POLITICO NIGHTLY: How the pandemic changed the veepstakes

BY RYAN LIZZA AND MYAH WARD

Presented by

BIDEN’S COVID CALCULUS — There’s been a lot of attention on how the coronavirus pandemic has altered the 2020 presidential campaign. The conventions will be mostly virtual. The debates will be different, too. The first debate was moved today, from Notre Dame to Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University, and the hosts announced that the event may not include an audience.

But the ongoing Covid crisis has also changed the calculus for Joe Biden’s next decision: his running mate.

In conversations about the process with plugged-in Democrats, four big issues came up for how the virus changed the veepstakes.

First, the pandemic could make it easier for Biden to choose someone who doesn’t have traditional campaign experience. Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations and then national security adviser, has emerged as a serious possibility. She has never run for office before, and some Democrats argue that a more seasoned political communicator is necessary.

But that major drawback might be less detrimental this year, some Democrats argue, when a virtual campaign will demand political skills that are more like a film actor’s than a stage actor’s.

As one former government official who worked with Rice in the Obama administration said, “She has no campaign experience but there’s no campaign!”

Second, the virus has raised the profile of a number of Democratic governors. Being a governor was once seen as the best stepping stone to the presidency, but they haven’t been faring as well since George W. Bush left the Oval Office. The pandemic has offered Biden a chance to observe a real-time test of the leadership skills of several governors, including Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, and Michelle Luján Grisham of New Mexico.

All three women have been praised for their response. One adviser to the Biden campaign who has been consulted about several potential candidates told me, “Gretchen Whitmer may be more of a possibility than people think.”

The risk, several Democrats noted, is that these governors are still battling the virus. “They have all been pressure-tested in real time,” said a Democratic strategist who was previously involved in the vice presidential selection process. “But is it an advantage or disadvantage to be a governor? What if something goes wrong in the next few months?”

Third, it’s harder for Biden to get to know the contenders. As Biden whittles down his list and conducts one-on-one interviews, the pandemic means he will have to decide whether he can afford the health risk of conducting the sessions in person or if they will have to be conducted via video. This is no small concern for someone like Biden, who doesn’t have deep relationships with most of the candidates, and who prizes personal relationships that are forged in one-on-one settings. “He’s a guy for whom his instincts and chemistry will matter more than most,” said the Democratic strategist. But it’s hard to bond over Zoom.

Finally, and perhaps most important, Biden knows that if he’s elected president the pandemic will consume his transition and first months in office. This means that he’ll want someone that he knows is prepared to meet that specific challenge with him. He is said to want someone who is loyal and willing to own politically fraught decisions, not someone preparing her presidential campaign.

The Biden adviser noted that when it comes to confronting the pandemic, as well as the multiple other crises that will be swirling around a Biden presidency, trust will be the key issue: “When the tough decisions are made, would she be too preoccupied with 2024?”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Renu is on the move, but her inbox is still right here. She’ll be back Wednesday. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

A message from AARP:

More than 59,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died from COVID-19. With cases continuing to spike across the country, desperate families are demanding Congress take immediate action. More lives can be saved if Congress makes sure necessary precautions are put in place. Take action

FIRST IN NIGHTLY

OBJECTION — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warns that businesses need protection against “an epidemic of lawsuits” that will arise as workers and customers sue employers over exposure to Covid-19. Yet data suggests that coronavirus-related litigation isn't very contagious, Eleanor Mueller writes.

Of the 3,727 coronavirus-related cases that have been filed since March, just 185, or less than 5 percent, fall into the personal injury category that McConnell describes — plaintiffs claiming fear of exposure, potential exposure or exposure to Covid-19, according to an analysis by the American Association for Justice of a litigation tracker run by law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth. Instead, the bulk of the legal actions deal with insurance claims and civil rights, including people challenging stay-at-home orders.

The association represents plaintiffs' lawyers; Hunton Andrews Kurth represents more than one-third of Fortune 100 companies, according to its website. That rate of filings is relatively low, labor law experts and advocates say, considering that more than 4 million cases of coronavirus have been reported in the U.S., and some 145,000 people have died.

HAPPENING 7/29 @ 12 p.m. EDT – A DEEP DIVE INTO 2020 CAMPAIGN POLLING : With less than 100 days remaining until Election Day, it’s time for a deep dive into campaign polling with POLITICO senior campaign and elections editor Steven Shepard and national political reporter Laura Barrón-López. Hear from expert pollsters Margie Omero and Jon McHenry on how the polls look today and what they portend for the future, how the industry corrected mistakes made in 2016, and the impact of Covid-19 on their work. REGISTER HERE.

ON THE HILL

THE COUNTEROFFER — While the first three major coronavirus relief packages passed Congress with large bipartisan majorities — despite some intense partisan wrangling — this round of discussions is going to be much more challenging, Marianne LeVine, John Bresnahan and Sarah Ferris write. Democrats want to spend at least $2 trillion more than Republicans will propose, while GOP hardliners don't want to do a package at all.

Senate Republicans began to release their coronavirus relief proposal this afternoon. McConnell outlined the pillars of the proposal, which would include another round of $1,200 in direct payments, more money for the Paycheck Protection Program, a reduction in boosted federal unemployment benefits, liability protection and more than $100 billion for reopening schools and colleges.

The Senate GOP proposal calls for the reduction in increased federal unemployment benefits from $600 to $200 per week for a 60-day period, or until states are able to provide a 70 percent wage replacement, according to sources on a call with GOP staff Monday. This prospective change had been floated by the White House last week, although there have been concerns whether state unemployment agencies could handle the revisions.

A federal $600 boost in unemployment benefits from the March CARES package began to expire over the weekend. Democrats are pushing to extend those benefits into next year.

PALACE INTRIGUE

O’BRIEN TESTS POSITIVE — President Donald Trump socially distanced himself from his own national security adviser today after he tested positive for Covid-19, Daniel Lippman writes.

"I haven't seen him lately," the president said of Robert O’Brien during a brief exchange with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. "I heard he tested, yeah. I have not seen him."

The president's remarks come days after a Thursday phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — the kind of high-level meeting that would typically demand the national security adviser's close involvement. The White House released a spartan readout of the call that did not list the participants, and administration officials declined to answer questions about whether O'Brien was in the Oval Office at the time.

According to a White House statement, O’Brien “has mild symptoms and has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site. There is no risk of exposure to the president or the vice president. The work of the National Security Council continues uninterrupted.”

 

FROM THE HEALTH DESK

RAYS OF LIGHT — “Deep cleaning” is, as Derek Thompson wrote in the Atlantic today, a bit of “hygiene theater” that’s not all that effective in preventing the spread of Covid-19. But there’s a different technology, Nightly’s Myah Ward writes, that some scientists think has real promise to kill the coronavirus: ultraviolet light.

Not just any ultraviolet light: It needs to be UVC, also known as germicidal UVC, which contains shorter wavelengths of radiant energy that can destroy a pathogen’s ability to multiply and cause disease. While ultraviolet rays from the sun can cause skin cancer, UVC is only mildly irritating to the skin and eyes, said Salmaan Keshavjee, a professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School.

The technology has been used in hospitals and prisons for decades to ward off the spread of viruses, Keshavjee said. After the drug-resistant tuberculosis 1980s outbreak in the U.S., UVC lighting was installed in homeless shelters and emergency rooms in cities like New York City, Miami and Boston. Very few countries use this technology widely, though there was an uptick in interest with the H1N1, SARS and Mers outbreaks, he said.

The idea is to put the device high up in a room where it’s not in the direct sight of people, Keshavjee said. Ceiling fans and air currents circulate the contaminated air to the top and the light kills pathogens before the air cycles back down. “These are like $100 fixtures,” Keshavjee said. “This isn’t a million-dollar intervention. They run on 110 volts of electricity, the same as the regular fixture up there.”

There’s a lot of misinformation about germicidal UV, said Edward Nardell, a professor at Harvard Medical School. People often assume all UV light is dangerous. But now there’s a wavelength of ultraviolet light that should eliminate those concerns, he said.

Far-UVC — an even shorter wavelength than UVC — was effective in killing more than 99.9 percent of seasonal coronaviruses present in airborne droplets, according to a study published in June by Columbia researchers.

Because far-UVC’s smaller wavelength won’t penetrate a person’s skin or eyes, it can be used in occupied rooms to disinfect the air and surfaces, said David Brenner, director of the center for radiological research at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center.

The researchers are studying the effect of far-UVC on SARS-CoV-2, and preliminary data suggests it’s just as effective in killing the pathogens.

The technology isn’t a cure for the spread of Covid-19, Brenner said. “We don’t see it as replacing the weapons that we have: masks and social distancing,” he said. “But we do see it as another weapon in the battle.”

IN MEMORIAM

LEWIS HONORED IN ROTUNDA — Rep. John Lewis arrived at the Capitol a final time this afternoon, where he will lie in state for two days, one of the last stops for the civil rights icon who long ago transcended politics to become an American hero. Lewis, who died July 17 at age 80 after being diagnosed with cancer, will lie in state in the Georgia Capitol on Wednesday before being buried in a private funeral in Atlanta Thursday.

Lewis, the son of tenant farmers from rural Alabama who was nearly beaten to death by state troopers while marching for voting rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, went on to serve more than three decades in Congress and never tired of engaging in the “good trouble” he so often urged Americans to find. Lewis is only the second Black lawmaker to lie in state at the Capitol, following the late Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who was honored in Statuary Hall last year.

ASK THE AUDIENCE

Nightly asks you: Have you taken up a new hobby or activity because of the pandemic? Send a picture capturing it to nightly@politico.com and we'll include some of our favorites in our Friday edition.

EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED: Policy professionals' work has drastically changed since the outbreak of Covid-19. Read what 700+ policy professionals had to say about this “new normal” in POLITICO Pro’s 2020 Policy Insider’s Report: Policymaking during a Pandemic .

NIGHTLY NUMBER

14 The number of Miami Marlins baseball players and staff members who have tested positive for Covid-19. Two major league games scheduled for tonight were postponed after the positive tests in an outbreak that stranded the team in Philadelphia.

THE GLOBAL FIGHT

NINE LIVES — A pet cat in England has tested positive for Covid-19, the first confirmed case in an animal in the U.K. and one of very few worldwide. The U.K.'s Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss said that it was “a very rare event” and there was no evidence to suggest that pets transmit the coronavirus to humans. The cat is thought to have contracted the virus from its owners, who had tested positive and since made a full recovery — as has the cat, chief U.K. correspondent Charlie Cooper writes.

British authorities referred the case to the World Organisation for Animal Health, which is monitoring incidents of the coronavirus in animals. Public Health England's Medical Director Yvonne Doyle said the case should “not be a cause for alarm.”

“The investigation into this case suggests that the infection was spread from humans to animal, and not the other way round,” she said.

There was no evidence that the cat had passed on the virus to other animals, the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.

Visitors watch a sea lion performance at Central Park Zoo as New York City zoos reopen during Phase 4 of reopening. | Getty Images

PARTING WORDS

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT — The face mask, something that seemed entirely foreign to most of us until a few months ago, has become an unavoidable part of our daily lives; so much so that our social media feeds are filling with “maskies,” those same sultry sun-lounger selfies as every summer, this time with face-coverings.

Hannah Roberts admits she wasn’t an early adopter: When she saw air travelers in masks in early January, she assumed they were overreacting. When wearing a mask became compulsory in shops in Italy in April, she huffed and whined.

But these days, Hannah is a convert and an evangelist — not just because she could potentially prevent someone from getting sick and dying of COVID-19, but because it voids the need for numerous social niceties.

Social distancing has already killed the kiss on each cheek and the handshake. The logical next casualty, thanks to the mask, is the fake smile. Throw on some sunglasses with your face mask, and you can legitimately pretend not to recognize acquaintances you’d rather avoid.

Hannah writes: “As we inch back to office life, the mask has given us license to drop courtesy greetings and chit-chat with coworkers too. My natural resting face is moody-to-serial killer, but it no longer matters. I’m spared from water-cooler chat and small talk, as no one can really understand each other — or bear the discomfort of trying to chat through a mask for very long. Behind the façade, I freely frown, scowl or chuckle to myself, without fear of appearing impolite.”

A message from AARP:

SENIORS DEMAND ACTION

It is an outrage that more than 59,000 residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have died from COVID-19. Cases are continuing to spike across the country and Congress must act now to help save lives in these facilities.

Protect nursing home residents with AARP’s five-point plan calling for:
1. Regular, ongoing testing and adequate personal protective equipment (PPE)
2. Transparency focused on daily, public reporting of cases and deaths in facilities; communication with families about discharges and transfers; and, funding accountability.
3. Access to facilitated virtual visitation.
4. Better care for residents through adequate staffing, oversight, and access to in-person formal advocates (called long-term care ombudsmen)
5. No blanket immunity to long-term care facilities related to COVID-19.

Tell Congress to act now to protect the residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Take action

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