michael barbaro

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

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Today, Joe Biden is the first candidate in U.S. history to wage a presidential campaign in quarantine. Alex Burns on the strange new reality of the 2020 race. It’s Thursday, April 30. Alex, the last time that we spoke with you, Joe Biden had just become the de facto Democratic nominee. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, and the pandemic was just really beginning to wash over the United States. Now, of course, the coronavirus is very much here, so I wonder if you could describe the state of the Biden campaign.

alex burns

Well, the state of the Biden campaign is super weird, which is a technical term.

michael barbaro

Of course.

alex burns

You know, since the last time we spoke, Joe Biden has not held one public event in person as a candidate, and his campaign has been really restricted to the telephone and to Zoom and FaceTime, like so much of life for so many Americans. He is campaigning, he likes to say, from his basement, kind of as a joke, but it’s true that he has a video uplink in a refurbished rec room in his enormous house in Delaware. But he is basically unable to do almost any of the traditional activities of a presumptive candidate. There was no unity rally with his defeated primary opponents, and there are certainly no in-person fundraisers.

michael barbaro

So what does the virtual element of this campaign actually look like, the part where he’s on Zoom in his basement with all those books behind him?

alex burns

Right. It’s kind of a work in progress.

archived recording (joe biden) Look, folks, I want to say good evening, and thank you for taking the time to speak with me.

alex burns

So they’ve tried a bunch of different formats.

archived recording We’re going to take a question now from Maureen Jenkins. Maureen, you are unmuted. archived recording (joe biden) Maureen, are you there?

alex burns

They have done what they call virtual rope lines, where Biden gets on his video stream and talks to a succession of voters the way he would if he were greeting them at the end of an event.

archived recording Good evening, Mr. President, and that has such a nice ring to it.

alex burns

Except it didn’t quite work that way, because on an actual rope line, you talk to a voter for, you know, maybe 10 or 15 seconds, a minute if it’s a really important conversation.

archived recording Do you support the Endangered Species Act?

alex burns

His first virtual rope line, I spoke to one of the voters who was on it. Voters said that it went for more than an hour, right?

michael barbaro

What?

alex burns

So this is not — yeah, exactly. These became very involved conversations.

archived recording And will you prohibit animals from being hunted and brought into this country for trophies? archived recording (joe biden) Yes and yes. archived recording Oh, I love you. archived recording (joe biden) But look, I want to say something beyond that. One of the things that I —

michael barbaro

Right. The whole point of a rope line, as I’ve observed them, is that the minute you bump into someone you don’t want to talk to, you literally just turn your head and you are done with them.

alex burns

Right.

michael barbaro

And here, it feels like you would be locked into a Zoom conversation with somebody and it would be hard to get out of it.

alex burns

That’s right.

archived recording (joe biden) There’s a lot more to say, but I’ve already probably said too much to you. archived recording Thank you to everybody for joining. You know, we appreciate this, and we do apologize for the technical difficulties that we had.

alex burns

The campaign has tried other formats. Virtual town halls. He has held virtual endorsement events.

archived recording (joe biden) My friend, Senator Bernie Sanders. Bernie, welcome. archived recording (bernie sanders) Joe thank you very much for your remarks, and thank you for welcoming me to your livestream, here.

alex burns

There is definitely a stilted and sometimes artificial quality to these events.

archived recording (bernie sanders) I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse.

alex burns

Getting Bernie Sanders’s endorsement, you ended up with these two guys pushing 80 on a livestream talking to each other, and there is something about it that — you know, it doesn’t have the same kind of emotional kick that a unity rally would, for instance.

archived recording (joe biden) I’m looking forward to working with you, pal. I really, genuinely mean it from the bottom my heart. Thank you for being such a gentleman. Thank you for being so generous, and I give you my word, I’ll try my best not to let you all down. archived recording (bernie sanders) Thank you very much, Joe. archived recording (joe biden) Thanks, pal. archived recording (bernie sanders) Say hello to — archived recording (joe biden) I will. archived recording (bernie sanders) Jane and I say hello to Jill, as well. archived recording (joe biden) I will.

alex burns

He has started a podcast —

archived recording (joe biden) Well hey, folks, this is Joe Biden, and we’re listening to “Here’s the Deal,” and I’m sitting here in Wilmington, Delaware, in my basement. I’m excited to bring you our next podcast episode.

alex burns

— where he does these, I think, rather charming interviews with other prominent Democrats —

archived recording (joe biden) On the show with me today is a great friend and a really incredible governor, Governor Jay Inslee. You know, the coronavirus —

alex burns

— where they talk in a fairly unstructured-seeming way about just sort of what’s on their minds, what their lockdown experience has been.

archived recording (jay inslee) Mr. Vice President, you look like a million bucks. That basement or wherever you are is working pretty well. archived recording (joe biden) Well, I tell you what, I’m living down here. I never thought it’d turn into a quasi-studio.

alex burns

What sort of their big policy agendas are and their ideas are.

michael barbaro

Hmm.

archived recording (joe biden) What lessons can the American people learn from this pandemic to help ensure we move quickly to address climate change before it’s too late, or is there a connection? Are there lessons learned? archived recording (jay inslee) Oh yeah, big connection. You know, you could think of Covid-19 as a metaphor for the — it’s kind of a fast-acting climate change.

michael barbaro

Alex, do you have the sense that the virtual components of this campaign that have been cobbled together — the podcast, the town halls, the rope line — do you sense that any of these are really breaking through and that the voting public is actually consuming them?

alex burns

You know, I think they have done some things that have broken through.

archived recording As you know, the coronavirus has hit Milwaukee particularly hard. What specific steps would you take to address this crisis? archived recording (joe biden) Well, number one, you may recall —

alex burns

He has begun doing local TV hits in swing states, in markets like Milwaukee and Detroit and Pittsburgh.

michael barbaro

Interesting.

archived recording When you think of Pittsburgh, what do you think of? archived recording (joe biden) I spent a lot of time in Pittsburgh, too, as you probably know. As I said, they’re the people I grew up with. They’re the middle class, working class folks who bust their neck, you know —

alex burns

And that is an important way to get in front of people, especially at a time when so many people are staying at home and watching television all day.

archived recording Good morning, everyone. We’re coming on the air to bring you live coverage of today’s White House briefing on the coronavirus pandemic. Here is the president. archived recording (donald trump) Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very much.

michael barbaro

And in that sense, it feels like fundamentally not quite an even playing field when you think about his opponent, the incumbent president of the United States. Because incumbency has always carried massive advantages for publicity, right, and commanding the spotlight. But here, we have an incumbent in the middle of a national crisis with daily news briefings.

archived recording (donald trump) While we mourn the tragic loss of life, and you can’t mourn it any stronger than we’re mourning it, the United States has produced dramatically better health outcomes than any other country with a possible exception of Germany, and I think we’re as good, or better.

michael barbaro

And on the other side is Joe Biden at home in isolation, trying to get on TV or do an online event.

alex burns

Right. You know, Donald Trump is also stuck at home doing video and television appearances from his residence, but his residence is the White House, and he’s the incumbent president.

michael barbaro

Right.

alex burns

And that commands a different level of public attention. And this is something in the course of our reporting on, you know, Biden’s life in lockdown, is that he has been frustrated with not so much the differential between the attention he gets and the attention Trump gets, but with the criticism he has gotten for being so much less visible than the president. Because I think the view among people close to Biden is, you just can’t put yourself on an equal footing with the president in a national crisis when you’re not allowed to leave your house.

michael barbaro

Right. And that frustration, I imagine, reflects a fear that this crisis is just going to make it much harder for Joe Biden to win.

alex burns

You know, I’m not sure that that’s exactly right.

michael barbaro

Hm.

alex burns

I think the view in the Biden camp, and I think increasingly the view as well among a lot of senior Republicans, is that the huge differential in media exposure in the president’s favor is maybe not working so much in the president’s favor.

archived recording (donald trump) So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it.

alex burns

He is out there, yes, getting tons of eyeballs on him every single day, but his numbers have steadily fallen, not just overall in terms of where he is in the election, but in how the public feels about his handling of the crisis.

archived recording (donald trump) Right. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that?

alex burns

A lot of people are looking at him very closely. They don’t really seem to like what they see. On the other hand, people are paying far less attention to Joe Biden, but let’s think back on the Joe Biden who we knew during the Democratic primaries, who was not exactly mister crisp, clean, and confident when it came to delivering a public message every single day out on the campaign trail.

archived recording (joe biden) Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids — wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids. [APPLAUSE] I really mean it, but think how we think about it.

michael barbaro

Right. There were a lot of gaffes. There were a lot of missteps, a lot of misspoken words and thoughts.

alex burns

Right. There were arguments with voters.

archived recording You’re selling access to the president just like he is. archived recording (joe biden) You’re a damn liar, man. That’s not true, and no one has ever said that, no one has proved that. archived recording The hell it ain’t. I see it on the —

alex burns

This is not a candidate with a really flawless performance as a public campaigner, so there is a trade-off here. And right now, I think on balance, it seems to be working for Biden to be this largely unseen figure who people basically have a favorable impression of. So to have him more offstage at a moment when the president is struggling at least creates the possibility that he continues to gain relative political strength mostly by default.

michael barbaro

So there is a version of this where Joe Biden meaningfully benefits from being the candidate of isolation.

alex burns

Yes, and that is the scenario that we are living in right now.

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michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So Alex, you have just described what the Biden candidacy looks like in isolation. I want to turn to the broader campaign. What does that start to look like under these very strange circumstances?

alex burns

You know, I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that for sure, but I think that what we can say today, with half a year left in this campaign, is that it is going to be a shadow of the kind of presidential campaign that we are used to.

michael barbaro

Hm.

alex burns

We don’t know whether either of these candidates will ever hold a conventional campaign rally again.

michael barbaro

Wow.

alex burns

We still don’t know whether either party will hold any semblance of a national convention, and these are restrictions driven by a public health catastrophe with a very, very uncertain trajectory ahead of us.

michael barbaro

It’s really hard to imagine presidential campaigns without conventions. We’ve both attended these conventions, and they are these really important moments in a campaign, right? I mean, in many ways, a candidate is introduced to the country — their biography, their story. There are the slickly produced videos, family members come out. You know, elaborate tributes are made, and without those, kind of, when does the general election really even kick off?

alex burns

Well, that’s the big question. I think right now, if one of the parties is going to forge ahead with a convention, it will clearly be the Republicans. The president has said to be very determined to hold a convention —

michael barbaro

Interesting.

alex burns

— in Charlotte, but he is a prisoner to circumstance and public health as much as anybody here. Biden has gone much further in suggesting that it may need to be some kind of virtual convention, and it’s hard to imagine a virtual convention getting the same kind of attention as the spectacle that you just described.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

alex burns

And if you are deprived of that opportunity, you know, not just to introduce yourself to the country, but to introduce yourself to the country with your running mate, and your ideas, and your general election slogan and message, it is a much, much bigger challenge of political stagecraft to make it really count the way I think both campaigns would really like it to this year.

michael barbaro

Well, so I’m curious whether we end up having anything resembling a normal convention or not. How are you seeing the pandemic start to influence the kind of visions that both of these candidates are going to be running on in the next few months?

alex burns

I don’t think that I can recall another presidential campaign where the two parties’ eventual nominees end up having to move so far away from the message that they set out to deliver at the beginning of the campaign.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

alex burns

Look, President Trump came into this election season expecting to run on four more years of peace and prosperity, and a booming stock market, and economic growth. That is obviously not a viable message at this point. Joe Biden entered the presidential race with, essentially, a message of returning to normalcy, where, “You all remember what the Obama years were like, and we can do, you know, more of that.” That also seems like a pretty defunct message under current conditions.

michael barbaro

Right. Well, what is it starting to mean for those two kind of assumed visions for the campaign? I mean, what are you seeing Joe Biden do to pivot away from the, “I want to return to normal” because there kind of is no normal anymore, and what are you seeing from President Trump, who wanted to campaign on a record stock market and economic expansion?

alex burns

It is a huge question mark for both of them even at this point, and I think the eventual answers are going to be heavily driven by the external realities of the campaign. If President Trump winds up in a position next fall to make the case that, you know, you are seeing the green shoots of an economic recovery, then that will be his message. If he doesn’t have that, I think it’s really hard to see what kind of positive, forward-looking message he can deliver. What we have seen from his campaign the last few weeks is a combination of attacking congressional Democrats —

archived recording (donald trump) They want to make Trump look as bad as they can, because they want to try and win an election that they shouldn’t be allowed to win.

alex burns

— for being very liberal and not being cooperative enough with him, and attacking Joe Biden personally.

archived recording (donald trump) We have a sleepy guy in a basement of a house that the press is giving a free pass to who doesn’t want to do debates because of Covid.

alex burns

And then, you have seen the president at a number of points revive the red meat issue of immigration as sort of a stimulus to his political base.

archived recording (donald trump) By pausing immigration, we will help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens. So important.

alex burns

I don’t know that that adds up to a cohesive message about, “Look at all the things I accomplished. Here are all the things I will accomplish for you with the second term.” I think the closest we heard President Trump get to that kind of message was when he said, somewhat off the cuff, in one of his briefings a few weeks back that we built the greatest economy in the world.

archived recording (donald trump) I’ll do it a second time.

alex burns

We’ll do it again.

archived recording (donald trump) So I’m very proud of this country, I have to say. I’m very proud to be your president, and I’m very proud of this country. Thank you very much everybody. [APPLAUSE]

michael barbaro

OK. So that’s Trump. What about Biden?

archived recording (joe biden) You and I, and anybody who gets re-elected or elected in November, is going to face a circumstance nationally and internationally that hasn’t been seen for a long, long time.

alex burns

Biden has increasingly begun to talk about the next presidency not as a return to normalcy kind of event —

archived recording (joe biden) A whole range of things are going to be, I think, as difficult as they were when Franklin Roosevelt got elected.

alex burns

— but as really a national emergency presidency.

archived recording (joe biden) I think we have an opportunity to turn, generating a fundamentally green infrastructure, and turning it around in a way that can be the very thing that helps us get through this existential threat to our economy.

alex burns

He has talked about doing much more in terms of investing in economic stimulus, income support, business rescues, infrastructure spending. We just haven’t seen it all come together in some kind of big, “Joe Biden’s National Rescue Plan.” This is what the Joe Biden version of a 21st century New Deal would look like. I can’t tell you that, from my own reporting on the Biden campaign, they are moving in that direction. They are having those conversations, and I think it is generally the view, not just in the Biden camp, but among Democrats more broadly. That the party needs to offer something much bigger than the Joe Biden primary season agenda, an agenda that many Democrats found totally worthy based on the conditions they knew about in February, but that doesn’t match the severity of the moment today.

archived recording (joe biden) I pray to God this is one of those moments where we move beyond where we were, not just back to where we were.

michael barbaro

Alex, I want to turn now to the state of the race, Trump versus Biden. What exactly are polls telling us at this point, with the enormous caveat that it’s six months before election day?

alex burns

Well, with that enormous caveat, the picture is quite clear at this point that Biden has an early upper hand over the president.

michael barbaro

Hm.

alex burns

In terms of the head-to-head between the two of them, Biden has an advantage of some size in basically everything that we consider this year a swing state.

michael barbaro

And when you mention swing states, which ones?

alex burns

Well, there are the big three from 2016, the historically Democratic Midwestern states that flipped to Trump’s column and delivered him the presidency: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. As of today, Republicans feel very pessimistic about Michigan, somewhat less pessimistic but still pretty pessimistic about Pennsylvania, and they see Wisconsin as a real nail biter, a place where Biden probably has a sliver of an advantage, but you know, not a state that has swung back to the Democrats decisively by any means. The shortest path for any Democrat to 270 electoral college votes is winning those three states, and holding the rest of the states that Hillary Clinton won.

michael barbaro

So at this point, Biden has real electoral advantages, but Alex, doesn’t a president in charge in the middle of a national crisis almost by definition benefit politically from the spotlight? From people rallying around the flag, even if he is seen to be screwing up?

alex burns

The short answer is yes, and we did see that initially with President Trump. Not in a really pronounced way, but at the end of March, the middle of March, he was a couple points higher in the polls than he had been previously.

michael barbaro

Mm-hm.

alex burns

There is a precedent for a president initially getting a political bounce in a national crisis, and then watching it fade rapidly and disastrously for his own re-election as it becomes clearly he has mismanaged the crisis. That’s Jimmy Carter. It all started with the Iranian hostage crisis, when Iran seized the American embassy, took American hostages. There was a rally around the flag effect for Jimmy Carter as he got kind of that aura of, not exactly a wartime president, but a crisis president. And as the crisis dragged on and on, and as the president seemed more and more impotent to resolve it, it really doomed him politically.

michael barbaro

Right. And Carter would go on to lose to Ronald Reagan, and he would become a one-term president because of that crisis.

alex burns

That’s right. And that was an election that was really just about one thing, and that was the country’s perception that the president was weak.

michael barbaro

Right.

alex burns

I think for those of us who are covering this election, we can’t say today that that is how voters will make up their mind in November. Something could come up that changes the entire framing of the race for either candidate. Take the allegation of sexual assault by a former Biden aide, which he denies, but that could get traction. Progressives in the Democratic Party have already pushed him to address the allegation. He has so far been silent on the matter. But we do have to contemplate the possibility that this election is ultimately just about one thing, and that’s the pandemic, and what voters think of the president’s role in marshaling a government response. And if the conditions that exist today exist in the fall, that is a very, very hard campaign for the president to win. And if those conditions change very substantially, then maybe Trump has a chance to run some version of the campaign he was hoping to run in the first place. But all of that is contingent not on the choices the candidates make and not on the tactics and strategy of the campaigns, but on this overwhelming external event that none of them is in a position to control.

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michael barbaro

In other words, it becomes up to the virus.

alex burns

[LAUGHS] That’s a very dark way to put it, but I think that’s basically true.

michael barbaro

Well, Alex, thank you very much.

alex burns

Thank you.

michael barbaro

The Times reports that President Trump has become increasingly frustrated with polling that shows him trailing behind Joe Biden in crucial swing states, and that last week, he berated his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, over the situation. During a phone call, the president insisted that the polling was incorrect, blamed Parscale for his poor standing, and threatened to sue Parscale. It was unclear if the threat was serious. We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today. A large-scale clinical trial sponsored by the U.S. government has shown that treatment with an experimental antiviral drug, remdesivir, can speed recovery from the coronavirus.

archived recording The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery. This is really quite important for a number of reasons.

michael barbaro

The trial found that the recovery time for patients using the drug was 11 days, compared with 15 days for those who did not receive the drug.

archived recording Although a 31 percent improvement doesn’t seem like a knockout, hundred percent, it is a very important proof of concept, because what it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.

michael barbaro

As a result, President Trump said that the drug is likely to receive emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration and become the first federally-approved treatment for Covid-19.

archived recording (donald trump) We want everything to be safe, but we do — we would like to see very quick approvals, especially with things that work.

michael barbaro