The NPR Politics Podcast - Pence And Harris Go Head-To-Head Over The Pandemic, Taxes, And Healthcare

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Vice President Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris spent the evening echoing the rhetoric of their respective party nominees — but with less interruptions than when President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden debated. This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, and White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe.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

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And it is 11.24 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, October 7th. And the vice presidential debate between Vice President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris has just ended. And I think we have to start off just by talking about the tone. It was like a palate cleanser for the interrupt fest that was the first presidential debate. Yeah.

And it wasn't surprising because Vice President Pence is so much different from President Trump. You know, he's a traditional politician and he is the type of politician who I think sometimes Republicans want Trump to be just, you know, on message. I think that's the, you know, I think that's- Disciplined. Very disciplined. On message and discipline and, you know, assertive at times, but not what we saw last week with President Trump. But I will say there was this sense that there was this, it felt kind of like this passive aggressive politeness. And I say this as a fellow Midwesterner myself, that there is this sense of what we call like Midwestern nice, right? Which is, I felt, you know, what we saw at times from the vice president. Senator, I want to thank you and Joe Biden for your expressions,

genuine concern. And I also want to congratulate you, as I did on that phone call, on the historic nature of your nomination. But also you did feel like Kamala Harris was kind of reining in some things that she wanted to perhaps say. You didn't see her retort with as many sharp jabs as maybe folks might have expected if they've seen her in some of those Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. If you don't mind letting me finish, we can then have a conversation. OK, please. OK, so it all felt very polite, but almost like this forced politeness compared to what we saw last week. You know, I think we should say, though, there were times where Pence did talk over the moderator, Susan Page, and talk over Kamala Harris. You know, Kamala Harris would have to say, I'm speaking. So there was some of that.

Like, that did happen during the debate. And there was obviously another big difference at this debate. If you were watching on TV, there was two plexiglass walls separating Harris and Pence, a move made after last week's debate, days after which President Trump tested positive for coronavirus. And the tone in the debate hall was made clear by the moderator that everyone was required to wear masks except for the two candidates and the moderator. And the debate started off with no surprise talking about the pandemic. Kamala Harris clearly used this as a way to attack. Well, the American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.

And here are the facts. 210,000 the history of our country. 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. You know, this is a very hard position for Pence. Obviously, President Trump was hospitalized last week with the coronavirus. More than a dozen close aides and or associates of the president have come down with the coronavirus and are dealing with that right now. And so he's trying to make this case as Pence being the head of the Coronavirus Task Force, that they've done a great job. But even just the reciting of the facts

that 210,000 Americans have died, that 7 million have contracted the virus, are pretty hard things for Pence, and in this moment, to really make the case about. So he tried to say that what they are doing as an administration is that they are letting the American people decide how to make the best decisions for their families and whether to wear a mask or socially distance, that the American people will make the right decisions. Well, the American people have demonstrated over the last eight months that when given the facts they're willing to put the health of their families and their neighbors and people they don't even know first. President Trump and I have great confidence in the American people and their ability to take that information and put it into practice. I thought that was such an interesting exchange because it was basically

like why should if you've got this outbreak at the White House, why should the American people trust you to get them out of this? And he basically didn't really answer the question, right? They just said that they trust the American people to make their own decisions, which I don't know if that's the best answer that they could give right now. But I will say it's an answer, though, that seems to be exactly what base voters want. You know, I was out in Michigan last week talking to voters, actually shortly after the president's diagnosis, and I was struck by almost verbatim hearing a very similar argument from a Republican voter who I spoke to who made the case

that really they feel like rather than having the government tell them what they do, they said, you know, most of the time people do wear masks. It's just that we don't want these mandates. And so just like almost everything throughout this debate, it just felt like it was an appeal to your base. It really didn't change the trajectory of this race at all. Right. And Harris pushed back on this, saying that, you know, how could the American people make the right decisions if they're not getting the right information? You respect the American people when you tell them the truth. You respect the American people when you have the courage to be a leader speaking of those things that you may not want people to hear, but they need to hear

so they can protect themselves. But this administration stood on information that if you had as a parent, if you had as a worker knowing you didn't have enough money saved up and now you're standing in a food line because of the ineptitude of an administration that was unwilling to speak the truth to the American people. now know that Donald Trump made to Bob Woodward throughout these series of interviews that suggest the president had a sense of how potentially deadly this virus could be, but did not disclose that information widely to the public. There was a lot of evading the actual question in this debate. I mean, it was almost maybe the overarching theme of the night. But one of the really interesting questions I thought that was put to both candidates was the question about their main candidates age.

Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in their 70s. Harris and Pence are much younger. And they were asked sort of if they have a plan for that. And neither one of them really wanted to answer that question. Have you had a conversation or reached an agreement with Vice President Biden about safeguards or procedures when it comes to the issue of presidential disability? And if not, and if you win the election next month, do you think you should? You have two minutes uninterrupted. So let me tell you, first of all, the day I got the call from Joe Biden, it was actually a Zoom call. Do you think you should? You have two minutes without interruption. Well, Susan, thank you. Although I would like to go back.

I think we need to move on. Well, thank you. But I would like to go back because the reality is that we're going to have a vaccine. You know, I talked to some experts this week, and in particular, I talked to a vice presidential expert from St. Louis University. And, you know, he talked about how this is always tricky for any vice president because you don't want to look like, even if the president is older or if the president is sick or injured, you don't want to look like you're trying to get promoted. You don't want to because, you know, what has to happen for you to get promoted.

So you have to be very careful when it comes to- Like I haven't even thought about the possibility of that. No. And he's, you know, and this was the person that I talked to was Joel Goldstein, who is a professor at St. Louis University. He said that presidents are very sensitive about their mortality, and especially at moments like this. And so it's a very hard question for a VP to answer. And they just didn't. All right, well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about the questions they didn't really answer.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, developing solutions to support strong families and communities to help ensure a brighter future for America's children. More information is available at aecf.org. With the unemployment rate at record highs right now, millions of Americans are without health insurance. This week on ThruLine, how our health care became tied to our jobs and how a temporary solution turned into an everlasting problem. Listen now to ThruLine from NPR, where we go back in time to understand the present. And we're back. And the debate is taking place just as the Senate is getting ready to start the confirmation process for Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. And Pence and Harris both addressed the timeline of this nomination. And Harris

came prepared with a little story. In 1864, one of the, I think, political heroes, certainly of the president, I assume of you also, Mr. Vice President, is Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was up for re-election. and it was 27 days before the election, and a seat became open on the United States Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln's party was in charge not only of the White House, but the Senate. But honest Abe said, it's not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next president of the United States. And then that person can select who will serve for a lifetime on the highest court of our land. This story came in the context of this back and forth where Mike Pence was clearly trying to get an explicit response from Kamala Harris to a question that Republicans have really been pushing the Biden campaign on now quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, and that's

whether or not they would pack the court, meaning whether or not they would add Supreme Court justices to the bench if Judge Amy Coney Barrett is appointed, you know, before November 3rd and then Democrats were to win the White House. And it's a question that I will say the Trump administration has been asking Biden about. It is a question that both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have not been willing to engage on. And again, we talked about Harris and Pence not answering the questions they didn't want to answer. This was one that Harris did not explicitly answer either. Thank you, Senator Harris. And the American people, Susan, are voting right now. They'd like to know if you and Joe Biden are going to pack the Supreme Court if you don't get your

way in this nomination. Let's talk about packing. You once again gave a non-answer. Joe Biden gave a non-answer. I'm trying to answer you now. The American people deserve a straight answer. 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. She didn't answer it, but I thought she gave an interesting sort of evasive counterpunch in that she pointed to the many judges that President Trump has gotten through the Senate, thanks much to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in this Congress. And do you know that of the 50 people who President Trump appointed to the Court of Appeals for lifetime appointments, not one is black? The Trump administration has argued, well, and Trump himself has argued,

he's done more for black people than maybe even Abraham Lincoln. That's one of his lines. But it's one of these areas where even when you look at who he has hired in his administration, there are some black officials in the White House, but there are not very many. This is a place where she was able to go at the administration and say, you talk about basically saying you talk about doing all these things for black people, but you know, you did not pick not one black judge for these lifetime appointments. You know, one of the challenges for running mates is their job is really just to stay on message and deliver the message. And I think both of them excelled in that this evening because Kamala Harris, I think, was able to deliver a really strong message on health care.

And Pence volleyed right back on sort of the economy and taxes. Harris focused, again, on the Affordable Care Act and a lawsuit pending before the Supreme Court that could essentially throw the law out. If you have a pre-existing condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they're coming for you. If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition, they're coming for you. If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition, they're coming for you. If you are under the age of 26 on your parents' coverage, they're coming for you. And Pence just never answered the question. He never responded. He

never had a pushback on health care. He just changed the subject. No, because they do not have a plan specifically for how to protect pre-existing conditions. They say that they support them. They want them to be covered. But they have not released any plan that would do that. But Ayesha, didn't he at some point during the debate say that, you know, we have a health care plan and that this plan would protect pre-existing conditions? I mean, to your point, the White House has never released a plan. He did say that. And that stuck out to my ears because we've never seen the plan.

And I would think four weeks before an election where this is such a big issue, you trotted on out if you had it. You know, to a point that you were mentioning earlier, Sue, of how really both of these candidates kind of courted the base and spoke to the issues that really matter the most, I was struck by how Mike Pence seemed to go after the Biden campaign for what he says would lead to a raise in taxes for folks. You know, the Biden campaign has insisted that they would not raise taxes on families that make less than $400,000. But what Mike Pence was arguing tonight is that Joe Biden has said that he would repeal the Trump tax cuts. And, you know, if a number of people did actually receive tax cuts under that Trump tax plan, then if you repeal it, those folks, he says, would actually see a tax hike. And this is a very traditional Republican argument that the Democrats are going to raise your taxes. That's why you shouldn't put them in office. And it also gives Pence a chance to pivot to the one area where Trump has polled the

best, and that's the economy. He talked about the American comeback is on the ballot. That is the message that when you talk to Republican strategists and people like that, that's the message that they think resonates. And that's the message that they feel like if they want to make an argument for reelection, the Trump team, that's the message they can hone in on. President Trump is not always as focused as Pence was on driving that home. So how much do you all think that this debate mattered to this race? Honest answers only. I mean, I feel like this did nothing to change the trajectory of the race. It felt very status quo to me.

It was status quo. What I will say, though, is that it's been a rough few weeks for the Trump campaign. President Trump got low marks in polls for his debate performance last week. And then, you know, very seriously, he came down with the coronavirus, which is a serious disease. And he's dealing with that. Many people in the administration now are also dealing with that. So what this campaign could not afford was a loss. They could not afford a bad night for Pence. Not that anyone expected that because Pence is very polished and professional, but they really needed a status quo at the very least. Yeah. Well, I know we got to go, but we cannot end this podcast without talking about the fly. At one point in this evening's debate,

and I couldn't tell what it was at first, there was a little black speck on Mike Pence's hair, which I think you could see more pronounced because he has this like whole head of white hair. And it was like, it made me nervous while we were watching it. I just wanted the fly to fly away. And I think I feel like for those seconds or minutes that it was on his head, I didn't hear exactly what it said. So I might have to go back and watch that part of the debate because it was quite distracting. I knew at first I wasn't sure if it was a live fly. It just like didn't move for a little while, but it did eventually fly off. All right. Well, that is a wrap for tonight.

We'll be back tomorrow in your feeds as usual at 5 p.m. Eastern time. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.