The NPR Politics Podcast - 38 Days After Results Became Clear, Mitch McConnell Congratulates Biden

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

Joe Biden's victory in the presidential race became clear on Nov. 7th, 2020, the day the contest was called by the Associated Press. On Tuesday, thirty eight days later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged that win for the first time.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and correspondent Scott Detrow.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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And thank you. This is Chris from the University of Texas at Austin, where I just defended my doctoral dissertation. And I am currently staring at my computer screen, waiting to be invited back into the most important Zoom call of my life, where hopefully my committee will have decided that I earned my degree. This podcast was recorded at 2.11 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, December 15th. Things may have changed by the time you listen, including the fact that hopefully I will be Dr. Torres. All right, here's the show. Dr. Torres, he didn't, he buried the lead. I don't want to know what his dissertation was about.

Go Longhorns. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis, I cover Congress. I'm Scott Detrow, I'm covering the Biden transition. And I'm Frank Ordonez, I cover the White House. And in a speech on the Senate floor today, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally recognized Joe Biden as the president-elect of the United States. The Electoral College has spoken.

So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden. The president-elect is no stranger to the Senate. He's devoted himself to public service for many years. I also want to congratulate the Vice President-elect, our colleague from California, Senator Harris. Beyond our differences, all Americans can take pride that our nation has a female Vice President-elect for the very first time. I look forward to finishing out the next 36 days strong with President Trump. Our nation needs us to add another bipartisan chapter to this record of achievement. Again, this is one of those moments that doesn't normally happen in politics.

It normally doesn't take this long for members on Capitol Hill to recognize the president-elect, but it's been pretty typical of this election, right, Scott? Yeah, I mean, this is, we've been talking about this so much lately. This comes about a week after 126 House Republicans signed on to a last-ditch effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the results of the election in key states. The Supreme Court, of course, had no interest in hearing that case. But still, I mean, that just shows you how much President Trump's insistence that he won an election he lost has bled into the Republican Party. So the fact that the top Republican in the Senate, the top Republican on Capitol Hill at this moment, Mitch

McConnell, is saying, yes, Joe Biden won the presidential election. He's going to be the president. We're going to start working together. Goes a long way. And Biden talked to McConnell today, right? Yeah. Yeah. Biden is actually, as we tape on his way to Georgia to campaign, we're going to talk about that in a little bit. He talked to reporters about this as he boarded his flight in Delaware. I called him to thank him for the congratulations. Told him, although we disagree on a lot of things, there's things we can work together on. his flight in Delaware. Yeah, Biden was saying that they spoke, they had a good conversation. He said something there that he said a lot that, you know, he expects that there's a lot that they can work together on. Sue, we've both reported on this. McConnell and Biden do have a history

together. I feel like Barack Obama said at one point, you know, they say they're friends. Mitch McConnell isn't friends with anybody. But the fact is that McConnell and Biden struck a lot of deals, especially during the second half of the Obama administration. Yeah. I mean, McConnell is one of those politicians that doesn't use a lot of words. And when he does, he tries to make them have impact. So I do think part of him saying this today is, one, it's the obvious. But two, I wonder if it's trying to send a message to the broader Republican Party, many of which have been, you know, post electoral college certification would, you know, call or recognize Joe Biden as president-elect. And, you know, she, you know, kind of punted. She said the president is still involved in ongoing litigation related to the election

and, you know, referred questions to the campaign. You know, what that actually means is really unclear. She was pressed about what legal recourse was actually left. And she claimed that the Electoral College was just one step in the constitutional process. But she did not elaborate and just kind of kept going back that he was pursuing ongoing litigation. But most legal experts will say this is kind of a going back that, you know, that he was pursuing ongoing litigation. But most legal experts will say this is a kind of a done deal. I'm curious to see how much pressure if President Trump doesn't concede, which there's no indication that that's going to happen quickly or easily. If he keeps up this drumbeat on Republicans on the Hill to keep fighting the results,

they will have one more bite of the apple. Congress has to certify the Electoral College on January 6th. And there's been a lot of talk that the president wants his allies to try to object to those results. Now, we know they can't overturn it, but they can cause a lot of drama and can sort of continue to feed that doubt about the outcome of the election. But it is interesting to see McConnell's comments today, because you would need a Senate Republican to go along with it. And I feel like tacitly Mitch McConnell's trying to close the door to that, which is, we'll see. I'm curious to see how President Trump interprets all of this, because we could be having some once again, back to some mean tweets about Mitch McConnell.

I'm very curious as well. I mean, I think the President has shown that he wants, you know, members of Congress to keep pushing. Look, the president has said over and over again, he wants members of Congress, he wants judges to show courage, you know, what courage for, you know, obviously, these are baseless claims. But he wants this to continue to be fought from the people close to President Trump and the campaign that I've talked to. they expect him to continue to fight and to continue to do this all the way potentially to, you know, January 20th and the transition. And that this is this is part of this. He does not like to lose.

And this is not you know, he's not just going to go away. All right. Let's take a quick break. And when we get back, Joe Biden is headed to Georgia with a lot on the line for his presidency. Today, some people argue that the Supreme Court has more power than all other branches of government. But when and how did the Supreme Court end up getting the final say? How the court became more powerful than anything the framers could have imagined. Listen now to the Throughline podcast from NPR. And we're back. And you've heard us talk about this a lot by now. There are two Senate runoff elections happening in Georgia in early January that will determine control of the Senate. If

Democrats were to win both of those seats, they would take control of the Senate with the most narrow 50-50 seat majority because in a tied Senate, the vice president, Kamala Harris, would be the tiebreaker. So clearly, Scott, Biden has a lot on the line here, and he's headed to Georgia. What's he doing down there? I mean, his entire agenda is really at stake, right? Democrats control the House of Representatives, but controlling the Senate, setting the schedule, deciding what comes up for a vote or what doesn't, even with the narrowest possible majority, would be really make or break for how much Biden can get done as president and, you know,

whether he can start confirming a lot of judges as President Trump did, among a lot of other things. So this is a big deal for Biden. The fact that he is campaigning in the middle of a transition, in the middle of a pandemic that has really spiked in recent weeks just underscores how important this is for Biden. And I expect he will make this case that, you know, this is just as important as the presidential election for all of the policies that he's talked about. And Trump has already been down to Georgia to campaign for the Republican candidates, right, Franco? Yeah, he was down there, you know, trying to, one, encourage people to support, you know, the Republican candidates, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, but also at the same time, kind of like push back on some of the doubt that some of his supporters may have about the election. There is a real concern among Republicans that, you know, his ongoing baseless

complaints about election fraud, attacking the governor of Georgia, attacking the secretary of state of Georgia could really dissuade his own base in Georgia from showing up. Now, the people I talk to who are close to the Trump administration and also who are close to the Biden transition, they kind of expect, you know, Republicans having the upper hand here. But, you know, we've seen anything can happen. And they're very, you know, especially the Republicans are nervous about these basis complaints and that it could hurt them. Why do people feel so confident that you've talked to that Republicans have an edge when Joe Biden won the state and demographically it seems to be shifting more towards Democrats? I mean, there's a couple of reasons.

One, it's because, you know, Democrats have not done very good in runoff races in Georgia. Also, Georgia just, you know, traditionally, you know, it was a big surprise that Biden won the state, you know, in the first place. And the fact that Trump is not on the ticket, you know, fear is often, you know, cited as one of the greatest motivating factors in an elections. Trump not being on the ticket, you know, may not, you know, Democrats may not feel as much of a need to go out and vote against Trump. That said, I mean, that's part of the reason why Biden is, you know, going down there is to make, you know, make the case that Trump's policies are very much on the ticket, even if he is not. Yeah, I think I think I might be a little skeptical of

some of that, Reid. I just think we don't really know. Georgia has changed so rapidly, so quickly. We are coming out of this cycle of just incredibly high engagement, record high midterms in 2018, record presidential turnout just a month or so ago. And this is a Democratic Party that's been really charged up in Georgia and now feels validated by this first time in more than a generation win. I was on the trip that Biden took when he made his one campaign swing in Georgia in the final days of the race. And in that itinerary, you saw the two things that Biden and Democrats were trying to do at once. He went to Warm Springs, Georgia, not a place that many Democrats

go hang out unless they're named Franklin Roosevelt. And he made this big overarching appeal to unity, saying he was going to work together for the whole country, kind of the theme that we've talked about so much about, that he was going to be a competent president, somebody who wasn't there to pick fights, somebody that maybe a Republican could vote for. Then after that, he got on a Republican could vote for, right? Then after that, he got on a plane, went up to Atlanta, and had a rally that was all about charging up Democrats in and around the city saying, we're competitive, we can do this, I can't believe we're here in this competitive race, let's go Democrats. Clearly, that second thing is what

worked better when you saw just the way that Atlanta and the suburbs around Atlanta, you had this blue circle in the middle of the state that really turned out in high numbers and gave him that historic win. So I think that's more of what you'll see them focus on in the coming weeks, especially since I think we all expect turnout will be lower than it was for the presidential election. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. I grew up in Atlanta. So I mean, this is really just an amazing thing to watch that Georgia would even be in this position to have such a role in such play such a huge part in, you know, deciding the future of the next four years.

Yeah, I think I'd say it's like that change in states happens very slowly and then all of a sudden you know like when I first started covering politics Virginia was a red state and Colorado was like a purple state but definitely Republican leaning and now like we barely even talk about those as states that Republicans are competitive in certainly not in the presidential level so we're looking at you Georgia yeah I think, I think both were called minutes, you know, minutes after the polls closed this time around. And that would have been unthinkable in 2008. All right. Well, I think that's it for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the Biden transition. And I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics

Podcast.