Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast. This is an election year. Will Donald Trump be re-elected? What is going on with the Democrats? And has America gone even more crazy? We'll be discussing all of these things and more, more than once a week, because

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on Twitter, you will get 5% off. Please do so. I'm joined today by Dave Beigle, who covers politics for the Washington Post, and we're going to be asking who will be Joe Biden's vice presidential pick.

Now, Dave, it's quite hard to think about any political stories at the moment with all the coronavirus crisis and the madness around it. But I do think this is probably

one of the most important political questions of the moment, which is not perhaps being asked as

much as one would normally expect it to be asked at this time in a presidential election cycle,

chiefly because Joe Biden is 77, he'll be 78 by the time he enters the Oval Office if he wins the election in November.

And as he himself has conceded, there's a pretty good chance he won't make it.

So therefore, the next vice president, the next Democratic vice president, if Biden wins, is very likely to be president.

Is that a fair assessment?

That's fair. That's something grim that we've

not talked a lot about. Both, well, if he's reelected, and then both of the Democrats who've been

running for president, Biden and Sanders, all of them would be the oldest person ever to hold the office.

I mean, every day, Trump's in office. He's the oldest person to hold that office. And the president has taken a much more forward-facing macho approach to this. He's taken the virus test. He's the picture of health. He has a doctor writing notes for him saying that no one's ever been healthier. Biden's been a bit more honest. And Biden's somebody who, uh, years and years ago had an

aneurysm and he's had some health issue, only that health issue in the past, nothing else.

Bernie Sanders had a heart attack for both of them. They were going to confront this reality

that a president who turns 80 years old in office is just actuarially at more risk of the

vice president taking over. and that has affected things.

Very early on in this campaign, Biden allies were suggesting Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of Georgia, who was the leader of the Democrats of the legislature there as a running mate.

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