The State of the Biden Campaign

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

Joe Biden all but locked up the Democratic Presidential nomination just as the coronavirius crisis began triggering national lockdowns. Now he faces an economic disaster and a public-health emergency that prevent traditional campaigning, which may help Biden if swing voters blame the incumbent for the state of the nation. But Biden faces his own heavy baggage: admissions of inappropriate touching of women, an accusation of assault, and a blemished record on racial justice. Amy Davidson Sorkin, Eric Lach, Katy Waldman, and Jelani Cobb reflect on the Biden campaign and on the candidate’s past leadership. Cobb, who discusses Biden’s history with police reform and the 1994 Crime Bill, says that one thing is almost certain: whatever gaffes that the gaffe-prone candidate may utter, the Trump Administration will create a bigger headline five minutes later. Plus, David Remnick interviews the South Carolina congressman James Clyburn, who is the most senior African-American in Congress. Clyburn helped Joe Biden win the critical South Carolina primary, and he defends Biden’s controversial record on issues of racial justice.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:08.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Four months out from the presidential election,
0:14.5	Joe Biden is leading big in the polls, and his campaign just announced record fundraising halls.
0:20.6	So it may be a little hard to remember that just a few months ago,
0:24.6	Biden was considered all but dead in this race.
0:27.0	The early primaries went really badly for him,
0:30.0	fourth in Iowa,
0:31.3	fifth in New Hampshire,
0:32.7	and second in Nevada.
0:34.4	You know, the press is ready to declare people dead quickly. But we're alive and
0:41.2	we're coming back and we're going to win. Then Biden won South Carolina, the primary he desperately
0:49.3	needed. And with a string of victories on Super Tuesday, he just about wrapped up the nomination, just as the country was starting to shut down.
0:57.8	The presidential campaign since then has been, what, unprecedented.
1:02.0	And maybe that doesn't begin to describe the strangeness of a campaign conducted from backyards and wreck rooms.
1:08.3	To understand how the Biden campaign has handled all these events, I'm going to
1:12.2	call on a few of our experts. Hi, how are you doing? Very, very good. Where are you? First up, Amy Davidson
1:18.7	Sorkin, who writes a great deal about politics. Amy, one of the distinguishing features that we
1:24.8	never would have anticipated about this campaign is that it's taking place during a pandemic.
1:30.2	And how has that affected Biden's campaign in particular?
1:34.4	Sometimes people say, well, will COVID-19 get in the way of Biden's larger agenda?
1:40.3	I think it's going to be hard to see that larger agenda divorced from COVID-19 because it is so integrated in a lot of democratic priorities like health care, like protections for workers, but also because it's going to be the first big test of his presidency if he is president.
2:01.4	Do you think that there's evidence that the dual crises of the pandemic and what we can now
	...

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