against Beshear is related to what works for him, which is that Kentucky is not a state that Democrats are gonna win in this election. It's just not even on the map for them. And frankly, white, rural, working-class voters, particularly male voters, are not a demographic they're going to win either.

So this is more about the possibility of cutting some of their losses than winning over a crucial swing state or, you know, a really crucial demographic. Fascinating. Okay. I think that brings us to Governor Walz of Minnesota, which is like Kentucky, not exactly a swing state.

No. Minnesota, of course, is a very liberal state, one that Democrats are not particularly concerned about holding in this presidential election. These guys are just weird. That's where they are. So it isn't much else. Don't give them the power. Look, are they a threat to democracy? Yes.

Are they going to take our rights away? Yes. But what Walls brings is he's been this really effective messenger for the party, particularly in the last two weeks since the possibility of Harris picking a vice president became real. He's really been out there leading on some new lines of Democratic attack. The fascists depend on fear. The fascists depend on us going back. But we're not afraid of weird people. We're a little bit creeped out, but we're not afraid.

Most centrally, that Republicans are, in his words, just too weird for America. Can you just explain that? Because it does seem like it's sticking a little bit. It does seem like it's sticking. And it's a way to capture something that Democrats have been trying in a lot of different ways to do for years now, which is paint Republicans as conservative extremists

who are out of touch with where mainstream America is in terms of abortion rights or same-sex marriage or families, all kinds of issues like that that are really intimate issues for voters. And Waltz has done it effectively. And we've seen this weird attack line be picked up across the party. Donald Trump has been resorting to some wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it's just plain weird. But beyond this new weird message, he has a compelling biography. As a small town kid turned soldier, football coach, teacher, husband and dad, never did I envision before you, before that I would be here and standing

as your Minnesota's 41st governor. I know and neither did you believe that. He's a former teacher. He's a former veteran. He's someone who comes across as a real Midwesterner, which of course he is. He has an accent. He's doing press conferences in a t-shirt. And that kind of regional affiliation matters because, of course, Michigan and Wisconsin are really, really important states on the presidential map. Interesting. So he might not be the governor of a swing state, but his appeal extends to those Midwestern swing states you just mentioned, and that could be very powerful, potentially. Yeah, he's in a swing state affinity group here in terms of, you know,

region and all of that. The drawback with him is that, as you point out, Michael, Minnesota is not a swing state, is in fact a very liberal state. And as governor of this very liberal state, he's championed some fairly liberal policies. He legalized recreational marijuana. He protected access to gender-affirming care for transgender people. And these are policies that might not provide the balance that Harris may be looking for, given that she is from a liberal state, California, herself. Okay, I think finally we have Secretary Buttigieg. So Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who's head of the Transportation Department, So, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who's head of the Transportation Department, really stems from his success on cable news.

Now, joining us, also fresh off the campaign trail, Pete Buttigieg, he's appearing today in his personal capacity. He's someone who goes on Fox News, which some Democrats won't do, and counters Republican talking points in this way that gets a lot of traction. Donald Trump made a promise when he was a candidate. One of the few promises he actually kept, by the way. You know, he didn't keep his promise of 6% economic growth. He didn't keep his promise to drain the swamp. Well, he did have a pandemic to deal with. Well, but even before the pandemic. And international. Even before the pandemic. He has this ability to see a viral moment and seize on it, whether it's, you know, dealing with airline fees because everyone's always mad at the airlines or it's refuting Republican talking points. He kept his promise to destroy the right to choose in this country.

And if you want to know what a second Trump term would be like, I would start by looking at those rare promises that he actually managed to keep. He did say that he wanted to get rid of Roe v. Wade. But again, send it to the states where they are. actually managed to keep. He did say that he wanted to get rid of Roe v. Wade. But again, send it to the states where they are. Empower the states to eliminate women's access to abortion. And also, as you know, the Republican Party continues to be interested in a national abortion ban. Which he's disavowed completely. Yeah, he's disavowed a lot of things. I don't believe him. And that's made him really beloved among large quarters of the Democratic base, who, of course, know him quite well from his primary run four years ago.

But what could hold him back is, in fact, another issue of how much history is America willing to make. I have the experience of being in a marriage that exists by the grace of a single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court. He's, of course, a very high-profile gay man. He's married. He has two kids. And it's just as some Democrats worry about the history-making potential of Governor Shapiro, they also worry about whether America is really ready to elect a gay man. But there's another issue, too. Buttigieg is really a liberal hero. He's someone who's risen to prominence through his support in liberal America and in a lineup where so many of the potential candidates

appeal to moderate and conservatives, that may not be something that Buttigieg really brings to the ticket. Lisa, given that Vice President Harris starts this general election behind Trump, not as much as perhaps before or as much as Biden, but still a little bit behind, I guess the question becomes, are any of these non-swing state contenders so compelling that it's worth not choosing a running mate who might help deliver one of these electoral college vote rich battleground states? Do we know

anything about whether that question is at the heart of her decision-making, or does she not care about that at all? I think it's hard to totally know. It is a governing choice, of course, but you're not governing if you don't get elected. So this is, at its core, above all, a political choice. So if you are Harris and you have the opportunity to help yourself win Pennsylvania or Arizona, it's hard to see that you would just quickly give that up. in Pennsylvania or Arizona, it's hard to see that you would just quickly give that up. Mm-hmm.

It feels like there's a potential X factor in this decision that might be guiding Vice President Harris' decision that I want to run by you as we conclude this conversation. And that's the reality that Harris is the sitting vice president. She knows the office of the vice presidency, knows its possibilities and all its frustrating limitations. And that, I have to expect, might have a very strong effect on how she makes this decision and perhaps might even outweigh a lot of the other factors

we're talking about here around strategy. I mean, like you said, yes, you have to win in order to govern, but she especially understands the governing side of this job. Right. She's clearly dealing with a checklist here that's really hard for anyone who has not been in the position of vice president to understand. And based on this crazy experience that just happened to her, where she suddenly became at the top of the ticket, she knows that you need someone who's not only going to be ready on day one to take over the job if a catastrophe ensues, but also someone that she's going to have to live with for four or even eight years. She's going to work closely with. The president and vice president can be a very difficult or a very

intimate relationship. We've seen both models. And there are people on this list that she knows better than others. Two of them, she served as a state attorney general alongside Josh Shapiro and Andy Beshear. They were both attorney generals at the same time as she was. But she also knows something else based on how her life has changed over the past two weeks. And she knows that effectively,

she will be picking the person who, when her time in the political stage ends, whether that's in November, or that's in eight years, she is effectively anointing her successor. She is picking the person that Democrats will look to as the next in line and as the person who will carry on the mantle of whatever her political career becomes. Right. And she has to decide all of that in political career becomes. Right. And she has to decide all of that in basically 10 days. Yeah, you know, no big deal. Just make the biggest political decision of your career, the future of your party, potentially

the country in 10 days. Just knock it out. On your to-do list, pick running mate. Check. list. Pick Running Mate. Check. Well, Lisa, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. I have great respect for our institutions. The separation of power is laid out in our Constitution. But what's happening now is not consistent with that doctrine. During a speech on Monday in Texas, President Biden unveiled a plan to bring sweeping changes to the U.S. Supreme Court. They include creating an enforceable code of ethics and creating 18-year term limits for justices. Extremism is undermining the public confidence in the court's decisions.

The plan has little chance of becoming law, but seeks to rein in the power of a court that has moved further and further to the right on everything from abortion to affirmative action, and shown a greater and greater willingness to disregard its own precedents. And Venezuela's authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro, has declared victory in his re-election bid despite accusations of widespread fraud. In response, officials in the United States and many Latin American countries denounced Maduro's claim of victory and sought precinct-by-precinct voting data to verify the results. Today's episode was produced by Michael Simon-Johnson, Ricky Nowetzki, and Claire Tennesketter. It was edited by Liz O'Balin, contains original music by Marion Lozano,

and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bilboro. See you tomorrow.