Joe Biden Picks Kamala Harris as Vice Presidential Running Mate; Biden and Harris to Make First Appearance Today in Delaware.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.</s>POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow. Well, an unprecedented moment, that is for sure, in American politics. We are just hours away from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris appearing for the first time together as running mates on the Democratic presidential ticket. Senator Harris will join Biden for a speech today. It will happen in his home state of Delaware and she will do so as the first black and South Asian woman to be on a major party's presidential ticket.</s>SCIUTTO: She is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants. Those were her parents there. That's her mother. The California senator has broken barriers her entire political life. She's only the second black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. Remarkable in the year 2020. And the first woman and first black woman to serve as California's top law enforcement official. Attorney general there. This morning, we're learning new details about how Biden decided to make this pick, to pick Harris. Let's go to Arlette Saenz. She's in Wilmington, Delaware. She's been covering the campaign since the beginning. So what made the difference for the former vice president?</s>ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, after a month long search process, Joe Biden finally landed on his decision, choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate. We're actually told that Biden interviewed 11 of the women that he was considering for this spot. Some of those interviews done in person. Some done virtually. But ultimately, he decided to go with his former rival, Harris, to join him on the Democratic ticket. Now Biden informed Harris of his decision yesterday over a video call from his Delaware home. Both Biden and Harris have actually tweeted out a video that features a little bit of a snippet of that conversation when he asked her if he was ready to join her and take on this job. And as you mentioned, Harris is a historic choice. She's the first black woman and woman of South Asian descent to be on a major party ticket as a vice presidential nominee. She also had a close relationship with Beau Biden. They served together as state attorneys general back when he was serving as the attorney general here in Delaware. Biden said that he has always valued his late son Beau's opinion and that that factored into his decision to choose Harris. Now we will see Harris and Biden for the first time together as the Democratic ticket here in Wilmington, Delaware. They are slated to deliver remarks later today. We'll see what the format of that event is like as many of Joe Biden's recent events in the age of coronavirus have been more socially distant. He usually walks in wearing a mask. We'll see if that is something that the two of them do together today. After that event, they are holding a grassroots virtual fundraiser with their supporters as they are trying to drum up and energize their supporters heading into the fall election.</s>HARLOW: Arlette Saenz, thank you very much. Let's discuss, Abby Phillip is with us, CNN political correspondent, Errol Louis, political anchor from Spectrum News, also the host of a fantastic podcast, and Molly Ball, national political correspondent for "TIME." Good morning, one and all. Abby, let me begin with you. And let's look back if we could to February, to what Joe Biden said then about who he might like as his running mate. Listen.</s>JOE BIDEN (D), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I very much like my administration to look like the country. Like Barack and our administration looked like. Black, brown, women, men, gay, straight. Across the board to look like the country. As vice president, I think it would be wonderful to have a woman or a person of color as vice president.</s>HARLOW: And he has chosen both. Not only the historic moment that this is, Abby, but what it does for this ticket.</s>ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I do think that this really doubles down on something that Biden has been very up front about really from the beginning which is that he understands that he is not the future of the Democratic Party. If he were to be elected president, he would be the oldest president ever elected in this country's history. And as a result, he has to think about in this first moment, this first big decision, how to pass the baton. And that's what that message seemed to largely be about. It's one of the reasons why there was so much pressure from Democratic activists and strategists and surrogates to pick a black woman because there was a feeling among Democrats that there was a need to make that point clear, that Democratic women, black women in particular, have been the cornerstone of the Democratic Party. They have been a reliable constituency. They have been there when other constituencies haven't been there and they have been there for Joe Biden, and so to pass the baton to a black woman is very important for that reason. And to pass it to someone who is 55 years old. She is a young -- has been seen as a rising star for many years now, it sends a very strong signal of who he thinks and what he thinks the future of the Democratic Party looks like.</s>SCIUTTO: Errol Louis, let's talk about how this plays out in November. You know better than me that this is going to be fought out among independent voters. Senator Harris is someone who actually had a very centrist record but has moved to the left as the party has moved left, and I wonder what your view is of how this pick will play among swing voters in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.</s>ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, to be sure, the states that you just mentioned, Joe Biden himself is going to do the heavy lifting. I think where Kamala Harris comes in is reversing the mistake of four years ago from the Democratic Party's standpoint. As we know, we've said it many, many times on this program, it was fewer than 80,000 votes spread across those three states that cost the Democrats victory. And so robust turnout in Detroit and in Milwaukee and in Philadelphia could actually turn it around. Clearly the campaign aims to do that and that's why they base their headquarters in Philadelphia. That's why they wanted the convention to be in Milwaukee. That's why they selected Kamala Harris who is going to do a phenomenal job I think in boosting black turnout. Keep in mind, four years ago it wasn't just the fact that Obama wasn't on the ticket. Black voter turnout had been rising and it fell to a 20-year low just a few years ago. Percentage wise. And so they've got to rebuild the coalition, they've got to get out and get to the base, and that's going to be the job of Kamala Harris.</s>HARLOW: Molly Ball, let's talk about the way that the Trump campaign is already attacking her. But it doesn't seem like, at least from the outside, that they can really figure out which way go here. I mean, if you look at the very brief initial statement they put out when she was named yesterday, in the same sentence they contradicted themselves, going after her record as a prosecutor and then calling her, you know, anti-police or appeasing anti-police extremist. So -- and then all sorts of things from the president, not to mention his tweet this morning about suburban housewives, which is a whole other thing we need to talk about. But what's their play here?</s>MOLLY BALL, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: They seem to be figuring that out on the fly and we have seen some reporting from inside Trump world that this was not the pick that they were hoping for their own political purposes but I think what you saw in that statement was the sort of -- the conflicting messages that the Trump campaign has been also putting out about Joe Biden suddenly colliding, coming into one place in a way that really made it obvious how contradictory and sort of nonsensical it was. They have been messaging for a while now on the one hand to the African-American community saying, you know, Joe Biden was too tough on crime with the crime bill and so forth, but on the other hand, trying to message to white voters that he and conservative-leaning voters that he's some kind of scary radical who's in bed with, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement which they also depict as scary. And so having to put those two messages in one sentence really shows you how contradictory they are. And I think also it was telling that, you know, they had to -- that they were accusing Kamala Harris more than anything of flip-flopping, of being politically malleable, of being a, quote-unquote, "phony" and then trying to associate her with figures like Bernie Sanders and AOC. It's clear that they don't think that Kamala Harris on her own strikes people as a scary left-wing radical. They feel like, as they've done with Joe Biden, they have to put her in the frame with other people to make that case.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes.</s>BALL: So that clearly signals that it's going to be an uphill battle, that they will try to brand her as, you know, a scary left winger, but it's going to be something of an uphill battle considering the public image she's already carved out.</s>LOUIS: Right.</s>SCIUTTO: Abby Phillip, Kamala Harris in the primary underperformed among black voters. Sometimes coming behind not just Biden and Sanders but also even Elizabeth Warren. And there's some reporting that the Biden campaign's own internal polling showed something of a lack of enthusiasm among black voters for her. Is that something they believe they can overcome? They're not worried about it? What's the campaign's view of this?</s>PHILLIP: Well, you make a really good point that Kamala Harris was one of several black candidates who ran in the primary and they all lost to Joe Biden. So black voters were in the primary very pragmatic in a certain way, where they were looking at different -- different priorities for them, most importantly who they thought could beat Donald Trump and in the primary they made the decision pretty early on that that person was Joe Biden. Now, secondly, I mean, as someone who covered Kamala Harris I can tell you that she has had some real challenges particularly with black men on the issue of her criminal justice record. And it's something that they had struggled with, to try to explain her evolution on that issue. That's how they described it as both talking about the nuances of her record, she had some reforms but there were other parts that were tougher on crime in the era that she was a prosecutor.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes.</s>PHILLIP: That's something that they worked on considerably in the primary. However, when you look at Kamala Harris' supporters and her crowds, there is an enthusiasm there among black women in particular who came out to see her, who were enthusiasm about her. Many of them, however, when you talk to them, would say we think that she is great, we think that she could be a great president someday.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes.</s>PHILLIP: In this particular election, they wanted Joe Biden.</s>SCIUTTO: Abby Phillip, Errol Louis, Molly Ball, thanks to all of you. Still to come this hour, South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, he's going to join us. His endorsement, you may remember, of Joe Biden in the primary particularly in South Carolina made a huge impact on the campaign. What this now choice for vice president means to him.</s>HARLOW: Also the largest district in Georgia starts the school year today with an all online program. More schools that opened for in- person learning in the state are closing their doors because of more COVID-19 cases. We'll take you live there.