Special: Biden Under Pressure

ROBERT COSTA: Welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I’m Robert Costa.

Let’s pick up our conversation where we left it off on the broadcast: the 2020 presidential campaign. With me tonight to finish this discussion: Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today; and Philip Rucker, White House bureau chief for The Washington Post. Susan, Phil, I appreciate you both sticking around.

Let’s continue with the discussion about former Vice President Joe Biden. Susan, what kind of crossroads was this for the 2020 campaign, big picture? I mean, Biden has been there in Delaware in his basement doing TV interviews, and now the hot spotlight of a sexual assault allegation on his campaign. He’s been in the public eye for so many decades, but this was a test.

SUSAN PAGE: That’s right, and remember also this is – this week was the six-month mark before the national election. We are getting really close to the election. We’re in the – in the heat of the – in the heat of the campaign. That’s been obscured so much because we’ve been so occupied with the coronavirus pandemic. This is a test for Biden. He’s had tests before. You know, we thought he had lost the nomination when he did so badly in Iowa and New Hampshire, and then he came back in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday and became the presumptive nominee. But this will be a test of his ability to hold the Democrats together, including some of the liberal Democrats, the progressives who backed Bernie Sanders who were less than enthusiastic about Biden as the nominee. Does he manage to hold them, and can he generate the kind of enthusiasm among women voters, including suburban women voters who were so important for Democrats in their victories in the 2018 midterms? This particular issue is important to many of those voters.

MR. COSTA: Phil, we saw Secretary Clinton endorse former Vice President Joe Biden this week. What’s the significance of that, in your view?

PHILIP RUCKER: You know, it’s more of a symbolic moment. I mean, the primary race is effectively over, so she didn’t really have a choice. We assumed Hillary Clinton was not going to be endorsing Donald Trump – (laughs) – for reelection, but it nonetheless was a coming together of these two huge forces in Democratic politics for decades now. The two of them were together, both broadcasting from their homes side by side in sort of a virtual campaign event, and it was a – it was sort of a passing of the torch from Clinton, who was the party’s standard-bearer four years ago, to Biden. You know, they got along fairly well in the Obama administration, but remember back in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was starting to run, there were all sorts of rumors that Biden might get in that race, might try to take the nomination from her. He ultimately did not run, but they have been rivals in the past as well.

MR. COSTA: Is there any chance, Phil, she could land on the ticket?

MR. RUCKER: That seems pretty farfetched, but she certainly meets two of the criteria that Joe Biden has set out: one, that he wants a woman as his vice presidential nominee; and, two, that he wants somebody who he thinks is qualified and ready to be president, and we know he believes that about her. But he – all of the reporting indicates that Biden is looking to a younger generation of women, people like Kamala Harris; Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan; Stacey Abrams down in Georgia.

MR. COSTA: I have a little surprise for you, Susan and Phil. We are now joined by Weijia Jiang from CBS News, who has reappeared on our Extra broadcast. Weijia, welcome. Thank you for being here.

WEIJIA JIANG: Thanks so much for having me, Bob.

MR. COSTA: We’re just talking 2020, Weijia. And Vice President Pence, we didn’t get to this in the broadcast, but he drew a lot of scrutiny this week for not wearing a mask at the Mayo Clinic and then wearing one when he was in Indiana later in the week. What’s going on with him behind the scenes at the White House and his decision to wear a mask or not wear a mask?

MS. JIANG: So this was very dramatic because it was so stark, the images that we saw from the Mayo Clinic when Vice President Pence went to visit the facilities and talk to doctors as well as patients, and he was the only one who was not wearing a facemask. And his defense was that he was still following the CDC guidelines, and because he is tested often and because those around him are tested often, he knows that he does not have the virus, and that’s why he did not wear a mask because it’s meant to prevent you, if you do have it, from spreading it to others. And that defense only drummed up a host of more criticism because doctors have said you could test for it negative but if – you know, you could possibly have it the very next day. And also, you know, people look to the vice president and the president to set an example, and they’ve received criticism before for sort of practicing do as I say, not as I do. And so the drama continued when the second lady defended her husband and said, look, the vice president didn’t know it was the policy at the Mayo Clinic to wear a facemask until after he left the facility. Well, of course, the Mayo Clinic had tweeted, you know, almost right after he left there saying that he knew beforehand what the rules were. So fast forward a couple days, he visited a ventilator production line in Indiana and he was wearing a mask. He didn’t talk about the controversy because he wasn’t asked about it, but I think his actions spoke clearly and that he was going to do what he was asking everybody else to do, which is of course to wear a mask.

MR. COSTA: Let’s stick with this VP, number two, theme. Susan, I was kind of teasing Phil when I asked him about Secretary Clinton. We all know it’s unlikely she is going to be on the short list, but you never know in politics, of course.

But it is a serious point, the VP question, because now – with this allegation of sexual assault and his denial, and he has decided, as Phil said, to pick a woman to be on the ticket – who he picks is going to perhaps matter as he reaches out to those women voters who may be backing away from President Trump. What are you hearing about that decision? I know the Biden campaign is moving to formalize the process, but what about the contenders?

MS. PAGE: Right, the former vice president has announced the people who are going to be handling his vice presidential selection process.

By the way, I would take the bet on Hillary Clinton. Like if you want to take Hillary Clinton could be on the ticket, I will take that bet for any amount of money. I think that’s really – (laughs) – unlikely.

Whoever is the – we know that the vice presidential pick is going to be female – Joe Biden has already said that – and that woman is going to have a big load to carry because she is going to need to take Biden’s side, defend his record when it comes to the treatment of women. She’s going to have to counter the Tara Reade allegations, wherever they stand at that point.

She is going to need to energize Biden’s support among the places where he is weak, and the places where he is weak tend to be young voters, lack of enthusiasm in black voters – that has been a big concern for the Biden camp – and the need to energize women voters, especially suburban women voters.

So they’re going to need like a political super woman to join his ticket, and of course, special importance for Joe Biden, he’s 77 years old now. He’ll set a record, if he’s elected, for the age of a president taking office for the first time. So that means there will special scrutiny that his vice presidential pick is qualified to step into the role of president.

MR. COSTA: I know you all haven’t prepared for this, but I’ve just – I was looking over my notebook today. I mean, it’s just a whirlwind of news.

And let’s start with you, Phil. When you look back at this week and you look ahead to next week, what are you really thinking about? What’s on the top of your list of – next week I want to pay attention to X? I’m just really curious what’s on your mind after all this torrent of information and news.

MR. RUCKER: Yeah, well, the most important thing in the coronavirus pandemic that has happened this week is we’ve started to see states open. And I think by next week we’re going to have a clearer sense of what that really looks like. Are people willing to leave their homes in a state like Texas? Even though businesses are open, is people’s behavior in society different? Is the psychology different, like Yamiche was talking about with restaurants on the broadcast earlier?

And also we want to keep an eye on the coronavirus cases and death totals in those states that are reopening. Is this going to prove to have been a dangerous and premature decision as a lot of health experts have warned? Or is it not going to have much of an impact there? I’m going to be looking at all of that next week.

MR. COSTA: What about you, Weijia? What are you looking at next week?

MS. JIANG: You know, to pile on to Phil’s point, I’m looking to hear from the health experts again at the White House, which is something that was pretty sorely missing this week as the death toll continued to climb and as the number of cases continued to grow.

Again, as we talked about on the broadcast, President Trump relishes that time in the spotlight, and he wants to be the one in command of the message. But I think Americans are really craving the raw facts and the data from Dr. Birx, from Dr. Fauci, and they want to know, you know, why the models continue to change, why the numbers continue to grow, and how this reopening from coast to coast is going to impact that.

I mean, even though governors are allowing people to do it, at the end of the day, you know, it’s still up to the consumer whether they want to go back and return to some sense of normalcy. And the irony here is that there are very little physical tools that the administration can give people to have that peace of mind, but testing is one of them. So that’s something I will continue to track and to try to understand about, you know, where we stand in the supply chain because, as of right now, it is not nearly enough and, you know, it’s something that the president will continue to have to answer to.

MR. COSTA: Susan?

MS. PAGE: You know, we’re going to head into a new phase of this incredible crisis next week. We’re going to have a patchwork quilt of states with some of them closed down tight, some of them beginning to open up in a big way, and I think the debate that we’re going to see is the tradeoff between the economic effect of keeping things closed down and the health effect of opening things up. And will different states come to different conclusions about what an acceptable tradeoff will be? That will be what I’m watching.

MR. COSTA: That’s it for this edition of the Washington Week Extra. Thank you very much to our reporters for joining us on this Extra conversation: Weijia Jiang, Susan Page, and Phil Rucker. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on our website. While you are there, check out our Washington Week-ly News Quiz. I’m Robert Costa. Thanks for joining us, and we will see you next time.