The Daily - Who Will Be Joe Biden’s Running Mate?

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

Joseph R. Biden Jr. is looking for a potential vice president in one of the most tumultuous moments in modern American history. His selection committee is attempting to winnow an exceptionally diverse field. So who’s on the list? Guest: Alexander Burns, who covers national politics for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: This is where the top candidates stand in Mr. Biden’s search for a running mate.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, Joe Biden is choosing a running mate in one of the most tumultuous moments in modern American history. Alex Burns on how that reality is influencing his choice. Plus, the latest from Atlanta. It's Thursday, June 18th.

Alex Burns, it has been a while. It's been a while and it's been an eventful while. Very eventful while. And within those events, it turns out there's still a presidential race underway. And just to catch us up on that race, is Joe Biden now officially the Democratic nominee at this point? He has clinched the Democratic nomination, which means that he has a majority of the delegates that were at stake in the primaries, which means that even if one of his opponents were to reactivate their campaign and start campaigning hard in the primaries, it's now mathematically impossible for anybody but Joe Biden to become the nominee, which will happen at whatever kind of convention the Democrats end up pulling together in August. That's, of course, also where Joe Biden will roll

out and anoint his running mate in the race. And that has really now moved to the center of the focus of the presidential campaign. move to the center of the focus of the presidential campaign. Decision 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden reportedly getting closer to picking a VP. So how does Joe Biden capitalize on this moment, especially when it comes to choosing his running mate? Now with recent events, is Biden under more pressure now to choose a woman of color? And from what you can tell, where is Joe Biden in that process? Basically, how long is his list of possible running mates? The Biden search team started with a list of more than a dozen women. If I'm elected president, my cabinet, my administration will look like the country.

And they are all women. And I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a, I'll pick a woman to be vice president. Biden has said he will have a female running mate. And now that list is getting whittled down. This process has been going on for about a month and a half now. It's now probably eight or nine people who are under the most serious consideration, and their relative prominence in the process is being shaped in important ways by the months of overlapping national crises that we have been experiencing as a country, and that Joe Biden

is trying to wrap his arms around as he anticipates what kind of administration he would have to build. So Alex, how should we think about the dozen or so potential running mates on Biden's list right now? You know, I think for starters, he has said some of the things that every presidential candidate says, that the person needs to be ready to assume the office of the presidency. They need to be ready on day one, having a similar overlapping worldview to his own and also having different strengths than his own and who will not be shy about telling the president when they differ. Somebody who will not be overly deferential to him. But once you assume that anybody being considered is seen by the Biden team as meeting that standard, then you think about how they fit into the political moment and the moment in our national life that we are now

experiencing. Does this person fit a moment in which we are having a wrenching national conversation about race and policing? Does this person bring something meaningful to the table at a moment when the economy is in tatters and the country is still facing a terrifying public health disaster. And finally, I think it's just an unavoidable reality of this that Joe Biden is 77 now. He'll be 78 on the day he's inaugurated if he wins the election. He'd be the oldest president ever on the day he's inaugurated. So the question of whether somebody is prepared to step into the job on a moment's notice had a significance on this one that it probably didn't when Barack Obama was choosing a running mate or even when

Hillary Clinton was choosing a running mate, even though she was a couple of years older than Barack Obama. So you're saying that there are three realities that are almost indisputably going to influence this choice, the outcry over race and policing in this country, the pandemic and the economic fallout, and the fact that Joe Biden is so much older than any other person who has taken this office. So let's start with that first reality, reality, the national debate around policing, how is that affecting Biden's search for a number two? So it seems based on our reporting that two women who have been on the front lines of this conversation have rapidly advanced in the vetting process. As Biden and his political advisors have seen their biographies and perspectives and actions intersecting with this moment. My name is Val Demings,

and I'm running for Congress in the great state of Florida. There's Congresswoman Val Demings from Florida. Val Demings is a former police officer and police chief in Orlando. I spent 27 years there, rose through the ranks to become the first woman chief of police. I enforced the laws and now I'm in Congress where I write the laws. And after the killing of George Floyd, she was a very prominent voice saying it's time for policing to change. When I see things go wrong, just like when I did at the police department, there were either one of three things, bad mind, bad heart or bad policy. We need to look at our policies and change them. I would expect her to continue to play that kind of a role in the legislative debate over police reform

at the federal level. She's been talked about as a potential vice president for a while, but there is just a new level of urgency around the scrutiny she's facing in this process because her resume and her life experience are now so relevant in this moment. I think the same is true for Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta. Good afternoon, everyone. I am joined by our interim police chief. She was one of Joe Biden's earliest and most loyal supporters in the Democratic presidential primary, and she's been seen in Georgia as a rising star for quite a while. Is that I am using the bully pulpit that I have as mayor to effectuate long lasting change in this city. And she has been on literally the front lines of responding to the demonstrations around police violence. And she has now been in the extremely sensitive position of replacing a police chief

because of a specific killing that happened under her watch. To watch Mr. Brooks on Friday night talk about wanting to go home for his daughter's birthday, it breaks my heart. And there is nothing that I can say and that I can do as mayor that will bring him back. They're both relatively little known nationally, and they haven't received the kind of intensive scrutiny in the press that someone like, for instance, Kamala Harris has received. Harris is somebody who's been seen as a leading candidate in the VP process all along. And Kamala Harris has a lot to say on race and policing.

She's a former district attorney, former attorney general of California. Attorney General of California. She also struggled to defend some dimensions of her criminal justice record when she was a presidential candidate in her own right. Another pretty prominent figure in Democratic politics who has undergone that kind of public vetting and recently to her detriment is Amy Klobuchar. She was one of the absolute top names on Biden's VP list, but her prospects have really faded in the last couple of weeks because she served as district attorney in Hennepin County. That's Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed. And Klobuchar has faced weeks of tough criticism for her relationship with the police when she was a district attorney and the claim that she really did not take on police misconduct.

Right. And what's come out of Minneapolis are essentially national calls now to defund the police. And Joe Biden has said that he does not want to defund the police. And he has a somewhat moderate to conservative record on law enforcement. So is there room on his ticket for somebody who might disagree with him and go further on the question of police reform than Joe Biden? I think it's certainly possible that he would choose someone who wants to go further in some areas on police reform. I don't think you're going to see Joe Biden put somebody on his ticket who says defund the police any more than you're going to see Joe Biden put somebody on his ticket who says abolish

ICE or single payer or bust or any of those much more left wing slogans that Biden personally, emphatically rejects. We'll be right back. Okay, Alex, let's turn to the second reality you mentioned that will likely affect this search, which is a global pandemic that is killing tens of thousands of Americans and the economic fallout from it. So how is that influencing the search? You know, even before we entered this period of reckoning around race and policing, the Biden campaign was looking at the almost certain scenario that if he wins this election, he will enter office in a really bleak period for this country. And so that affects the vice presidential search

from a couple of different directions. It raises the stakes for choosing someone who can be a full governing partner, that this is going to be an all hands on deck kind of administration because there will be multiple ongoing crises. And the question for the people he is considering for vice president is what do you have to offer in those crises? Do you have real credentials on the economy and public health? So that brings us to a category of people in the mix that's probably best defined by Elizabeth Warren. Remember, just a half step behind the physical crisis is the financial crisis. Who is a much more forceful messenger on the economy and the ravages of the coronavirus than

Biden himself. We've seen it in businesses closing, people out of work. And so we need to be pushing right now on a stimulus package. When you remember the qualifications that Biden has set out for choosing a vice president, somebody who'd be ready on day one, somebody who would challenge him and have different strengths from his own, Warren does seem to fit that bill. We've got to make sure that the money is not going to the treetops, that the money is going to the grassroots. There are a couple other figures who I think fit into this sort of coronavirus economic recovery bracket

in the vice presidential search, and they are mostly governors. They are people who at the state level have been either highly visible or just deeply, deeply involved in actually managing the public health crisis and economic damage on the ground. So we're talking about somebody here like Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. I'm not going to apologize for using every power at my fingertips to save lives. I'm always going to do that. every power at my fingertips to save lives. I'm always going to do that. That's what my job is. Who was one of the most prominent state executives clashing with the Trump administration over the early stages of trying to contain this disease.

Every action I've taken has been in the interest of saving lives in Michigan and has been on the right side of the law and within my executive powers. We're talking about somebody somewhat less prominently like Michelle Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico, who was also on the front lines of trying to contain the coronavirus and is now deeply wrapped up in trying to manage the implications for her state's budget and state's economy. So it is a very serious infection and we have to treat it as such. You know, New Mexico is a classic Western state with a fairly fragile economy that reflects a lot of the damage that the country as a whole is taking. What we're trying to do is find ways until there's a vaccine to really manage our lives and the economy with a laser focus on the fact that we have an obligation and a duty to save lives. So I think the question for somebody in Biden's position is ultimately, if you're looking for somebody to be your deputy in managing the economic recovery, are you looking for somebody who has a very distinct ideological perspective?

Or are you looking for somebody with a less defined ideological view, but deep familiarity with the crisis in other ways. You know, so much of what we've been talking about here is how high the stakes are for a number two. And I think that brings us to this final reality, and it's the very delicate question of Joe Biden's age. And I wonder how his campaign keeps that in mind as it searches for a vice presidential running mate without maybe drawing too much attention to it.

You know, I don't think the Biden campaign has to draw too much attention to it because it just sort of speaks for itself. Joe Biden is a very, very old presidential candidate. He would be 78 on inauguration day, which is older than Ronald Reagan was on the day he left office as the oldest president ever. So look, there are realities about what it means to have a president of that advanced age and the sensitivity around making sure that the number two is somebody who really is prepared to do the job on day one. somebody who really is prepared to do the job on day one. There's a political dimension to this as well, which is that it's generally assumed, Joe Biden has never said this and his advisors will

push back on it forcefully, but it is generally assumed at the highest levels of the Democratic Party that if he wins in November, he is likely to be a one-term president, that he would probably not seek a second term at age 81 or 82. So the person he is choosing now is somebody who could enter office next year as the frontrunner in an open primary for 2024. And as much as people may roll their eyes or laugh at the idea that we're already talking about the next presidential election, I assure you that the people who are involved interviewing the options for the vice president are having that conversation themselves. Does the fact that Joe Biden would be the oldest president in American history, does it limit the chances of any one of the candidates you've mentioned so far who doesn't

have a lot of national experience and exposure? It definitely complicates the path for the candidates who have not been at a really, really high level of national politics. That if you look at somebody like Akisha Lance Bottoms, if Joe Biden were 10 years younger, it's definitely a little bit easier to imagine the Democratic nominee for president making the case that the first term mayor of Atlanta is an appropriate person to have a heartbeat away from the presidency. And I think, Michael, the age factor weighs on the opposite end of the VP field as well, that for somebody like Elizabeth Warren, who is also over 70, the question of generational diversity becomes really relevant here. She's obviously a politician with considerable appeal to younger people. So maybe on that level, it's less of a challenge.

But the question of, are you going to put up a ticket of two white people over 70? There are a lot of Democrats who would look askance at that for a whole bunch of reasons. Alex, I haven't heard you mention somebody who is mentioned a fair bit as a potential running mate, and that is Stacey Abrams. She is one of the more puzzling figures in this process because she has been very direct about her interest in the vice presidency, and she does have such a strong following among Democrats nationwide. And she has a lot to say about the issues that are defining the campaign in this moment. I think she is maybe the most compelling example of somebody

who would be a more serious contender in this process if not for Biden's age and if not for the gravity of the moment, that the highest office that she has attained is state representative in Georgia. She really does suffer from just the question of readiness and the question of does she have the traditional training that people expect a president in waiting to have. You know, one thing we haven't talked about in all of this is exactly where the race is between now actual technical nominee Joe Biden and his rival, President Donald Trump, and how that affects this search. And my sense is that Joe Biden is doing well in that matchup. He's doing very well. He is consistently hitting or approaching a double-digit lead over

President Trump in national polls and in the all-important swing state polls. He is leading by some margin almost everywhere. We've even seen polls suggesting there's a close race in Texas and Ohio. These are not states we think of as top-of-the-list swing states for a Democrat running against President Trump. Does a lead like this in some ways liberate Joe Biden from having to confront everything that we have just talked about? Crises around race, the crises around pandemic and the economy, and the very real questions about his age in the way we might expect him to want to confront those questions.

He's not ahead by the kind of margin in the swing states that says, you can take this to the bank. You can just go to sleep for the next four and a half months because this thing is over. But it certainly liberates him from the burden of feeling like these are huge political vulnerabilities that he has to address in the form of his vice presidential choice. If the country had a huge problem with Joe Biden's approach to the coronavirus or Joe Biden's approach to race or policing, he probably would not be up by the margin that he is right now. So he may very well say at the end of the day, you know, person X doesn't seem super

responsive to this moment around race, or this person doesn't seem particularly deeply credentialed on the economy. But you know what? This is the partner I want. This is who I'm going with. And based on your reporting, who might that person X be? You know, a month ago, six weeks ago, I think that person was almost certainly Amy Klobuchar. But I think even Joe Biden, from the position of political strength that he is in right now, would be hard pressed to make that choice because of the moment we are in around race and policing. It is one thing to choose a running mate who is not terribly responsive to the moment. It is another thing to choose a running mate

who is responsive to the moment in a bad way. So I don't know that it's clear today who that person would be, who Biden says, you know what, the hell with the political calculus that we've been talking about. This is the governing partner I want. I think that if we could answer that question, we would have a much better sense of how to order this list than we do right now. So lead or no lead for Joe Biden, this moment, these moments that we are living through very much weigh on this choice. There's no way that they can't weigh on this choice because in the end, we're not talking about fleeting episodes in our shared experience

of living in the United States. These moments are so powerful because they are reflective of much deeper, systemic, longstanding social problems and challenges for the next president. So whether Biden chooses somebody whose life experience and political profile precisely answer the specific traumas that we're confronting, or whether he's just choosing somebody who is seen as a person of great gravitas and governing ability, who is serious enough to lead in this time, you cannot separate the choice he's about to make from the profoundly challenging backdrop for this campaign.

Alex, thank you very much. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. We concluded that Mr. Brooks never presented himself as a threat. At the very beginning, he was peacefully sleeping in his car. After he was awakened by the officer, he was cooperative. On Wednesday, local prosecutors charged a former Atlanta police officer, Garrett Wolf,

with murder and aggravated assault in the killing of Rayshard Brooks and revealed the most detailed account yet of their encounter. We have also calculated the distance, and the distance that they are apart at that time was 18 feet 3 inches at the time that this shot was fired. So based upon that information, was 18 feet 3 inches at the time that this shot was fired. So based upon that information, we have concluded that Mr. Brooks was running away at the time that the shot was fired.

During a news conference, the district attorney for Fulton County said that Brooks posed no threat to the officer's life, in part because the taser that Brooks had taken and fired twice was empty and unusable, something that prosecutors concluded Rolfe knew, and because Brooks was moving away from police when he was shot. And at the time that the shot was fired, the utterance made by Officer Rolfe was, I got it. That was the statement that was made at that time. Prosecutors said that after Rolfe shot Brooks twice in the back, the officers at the scene did little to try to save his life. After Mr. Brooks was shot, for some period of two minutes and 12 seconds, there was no medical attention applied to Mr. Brooks.

What we discovered is, during the two minutes and 12 seconds, that Officer Rolfe actually kicked Mr. Brooks while he laid on the ground, while he was there fighting for his life. And in his forthcoming book, former National Security Advisor John Bolton describes multiple acts of alleged misconduct by President Trump, including a decision to link U.S. trade negotiations with China to his own re-election. Bolton claims that during the negotiations, Trump explicitly asked China's president to buy American agricultural products so that Trump could win states that rely on farming. The book also says that the president repeatedly sought to halt criminal investigations as

favors to foreign leaders, and that for Trump, obstruction of justice was, quote, a way of life. Trump has sought to block publication of the book, which is set to be released next week. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.