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What to Know About Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s V.P. Choice

Ms. Harris, a California senator who is the first woman of color to join a major party’s national ticket, ran for president against Mr. Biden last year.

First elected to the Senate in 2016, Kamala Harris was the first Black woman in the chamber in more than a decade.Credit...Daniel Acker for The New York Times

[Follow our live coverage of the Biden inauguration.]

Senator Kamala Harris of California, whom Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced on Tuesday as his pick for vice president, will be the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party. A pragmatic moderate and one of Mr. Biden’s former rivals in the presidential race, Ms. Harris was a barrier-breaking prosecutor before being elected to the Senate in 2016.

Ms. Harris, 55, was born in Oakland, Calif. (Her first name is pronounced COMMA-lah.) She is a former attorney general of California and a former San Francisco district attorney.

When she announced her own bid for the presidency — on Martin Luther King’s Birthday in 2019 — she pitched herself as a history-making candidate, paying homage to Shirley Chisholm, the New York congresswoman who became the first woman to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

Ms. Harris’s record as a prosecutor — she was the San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011, and the California attorney general from 2011 to 2017 — was a major theme of her presidential campaign and will almost certainly be discussed in the general election, especially given the national outcry over police brutality and systemic racism since the killing of George Floyd.

Ms. Harris has described herself as a “progressive prosecutor” and argued that it is possible to be tough on crime while also confronting the deep inequities of the criminal justice system. She has said she became a prosecutor because she believed she could best change the system from within, a message that became a key part of her pitch as a presidential candidate: that voters could trust her to overhaul the justice system because she knew it “from the inside out.”

But aspects of her record have been a source of criticism, especially from the left.

As attorney general, she rarely prosecuted police officers who killed civilians, though by the time she left that office, she had opened some reviews of police departments. She was also criticized for refusing to allow advanced DNA testing that might have exonerated Kevin Cooper, a Black man on death row, and for defending some convictions against allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

An opponent of the death penalty, she refused to seek it when a police officer was killed in San Francisco in 2004 — an episode that drew protests at the time but that she has pointed to as an example of her commitment to a fairer criminal justice system. But 10 years later, when a judge declared California’s death penalty unconstitutional, she appealed the decision, saying she was obligated to do so as the state’s attorney general.

The criminal justice plan she released during her presidential campaign contained a number of progressive policies that she had opposed earlier in her career.

Elected to the Senate in 2016, Ms. Harris was the first Black woman in the chamber in more than a decade. During her relatively brief time as California’s junior senator, she has become known for her intensive interrogations of Trump administration officials and nominees, including Brett M. Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing and Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

In recent years, she sought to align herself more with the Democratic Party’s left wing, initially supporting Senator Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare for all” bill before shifting her position during the presidential campaign. She has also backed proposals to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and revise the country’s bail system.

Ms. Harris has been a vocal supporter of racial justice legislation in response to the killing of Mr. Floyd, supporting proposals to overhaul policing and make lynching a federal crime.

She serves on several high-profile committees in the Senate, including the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee.

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Kamala Harris Is Biden’s V.P. Pick. Here’s What to Know About Her.

Kamala Harris is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party.

A barrier-breaking prosecutor with a love for grilling — “I will repeat —” and music. “One nation under a groove.” She ran for president — “I am running for president of the United States.” — going head to head with Biden over school busing. “You know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools. And she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.” But she later endorsed him. Now, California Senator Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s pick for vice president. “As I said, Joe, when you called me, I am incredibly honored by this responsibility. And I’m ready to get to work. I am ready to get to work.” So, who is she? Harris has a history of being the first. “You may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.” She was the the first black person and first woman to become district attorney of San Francisco and later attorney general of California. “I decided to become a prosecutor because I believed that there were vulnerable and voiceless people who deserved to have a voice in that system.” And in 2016, she was elected the first Black senator from California. Now, she is the first Black woman and first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party. So what is she known for in Washington? “So my question to you —” Harris serves on four Senate committees and is perhaps best known for her tough questions. “It makes me nervous —” “Is that a ‘no’?” “Is that a ‘yes’?” “Can I get to respond please, ma’am?” “No, sir. No, no.” And some of her policy priorities? Criminal justice reform and racial justice legislation. “Racial justice is on the ballot in 2020.” After the killing of George Floyd in police custody, Harris returned to the Senate with new purpose. “Black Americans want to stop being killed.” She found clarity here that she was missing as a presidential candidate. “We should have things like a national standard for excessive use of force.” But she’s faced criticism from progressive activists over her record as a prosecutor, including her push for higher cash bails for certain crimes and for refusing to support independent investigations for police shootings as recently as 2014. So what’s her dynamic with President Trump? She’s called Trump’s border wall — “His vanity project.” — and him — “That guy in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ you know, when you pull back the curtain, it’s a really small dude.” Most recently, Harris criticized Trump for ordering an aggressive military response to peaceful protesters in Washington for a photo op. “Turning the U.S. military on its own people. This is not the America that people fought for.” Trump tweeted an attack ad on Harris shortly after the V.P. pick was announced, calling her a “phony” and accusing her of rushing to the radical left during her presidential run. “Slow Joe and Phony Kamala.” Harris ran an unsteady presidential campaign that ended before the first primaries. “We are all in this together.” But she is among the best-known Black women in American politics — “This is our house.” — and may appeal to both moderates and liberals. Her proponents hope her experience in law enforcement will help her face the unique challenges of the moment — “I voted.” — but her previous public feud with Biden could cast a shadow on their united front.

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Kamala Harris is the first Black woman and the first person of Indian descent to be nominated for national office by a major party.CreditCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Ms. Harris dropped out of the presidential race late last year after running low on money. She shot up in the polls after a strong first debate, but then fell and never really regained traction.

Yet when she entered the race in January, she was seen as one of the front-runners, and she had an impact on the early trajectory of the campaign.

Part of her influence was ideological: She was the first candidate, for instance, to suggest requiring federal preclearance for state abortion restrictions, a position that most of the Democratic candidates later expressed support for.

She had an electric moment in the first debate last June when she forcefully challenged Mr. Biden over his record on race. The way that exchange began was also notable: The moderators had not called on Ms. Harris, but she asserted herself by saying, “As the only Black person on this stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race.”

The interaction was an example of a quality that Ms. Harris’s campaign worked hard to play up, just as it played up her intense questioning in Senate hearings. Her team’s argument was that she could take control of any debate stage, including against President Trump, and that she would not be intimidated by Mr. Trump’s bullying style of politics.

Broadly, however, she seemed to lack a guiding political ideology and sometimes struggled to present a cohesive platform, most prominently on health care. In one well-publicized instance, she vacillated on whether enacting “Medicare for all” would mean eliminating private insurance.

To many political observers, it might have seemed that the relationship between Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden was fraught. After all, in that first debate, Ms. Harris unleashed perhaps the most forceful — and memorable — attack on a rival of the entire primary campaign when she challenged Mr. Biden over his past opposition to busing as a means of integrating public schools.

It was “hurtful,” she said, to hear Mr. Biden speak positively about working with segregationist senators, because “there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me.”

Among some of Mr. Biden’s advisers, her debate-stage attack generated lingering resentment — even as recently as weeks ago. At a fund-raiser in March, Jill Biden, the former second lady, called Ms. Harris’s debate stage remarks a “punch to the gut.”

But perhaps to stave off any doubts about their compatibility, Mr. Biden’s campaign immediately released a document on Tuesday about Ms. Harris that included a section on the “partnership” between the two politicians, noting that she had served as attorney general of California when Mr. Biden’s son Beau was attorney general of Delaware.

“The two grew close while fighting to take on the banking industry,” one bullet point read. “Through her friendship with Beau, she got to know Joe Biden.”

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Historic VP Decision

Joe Biden’s vice-presidential search has ended: Kamala Harris will be his running mate. How did he settle on the California senator?
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Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Historic VP Decision

Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Rachel Quester, Jessica Cheung, and Robert Jimison, and edited by Lisa Tobin and M.J. Davis Lin

Joe Biden’s vice-presidential search has ended: Kamala Harris will be his running mate. How did he settle on the California senator?

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

Today: Joe Biden picks Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate, making her the first Black woman and the first Asian-American woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket. Alex Burns on the historic decision.

It’s Wednesday, August 12.

Alex, did you get the text message from the Biden campaign?

alex burns

You know, I had the text messages forwarded to me by several other people before I got it myself. But I suppose I was notified by text message, just not directly from the Biden campaign.

michael barbaro

Just not the Biden text message? I actually am pretty disappointed. Because I signed up for the text message from the Biden campaign, and I didn’t get a text message. So I suppose this answers the inevitable question, how do you make an enormous announcement during a pandemic? Which is you do it via text message. You just don’t send it to Alex Burns or Michael Barbaro.

alex burns

[LAUGHS]

michael barbaro

OK. So onto the decision itself. It is 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday evening. Joe Biden announced his choice about three hours ago, that it was going to be Kamala Harris. And Alex, the last time that we spoke with you, we talked about three overlapping realities that you said were influencing Biden’s choice of a running mate — the nationwide protests over race and policing, the pandemic and the economic collapse. And then there was Biden’s age, the fact that he would be the oldest president to assume the office. So how does Biden get from those realities to Kamala Harris?

alex burns

So I think in some ways they are three distinct forces. And in some ways, they really are different strands of the same big current. Which is that Biden was looking from the start for a running mate who he saw and who he believed the country would see as a really serious person for really serious times. Now that could mean a whole bunch of different things. But one of the reasons why I think you end up seeing Kamala Harris emerge as the vice president is that she straddles all the different forces of this moment in a way that nobody else on the short list did or, at least demonstrated that they did.

She was a senator who marched in racial justice protests this spring and who led a charge in the Senate to make lynching a federal crime. She is a familiar face to Democratic voters, not only from her presidential campaign, but from her interrogations of Trump officials in the Judiciary Committee at a time when Democrats are really struggling to hold the administration to account over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And she’s somebody of, clearly in Joe Biden’s eyes, sufficient and diverse enough political experience and stature that she will look to voters like somebody who is ready to be president.

michael barbaro

Mhm. Well let’s drill into these three realities, each individually, just a little bit further. And I want to start with the nationwide protests, the questions around race. How did that influence the choice? You mentioned Kamala Harris marching in some of these protests and the work she has done in the Senate.

alex burns

Right. You had, at the outset of the season of protest, a number of figures on Biden’s vice presidential list really speak up about matters of racial justice and policing. You had Val Demings, the congresswoman from Florida, a former police chief, become an outspoken champion of police reform. But you also saw people come under the microscope in less flattering ways, including Val Demings. That there was a sense from the start among Democrats that anybody on the short list who has touched the criminal justice system in their career is going to really need to have their record picked over. And that happened with Val Demings. She was the police chief in Orlando. And there are some questions about how appropriately she handled matters of police misconduct on her watch.

michael barbaro

Well, what about Harris’s history as attorney general in California? Because that was a significant focus during her own primary run for president. And my sense is that a lot of progressive voters, a lot of Black voters — especially in California — are skeptical of her record and question whether or not she’s the right figure in this moment. I recall that she once described herself as the state’s top cop.

alex burns

I think that’s one of the questions that we are going to see play out in this campaign going forward — is whether she can address the criticism of her record as a prosecutor more convincingly in a general election than she did during the primary. And the question is, has she done enough in the last few months, in the wake of George Floyd, in the midst of these demonstrations, to show that she is serious about criminal justice reform as a matter of governing now, that people who looked askance at her record during the Democratic primaries say, you know what? This is good enough or even better than good enough.

michael barbaro

And in thinking about race and this moment, how should we be thinking about fact that Harris is herself a Black woman?

alex burns

Well that’s of course of enormous importance in this moment. That I think starting in the late spring, the sense among people close to Biden was that it would be tough in this moment to really meet the political mood of the country if the Democrats put forward an all white ticket. That Joe Biden, as a 77-year-old white guy, needed a running mate who could speak to the country’s multiracial future in a way that he with his identity could not.

And so, between her identity as a Black woman and as an Indian-American woman, Senator Harris, I think, clearly has an opportunity to speak to the country in a different way than a white running mate with her criminal justice record might have had. That there are people who may be willing to accept her embrace, her evolution on certain matters of police misconduct, police reform, criminal justice, because she can speak to those issues from the perspective of her own identity in a way that a white candidate could not.

michael barbaro

OK. So next in these overlapping realities that guided Biden’s choice, we have the pandemic, both as a public health crisis and an economic crisis. So how did that further narrow the field, influence the choice?

alex burns

So this is a trickier one. Because the candidates for vice president who were most directly in contact with the pandemic, most directly involved in responding to the pandemic, were governors and mayors. But the pandemic has made it really hard for a lot of people to imagine choosing a running mate who would be campaigning for vice president at the same time as they were managing a crisis on the ground, where it would just be awfully difficult to imagine the governor of a state being out at a political fundraiser every day, or doing political morning shows when their state is experiencing a second wave of the virus in October.

michael barbaro

So are you saying that Kamala Harris’s lack of responsibility in this pandemic was actually kind of an asset.

alex burns

Well, I think for all the senators the lack of day-to-day management responsibility in the coronavirus pandemic — yes, absolutely an asset to them in being considered as a political candidate for the fall.

michael barbaro

And finally, Biden’s age and his energy are kind of this third overlapping reality that you said would shape the decision. So how did that shape it?

alex burns

It shapes it in a couple ways. Some of them are about governing, and some of them are about the political future of the Democratic party. When you talk to voters, when you see polls about how people see Biden, how people think about his vice presidential choice, there is clearly a sense that he is choosing a back up president in a way that you might not have if Biden were 57. And you put that together with the gravity of the crisis that this country is in, and the bar for what a vice president needs to bring to the table on the first day gets a lot higher. Kamala Harris ran for president. People know her as a former presidential candidate. She’s not a new face to most of the country. And that feeds into the dimension to this that’s about the political future of the Democratic party as well.

michael barbaro

Well, so you’re starting to get at this. But how strongly do you think the age question, the succession question, influenced who Biden felt he could select in terms of their politics? Not just in terms of the future of the party, but the future of his ticket, whether he can win in the fall. And I’m thinking about a voter who might be comfortable with the idea of a Vice President Warren, for example, right? But if they are thinking to themselves, but if something happens to Biden or if he doesn’t seek re-election, am I comfortable with a President Warren? And therefore, he needed to choose a candidate whose politics aligned with his, resembled his, so that voters didn’t feel like a more progressive figure was kind of being snuck into office through the back door of Joe Biden.

alex burns

Well, that is exactly the message that the Trump campaign is trying to push about Joe Biden. That he is a Trojan horse for the left. So we know that Joe Biden feels an affinity and a respect for Elizabeth Warren. And they’ve gotten closer over the last few months. It clearly would have been a significant political risk for him to choose a running mate who is seen by a lot of the moderate white folks who are currently supporting him as an alternative to President Trump — might make them feel, like, maybe the president has a point.

But in Kamala Harris, I think they feel they have somebody who cannot easily be caricatured as some flag burning radical who wants to burn down police stations. Right? That’s not the truth of her political biography. And it leaves the Trump campaign with a somewhat difficult task in trying to caricature the Biden ticket and a potential Biden administration as some kind of stealth project of the extreme left in this country.

michael barbaro

So with everything that you have laid out here, did all this leave Biden with many choices? Did you expect it to be Harris?

alex burns

So I’ll say two things to that. The first is, and I’m glad you asked this. Because part of how we’ve been talking about this, I hope it doesn’t sound to people like this was merely a process of elimination with Kamala Harris as the last person standing. She was one of the strongest candidates at the start, and in the middle, and obviously at the end. And there was never really any doubt that she would be one of the finalists.

And the second part of this is that one thing we heard consistently was that he was making the selection from a position of political strength. That he is substantially ahead of President Trump in the polls right now. And if he had felt like, you know, the governing partner I want is somebody who I will have to defend from attacks that she is too liberal, like Elizabeth Warren, or that she’s inexperienced, like Keisha Lance Bottoms, he definitely could have done that. And he didn’t. He chose Kamala Harris.

michael barbaro

So now that we have Harris as the running mate, let’s talk about what she brings and what kind of voters she is meant to appeal to. Who might go to the polls, or I guess the mailbox in this case, because of this choice of Kamala Harris? In the mind of Joe Biden and his advisers, I mean, how does this help him win in the fall?

alex burns

I think that they hope she will keep the broad appeal that Joe Biden currently has, while exciting groups that are currently voting for him but maybe without an enormous amount of enthusiasm. Think about young people. Think about educated left of left of center voters who may have supported Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary and see Joe Biden as just a figure from the past. They’re not looking at Kamala Harris as somebody who is going to go out there and electrify the left the way somebody closer to Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren might. They’re looking at her as somebody who will excite Democrats and liberals and young people, because she does represent a breakthrough for the country, because she can speak about the themes of the Biden campaign with a perspective and a biography that Joe Biden himself lacks.

And so the hope among Democrats and the hope of the Biden campaign is that Kamala Harris can do all of that without becoming a divisive or scary figure to voters in the center and to the right of center who are currently supporting Joe Biden but maybe haven’t voted for a Democrat in a while or ever.

michael barbaro

So what Harris does theoretically, in the eyes of the Biden campaign, is she firms up Biden supporters who may be skeptical. She helps bring in some people who might be on the fence. And she does that without alienating his existing base of supporters and without inflaming a whole bunch of other Americans, including Trump supporters.

alex burns

Again, that’s the hope. Whether it turns out that way I think is a really open question. And there are Democrats, including pretty senior Democrats who are pretty close to the Biden campaign, who will acknowledge at least in private that they really don’t know how a lot of those voters in the middle will react to the idea of a Black woman being a 78-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So it’s not that there’s no risk involved here. There is just a bet that there are more people in the country by a lot who will be excited by somebody who looks and sounds like Kamala Harris than people who will be turned off, or at least people who will be turned off who were open to Joe Biden to begin with. But, again, I think there is a high degree of confidence that the country is broadly ready for a ticket that looks like this. There is just some uncertainty about exactly who is ready for it.

[music]

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back Alex, we’ve been talking a lot about Biden, how he’s thinking about this decision of a running mate. We haven’t talked much about how Kamala Harris is thinking about it. And I am mindful that she delivered the single most searing and memorable attack on Joe Biden —

archived recording (kamala harris)

Vice President Biden —

michael barbaro

— during the Democratic primary.

archived recording (kamala harris)

I do not believe you are a racist. But I also believe, and it is personal — and I was actually very — it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing.

michael barbaro

Basically saying that he was sympathetic to segregation and segregationists.

archived recording (kamala harris)

Do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then? Do you agree?

archived recording (joe biden)

I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education.

michael barbaro

Words that you really can’t ever take back when you have said them on live television. So how does Harris square that — that point of view, that statement — with this decision to be Biden’s running mate?

alex burns

In a couple ways. You know, even at the most pitched moments of conflict between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the Democratic primary, I didn’t talk to anybody in either of their camps who suggested that they just cannot stand each other, that they fundamentally see each other as bad people who were in politics for the wrong reasons. I think it’s pretty clear at this point that she did not think that his views on race were utterly disqualifying. And one of the things that I am personally going to be watching for with great interest is: What is the public chemistry and personal rapport between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? How do they talk about this stuff when they get asked about it?

michael barbaro

Right.

alex burns

I think it’s hard to imagine that Joe Biden would have chosen her if he didn’t feel he had sufficient confidence based on their private conversations that the past is the past. But let’s hear him say that for himself, if that is indeed how he feels.

michael barbaro

Alex, do you think in any way the Biden campaign liked the idea of picking someone who had so publicly attacked him? Did they see any value in that?

alex burns

I’ll tell you what they did like, is they liked the idea of picking somebody who can deliver that kind of attack. Not against Joe Biden, but against Donald Trump, against Mike Pence in a vice presidential debate. You know, just a recognition that that person has real moves and real skills.

michael barbaro

Right.

alex burns

And that even people who didn’t like what she did to Joe Biden recognize that there was a kind of political dexterity and panache that Joe Biden himself has really not exhibited in this race.

michael barbaro

Well, to that point, are we expecting Kamala Harris to be used to attack the president over the next three months or so? I mean, I vividly remember people during the Democratic debates, the pundit class, talking about the prospect of seeing Harris apply the same kind of sharp prosecutorial flair that she had used against Biden on Donald Trump.

alex burns

I think there’s a universal expectation among Democrats that Kamala Harris will be a obviously major carrier of a message of criticism and denunciation against the Trump administration. And that in her role in the Senate, she will continue to really hold the administration’s feet to the fire in different ways. There is — not to get too far ahead of the game here — but if we did have a Supreme Court confirmation battle in the middle of all of this, she is a member of the Judiciary Committee. That has been a major source of her stature and popularity within the Democratic party, because of how she handled moments like the Brett Kavanaugh confirmations.

archived recording (kamala harris)

So I’m going to ask you one last time, are you willing to ask the White House to authorize the F.B.I. to investigate the claims that have been made against you?

archived recording (brett kavanaugh)

Well, I’ll do whatever the committee wants, of course.

archived recording (kamala harris)

And I’ve heard you say that.

archived recording (brett kavanaugh)

The witness statements —

archived recording (kamala harris)

I’ve not heard you ask — I’ve not heard you answer a very specific question that’s been asked.

alex burns

So I think there’s a high degree of optimism and sky high expectations for the role that Harris will play in, as she would put it, prosecuting the case against Donald Trump.

archived recording (kamala harris)

So are you willing to ask the White House to do it? And say yes or no, and then we can move on.

archived recording (brett kavanaugh)

I’ve had six background investigations over 26 years.

archived recording (kamala harris)

Sir, as it relates to the recent allegations, are you willing to have them do it.

archived recording (brett kavanaugh)

The witness testimony is before you. No witness who was there supports that I was there.

archived recording (kamala harris)

OK. I’m going to take that as a no. And we can move on. You have said —

michael barbaro

Well, with that in mind, I mean, what are we expecting the Trump campaign to say about Kamala Harris, about this choice? What are they saying about her so far?

alex burns

It’s been pretty scattershot so far.

archived recording (ad for donald trump)

Voters rejected Harris. They smartly spotted a phony.

alex burns

You have had the Trump campaign immediately putting out videos, statements attacking her as yet another Trojan horse for the radical left.

archived recording (ad for donald trump)

Kamala Harris ran for president by rushing to the radical left, embracing Bernie’s plan for socialized medicine, calling for trillions in new taxes, attacking —

alex burns

That she adopted these more left-wing ideas during the primary and that, in her heart, that is truly her agenda, just like they claim it is for Joe Biden. The president himself we saw at the White House earlier today come out and call Kamala Harris a “nasty” for how she handled the Kavanaugh hearing.

archived recording (donald trump)

I was a little surprised. She was extraordinarily nasty to Judge Kavanaugh then, now Justice Kavanaugh. She was nasty to a level that was just a horrible thing the way she was. The way she —

alex burns

Again, there was the sort of she, like Joe, is just going to be another radical lefty.

archived recording

She’s also known, from what I understand, as being just about the most liberal person in the U.S. Senate. And I would have thought that Biden would have tried to stay away from that a little bit. Because —

alex burns

I don’t know how convincing that is going to be as an attack on Senator Harris. And a lot of the stuff that’s been said about her by the Trump folks so far, with the exception of what the president said on the Kavanaugh hearings, you could really imagine them saying about basically anybody Biden chose as a running mate. So there’s kind of a boilerplate quality to it. And I think you still do kind of have the sense that they are trying to run against the Democratic ticket as though the Democrats nominated Bernie Sanders, when obviously they nominated somebody much more moderate than that.

michael barbaro

You know, Alex, it’s actually been a pretty long time since we’ve had big political news. You know, politics is not the dominant story of America right now.

alex burns

Michael, that hurts my feelings.

michael barbaro

I know that. I know that. And look, you’re just as essential as you’ve ever been. But that being said, what are you thinking about with this decision, knowing everything else that’s going on?

alex burns

What do you mean? Just, like, what’s on my mind personally?

michael barbaro

Not like, what are you making for dinner? But like, you know.

[laughter]

alex burns

You know, we have been talking about these intertwined realities of the campaign that all fed into this decision by Biden. What ties together everything Joe Biden has done in this race so far — I think including his choice of the vice president — is his real conviction that you can bring the country together again, that you can run as a unity candidate in a country this divided and in so much painful turmoil. It worked out for him in the Democratic primary. It seems to be working out for him so far in the general election. But just because it seems to be working out for him politically so far with Donald Trump as your opponent doesn’t necessarily mean that that is an achievable thing for any president to do in this country at this time.

[music]

This is, in some ways, less of a question for the next few months of this election than for the next four years if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are elected. Is how justified is Joe Biden’s faith that you can put things together again? And how much is he setting himself and his party up for disappointment and turmoil if it turns out that a coalition that you put together to beat Donald Trump in November isn’t necessarily held together by a whole lot besides this urgent desire to beat an unpopular president?

michael barbaro

Alex, thank you very much.

alex burns

Thanks, Michael.

michael barbaro

Biden and Harris are scheduled to appear together for the first time as a ticket later today at a hotel in Delaware, the same hotel where Biden first announced his campaign for U.S. Senate in 1972. We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording

[CROWDS YELLING AND SIRENS BLARING]

michael barbaro

Protests in Belarus are entering their fourth consecutive day over suspicious election results that gave the country’s authoritarian president his latest landslide victory.

The election is widely viewed as rigged by President Alexandra Lukashenko, who is known as Europe’s last dictator, fueling the biggest anti-government demonstrations since Belarus left the Soviet Union in 1991 and a massive government crackdown in response. And —

archived recording (kevin warren)

When you look at this decision, we just believe collectively there’s too much uncertainty at this point in time in our country to really — to encourage our student athletes to participate in fall sports. And we just, I take this responsibility seriously.

michael barbaro

On Tuesday, two of college football’s wealthiest and most powerful conferences, the Big Ten and the Pac-12, announced that they will not play this fall because of the pandemic. The decision is one of the most significant in the history of college athletics, a multibillion dollar industry that heavily supports college budgets. And it defies calls by some coaches, players and President Trump to mount a season.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

During her presidential campaign, Ms. Harris appealed in particular to more moderate Democrats and those drawn to her biography. She could reinforce Mr. Biden’s appeal with Black women, suburban women and women generally who are eager to see themselves reflected in the country’s leadership.

Ms. Harris also has another potential secret weapon: her connection to the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which she joined as an undergraduate at Howard University and whose roughly 300,000 members and multimillion-dollar budget could help provide fund-raising and organizational might across the country.

But the progressive left, including some supporters of Mr. Sanders, will most likely be disappointed in Ms. Harris’s selection, viewing her as far more supportive of incremental change than the kind of broad, revolutionary proposals they champion. And her long career in law enforcement could be off-putting to some voters, especially younger voters, who are eager to see a police-reform movement with unqualified backing from the White House.

Maggie Astor is a political reporter based in New York. Previously, she was a general assignment reporter and a copy editor for The Times and a reporter for The Record in New Jersey. More about Maggie Astor

Sydney Ember is an economics reporter. Previously, she covered Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign and the 2020 election, including living in Iowa for three months during the run-up to the state's caucuses. More about Sydney Ember

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