The NPR Politics Podcast - "Veepstakes": Joe Biden Begins Search for Vice Presidential Pick

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Joe Biden has committed to selecting a woman as his running mate. Now that is the presumptive nominee, he's facing pressure from a number of camps in the party as to exactly who that woman should be. Possible picks like Stacey Abrams and Elizabeth Warren say they would embrace the opportunity.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Scott Detrow, and campaign correspondent Asma Khalid.Email the show at [e-mail] Join the Facebook group at n.pr/politicsgroup Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/politicsnewsletter Find and support your local public radio station at donate.npr.orgLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Susan Davis. We're trying to figure out more about who listens to the show and what you're looking for from our podcast. So we've put together a quick anonymous survey at npr.org slash podcast survey. If you could go ahead and hit pause and take it right now, it would be a big help. Here, I'll wait a few seconds for you. All right, on with the show. Hi, this is Sarah. And this is Thea. And we're in Begor, Spain. And we're outside taking a walk for the first time in six weeks. We haven't taken a walk in six weeks because of the coronavirus pandemic. This podcast was recorded at 2.09pm

on Monday, April 27th. Things will definitely have changed by the time you hear it. And we will be very happy to have been stretching our legs for a whole hour. Okay, enjoy the show. Oh, I cannot highly recommend enough getting outside for a daily walk. If you can and do it safely. It has keeping me sane in these months. That must be a very nice walk for them. They haven't been able to at all for so long. I know. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis.

I cover Congress. I'm Scott Detrom covering the White House. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm personally really excited for this episode today because it's something that our listeners have been wanting us to talk about for quite some time. The veepstakes. Veepstakes. Veepstakes.

Veepstakes. Joe Biden has said he will announce his vice presidential search committee this week, no later than Friday. But he's already made some pretty public promises about who he's going to choose. So Asma, what has Biden said about what he's looking for in a running mate? Well, he talks a lot about wanting to find someone who is simpatico. The president knows when they send the vice president, everyone knows when that vice president speaks, they speak for the president. And that third thing is required. You have to be intellectually simpatico. You have to be on the same wavelength. Simpatico. I really like the way that word sounds, right? So he says simpatico being that he had this, you know, chemistry himself when he was serving

as Barack Obama's vice president. They really trusted each other. He feels that, you know, Obama trusted him to enact huge pieces of legislation and carry out his vision. And he really wants somebody who can do the same for him, somebody who's going to be ready to be president on day one. And whether or not he has always explicitly acknowledged this, you know, people around him are very aware that his age is a factor in all of this. And so, you know, choosing somebody who is not only going to be president on day one, but somebody who has experience, but is also

younger than him. And lastly, one clear thing he has talked about is he has promised, he has pledged that he will select a woman. The first and most important quality is someone who, if I were walked away immediately from the office for whatever reason, that they could be president. And the public look at that person and say, she is capable of being president of the United States tomorrow. And he said all of those things on a recent appearance on The Late Late Show. And Sue, I think there's two political dynamics here. The first is the political dynamic that you have every single election. And that is, you know, is this somebody that I need to excite the base of my party with a little bit more? I think there's arguments on both sides of that for Joe Biden. But the unique thing about

this pick is, given the fact that Joe Biden is in his late 70s, he has made a point to say, I'm not going to rule out running for a second term. That would be a dumb thing to do. But he has acknowledged this himself. He is picking someone who would effectively, if Biden becomes president, he is basically picking the next head of the Democratic Party. And he has made it pretty clear that he wants to see himself as a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leaders. He said that at one point standing on stage with two people who are probably going to be finalists for that vice presidential pick, Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan. So I think that

Biden has a lot of factors that he's thinking about here compared to the typical vice presidential selection process. So he's making this calculation about how it'll round out his Democratic ticket, but there's also a political calculation that goes on in picking a vice president. Do they come from a battleground state? Do they help with a region? How are they on the campaign trail? What's the sense of the political calculations that Biden's making there? Yeah, so, you know, Sue, that's an interesting question, because I was actually just on the phone with a political science researcher who's looked a lot at vice presidential research, looked at, you know, at past historical decisions. And, you know, what he told me is that essentially, the consensus in their research is that geographic diversity doesn't

really influence a person, you know, that that choosing somebody from a particular home state, you know, it might have a marginal effect, he says, in a really small state like a New Hampshire, but by and large, it doesn't seem to affect, you know, the way that voters choose a particular person. He told me that, you know, really what they see is that they don't want to have a vice presidential pick. No nominee does. They don't want to have a pick who is going to do them any harm. I said, other than that, a vice presidential pick essentially just affirms the way people already feel about the president, which is what he says a lot of voters are thinking about Joe Biden selecting a woman. You know, it sort of like reaffirms they feel his commitment

to some of these diverse values, etc. But the idea that it's really going to offer you electoral benefits, he feels like you can't be sure of that. So what you want to do is choose somebody who can just do the job well. I think in particular with 2020, one thing a lot of Democrats have thought about is the fact that the reason that they lost Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, the three states that put Donald Trump in the White House, you know, there's this overall narrative for the last few years of white working class voters who shifted from Obama to Trump. But I think a lot of Democrats say that is not the case at all. It was the fact that Hillary Clinton did not get progressives excited, did not get the urban base in those states excited, particularly black voters in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee. So that is the push of why Joe Biden needs to have an African-American woman, a woman

of color on the ticket to excite Detroit and Milwaukee voters specifically. But then there's also this, the fact that we've talked a lot about that Joe Biden needs to, in one way or another, give an olive branch or give Bernie Sanders voters a reason to get excited about him, right? And we've thought and talked about on this podcast that maybe the vice presidential pick is a way to do that. So it surprised me, Asim and I were on the phone with Sanders' former campaign manager, Faz Shakir, on Friday, and we asked him about this. And he made the point that obviously he agrees that Biden needs to move to the progressive lane on a lot of fronts. But he argued that maybe the vice presidential pick is not the place to do that. Policy is the place to do that. The overall cabinet's the place to do

that. But Shakir said, look, I think when it comes down to it, Joe Biden needs to pick someone that he's comfortable with, that he's ready to govern with, that he trusts. And that's more important than some sort of party philosophical balancing out act. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, let's talk about some of the names that could be on that list. The biggest story in the world is a science story. And keeping up with all the latest coronavirus research, it's a lot. So on Shortwave, we translate the science you need to know into short daily episodes. Listen and subscribe to Shortwave from NPR.

And we're back. And I think the only thing we know for certain about Joe Biden's vice presidential shortlist is that it will probably not include former First Lady Michelle Obama. We're going to live waves of Democrats wishing it was going to be Michelle Obama, but I don't think there is anyone has been more certain that they are not coming back into Democratic politics than the former first lady. That is true. Although I do think that there is a lot of focus on talk that it should be or will be or could be a black woman. And in this context, there is other names out there. You know, Sue, one name that's been tossed around is Stacey Abrams. She ran for governor of Georgia. She did not win in 2018. And, you know, it's interesting because she doesn't have loads of federal experience. And usually that's something that, you know, it's interesting because she doesn't have loads of federal experience. And usually that's something that, you know, a candidate would be looking for, particularly

if they want somebody who can take the reins on day one. But Stacey Abrams is this progressive, she's really excited, a lot of progressives in the party. And she is a black woman. And to your point, there are many voices within the Democratic Party arguing that he should focus on choosing an African American woman. And you know, what I find so interesting is that a lot of times, you know, you ask a candidate about if they want this job or not, and they're kind of coy. Abrams has not done that at all. You know, she's been pretty candid about wanting this job. And in fact, here she was on Meet the Press the other weekend. And as a young black girl growing up in Mississippi, I learned that if I didn't speak up for myself, no one else would.

So I'm not my mission is to say out loud if I'm asked the question, yes, I would be willing to serve. But I know that there is a process that will be played out that Joe Biden is going to put together the best team possible. And I believe that he will pick the person he needs. Can I tell you, I think there's something refreshing about this. Like there's something so tired in politics of, you know, the candidates are always thinking about running for president or running for office and they are always so coy and having a candidate be like, yeah, I'll do it.

I'll take it is just so different than what we've experienced before. And that's led to other women who are being considered or probably being considered being just as blunt, including California Senator Kamala Harris and same with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. other women who are being considered or probably being considered being just as blunt, including California Senator Kamala Harris, and same with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. The only person who's being talked about who is really not saying yes, of course, I'd love to be vice president is the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, who of course, is in the middle of a massive pandemic in her state. Of all those names, Kamala Harris, to me seems like one that will

ultimately end up on the shortlist for certain because one thing, one, she seems to check all the boxes, right? She's younger. She's already been elected to California, which is one of our largest and most populous states. She's got a long resume. She's a black woman. And she was also one of the candidates throughout the primary that every time I talked to voters about her, there was just this sense of inevitability around her. And there's a risk reward calculus with every single one of these candidates, right? So maybe Stacey Abrams has a higher reward than Kamala Harris in the way that she just dynamically excited voters in Georgia, even though she did not win that race for governor in 2018. Asma and I were both down there covering her. I have never seen a candidate for governor get crowds like Stacey Abrams got in 2018.

So that's the reward side. But the risk side we mentioned before, she has never held statewide elected office. And if you're trying to win the presidency in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic and maybe depression, governing experience is probably something you want in the list. And that's where you look at Kamala Harris and say, she's been a statewide elected official. She's been an attorney general and a U.S. senator, and she ran for president for a little less than a year and got the scrutiny of that run. And it does make me wonder, too, if Joe Biden has a different calculus in all of this because he was a senator and because he's also been a former vice president, right? And so he talks a lot about

wanting someone who knows how to handle this job on day one. He's acutely aware that he could be inheriting an economy, as he says, that could be, you know, worse than the Great Depression, I believe he said. And so because of that, you know, it does make me also wonder if a candidate like Gretchen Whitmer, who by all accounts does check a lot of the boxes, but has no federal governing experience, just might not be the right fit for him if he's looking for somebody who actually just knows the halls of Senate, if somebody who knows Washington in a way that a candidate from outside of Washington might not. What are some other names of governors that you guys think people should be thinking about? I think another governor who's gotten high reviews for how she's handled this crisis, even though she's nowhere near the high profile of

Gretchen Whitmer, is the governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, who also would be a woman of color on the ticket. She's a governor. She's also been a congresswoman. And when I was going through everybody's resumes, this jumped out to me. She served as state health secretary before she went to Congress. Also, Latino is a group of voters that Biden could use some outreach boost to. Yeah, that's true. And that's why another name that voters that Biden could use some outreach boost to. Yeah, that's true. And that's why another name that we've heard is Catherine Cortez Masto. She's a senator from Nevada. And, you know, it was interesting because when I spoke with a political science researcher earlier about whether or not there's a demographic boost from a VP pick,

I mean, bluntly, he was like, we don't have loads of research data points on this, right? Like we haven't had really diverse VP picks in the past. So the only thing he could point to, he said, was that we can see that black voter turnout was higher in 2008 and 2012 when Barack Obama was at the top of the ticket. Like he doesn't know if that's going to, you know, have a correlation if there's a Latino or an African American as a VP pick, but it's just worth remembering. We don't really have any previous data points to say whether or not that would happen. We should also mention Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. She's another one of the former rivals who I think had some standout moments in the primary. And also it goes back to that, we don't know if it'll matter or not, but the

geography question. She comes from the Midwest. She's someone who could campaign well in theory in places like Michigan and Wisconsin. Yeah, it's like, if you just look at the political aspects of this pick, if you set aside the governing partner part of this conversation, this is like the embodiment of the three and a half year argument Democrats have been having of, was it moderate white Midwestern voters who lost the presidency for them or not getting progressive and voters of color excited enough? And that seems to be playing out with the choices here. Another name that I've heard a lot on Capitol Hill when you ask lawmakers who they think, Val Demings. She's a Democrat from Florida. I think a lot of people in this country, one probably had no idea who she was, but got to know her earlier this year because she was one of

the impeachment managers and was on TV a lot during the Senate trial. And she got really high marks for that. All right. That is a lot of names. And I think now that we've ticked through all the names we've heard a lot about, have we made sure that it's probably not going to be any of them? Because it's the ones that we think are going to be, it's not going to be any of them, but we'll be having some surprise podcasts in a couple months. But this is a question that our listeners are super enthusiastic about. One of our listeners, John, on our NPR Politics Facebook page, put up a poll asking our listeners who they want the presumptive Democratic nominee to be. And right now, guys, Elizabeth Warren walking away with it.

She is the strong favorite with Stacey Abrams, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar following. So I think that our sort of shortlist conventional wisdom is shared with our listeners here. There's no real surprises on this list. That's good. All right. We're going to leave it there for today. But we have some exciting news. This Thursday at 3.30pm Eastern, we're going to do a live Q&A on Facebook on the NPR Politics Facebook page. We'll talk about the health, economic and political impact of the push to reopen the country. And we want your questions. If you have questions about the policy and the politics of all this, send them to us at nprpolitics at npr.org. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Detrow. I'm covering the White House. And I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the

presidential campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. © BF-WATCH TV 2021