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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, on this Monday before Super Tuesday. Why do they call it Super Tuesday? Because the following states will hold their primaries tomorrow. Are you ready? Here we go. Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. I memorized that. No, I didn't. Which one does not belong? American Samoa, the only place that's not a state, will also vote.

15 out of the 50 states plus the one territory all tomorrow, Super Tuesday. You would think there would be more at stake for the challenger Donald Trump who's losing 30% to 40% to Nikki Haley in state after state, not for President Joe Biden, who's got no competitive opponent. There may actually be more at stake for the president tomorrow. Why? Back in December, Biden said this about the Israeli assault on Gaza.

"It has most of the world supporting it, but they're starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place." Biden said in December. Now, the same thing may be true of him, as things in Gaza get worse and worse, especially for Biden not threatening to cut off the military aid that enables the war is now the way the war is being fought. This isn't just Netanyahu's war. It's Biden's war, too. As far as more and more people are concerned with the tens of thousands of deaths, plus starvation and desperation, afflicting nearly all 2 million Gazans and getting worse.

You know that 100,000 people in the Michigan primary voted uncommitted rather than vote for Biden last week. Tomorrow could be an important test of how much power the uncommitted movement has. While Biden is seen by many as doing nothing to stop the way the war is being fought, even how justified it may have been from the start because of the horrible October 7th attack by Hamas, maybe this is why Vice President Harris spoke in the strongest terms yet about the situation in a speech she gave yesterday.

Vice President Harris: The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid.

[applaud]

Vice President Harris: No excuses. They must open new border crossings. They must not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid. They must ensure humanitarian personnel sites and convoys are not targeted. They must work to restore basic services and promote order in Gaza so more food, water and fuel can reach those in need.

Brian Lehrer: Vice President Harris in Selma, Alabama yesterday. Let's talk about how it's Biden versus Netanyahu and Biden versus uncommitted. Now, with NPR White House Correspondent, Asma Khalid, also the co-host of the NPR Politics podcast and a seasoned campaign reporter before she took the White House beat. She's got expertise both ways on this Super Tuesday week. Asma, I know you've got 15 states plus American Samoa to keep your eye on tomorrow. Thanks for squeezing in some one-on-one time for WNYC today. Welcome.

Asma Khalid: No, my pleasure to join you all. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: The Kamala Harris speech is making news around the country and around the world. Do you see a relationship between the timing of the speech and the timing of tomorrow's vote?

Asma Khalid: That's an interesting question. I think I see more of a relationship between the setting of where Harris delivered this speech and the words that she spoke. We have seen from the White House an increasing frustration, both privately, and some of it has spilled out publicly with how Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's leader, has been conducting the war in Gaza.

Notably where the Vice President spoke yesterday was in Selma, Alabama on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday. We have seen some reports that a number of African-American leaders, church leaders have grown very frustrated with what's been going on in Gaza, and they see a human rights, civil rights comparison to the way that many Black folks have been treated for years here in the United States with the way the Palestinians are being treated both in Gaza but also to some degree in the West Bank.

Then, more recently also, you had a number of bishops from the AME, the historical AME church, who issued a letter calling for the United States to halt funding for Israel. These are very bold moves, I would argue, by a key constituency of the Democratic Party. I think there was an early assumption, I would say, that the Michigan concerns were largely limited to Arab American voters, to Muslim voters. There is a concern about the concerns about Gaza potentially spilling over to young voters, Black voters and other key parts of the Democratic base.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think they sent out the vice president to give that speech rather than the president himself? He can sound that strong and passionate when he wants to, as we know, as he has on a few other occasions recently.

Asma Khalid: I did a story a little while back about why President Biden has been hugging Netanyahu so closely. I think a lot of this goes back to his long personal relationship both with the country of Israel and then also with Netanyahu. Harris, I would argue is more skeptical of Netanyahu in particular. We've seen very public remarks that differ a little bit on the margins. The vice president's office and the president's office often try to point out that there's no daylight.

If I go back to her comments in Dubai on the outskirts of this big climate conference, the tone was different. I think when you talk about Biden, he has had a long personal relationship. The politics domestically on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have to some degree shifted, I would argue, evolved within the Democratic Party. Joe Biden, and I hear this from many particularly younger Democratic voters, feels a bit stuck in time in the 1990s. When I talk to people who know Biden, who've worked for Biden, this is a very personal, emotional issue.

He feels deeply bothered, of course, by what happened, the horrific attack on October 7th. You saw him go to Israel and literally hug Netanyahu. There was some concerns within some Democratic circles that prior to what happened on October 7th, this administration had deep concerns about Netanyahu's commitment to democracy. You ask why the Vice President?

I would argue that tonally she has had a bit of a different message. Secondly, this White House's administration sees the vice president as the whisperer to communities of color, whether that's Black voters, Latino communities but also certainly young voters. Beyond this issue of Gaza, you see her meet extensively with a college campus tour. You've seen her talk to a number of Black and Latino conventions last summer. That has been her role, particularly as we're heading closer into that November 2024 reelection campaign.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. One more clip from Harris's speech, because the US does still acknowledge that Hamas has responsibility for what happens next year, too. You'll hear how this starts with the vice president, but you'll hear also how this ends.

Vice President Harris: Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire-

[applaud]

Vice President Harris: -for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table. This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in. This would allow us to build something more enduring to ensure Israel is secure and to respect the right of the Palestinian people to dignity, freedom and self-determination.

[applaud]

Vice President Harris: Hamas claims it wants to cease fire. Well, there is a deal on the table.

Brian Lehrer: She's calling for an immediate cease-fire but not the permanent cease-fire that the protest movement calls for because that's seen by the US as giving Hamas too much of a permanent victory in this war when they promise more attacks. She ends the clip by saying, "Hamas knows there's a temporary cease-fire and prisoner and hostage exchange deal on the table. They have to accept it." My question for you as a White House correspondent is if the US is pressuring Israel to say yes, which it hasn't either, does the Biden administration have a partner who's closer to Hamas pressuring them?

Asma Khalid: No. The Biden administration, I would say many previous US administrations doesn't have a direct line to Hamas. You've seen intermediaries both in Qatar and in Egypt talk to Hamas officials. That's the go-between. The United States certainly has a much closer direct line to pressure the Israeli government to pressure Netanyahu. I would argue broadly, you look today, you've got a member of Israel's war cabinet, Benny Gantz, who's here in Washington, going to be meeting with the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, going to be meeting with Vice President Harris.

I do think that there is a desire to separate out the Israeli people from the current Israeli government that you hear in this Biden administration. I want to go back to one thing you said earlier, which was the VP's comments about a ceasefire for at least six weeks. This is arguably the Biden Administration's position. It is no different, in terms of what she articulated than what we heard, I believe Joe Biden articulated some weeks ago when he spoke with the King of Jordan visiting Washington DC.

The difference again, though, I would say is a matter of tone. When I've spoken to Arab American voters, one of their big concerns has been that you have this man and Joe Biden, who is known as an empathizer and chief, who really talks about feeling other people's pain. They have felt consistently throughout this conflict, that while the President, very much humanized Israelis who lost their lives on October 7th, he has somewhat struggled, they felt, to articulate the same degree of humanity and empathy for now about 30,000 Palestinians who've lost their lives.

I think what we heard again, going back to Harris, there was a degree of detail in how she spoke about Palestinian lives that we don't really hear from President Biden very often. She spoke about some people needing to resort to eating animal feed, malnourished babies. There's a degree of vividness in the stories. That is something I've routinely heard from Arab American voters is that there is a degree that these are just mass casualties and that there's no human face behind what's going on in Gaza right now.

Brian Lehrer: Michigan, which had its primary last week, of course, has a large percentage of Arab and Muslim voters, including in the Democratic primary as compared with other states is tomorrow, a test of how political, how powerful the dissent on by Biden's Gaza policy is for a wider spectrum of the Democratic base that might vote uncommitted in multiple states?

Asma Khalid: I don't see it particularly that way. I do think that the uncommitted vote we saw in Michigan was, to some degree, demographically unique. There is a sizable population of Arab American voters, many of whom are Muslim, but not all. I think it's upwards of 200,000. They really could help potentially swing an election one way or the other in that state of Michigan. It was a campaign that I believe started about three weeks prior to the primary election itself in Michigan. The bigger test tomorrow, if I'm speaking really candidly here, is on the Republican side.

There is a sense that after Super Tuesday, there will be a solidified Republican front-runner. The Biden campaign believes that once many voters see that Donald Trump is the likely presumptive Republican nominee, this idea of a contrast and choosing between Biden and Trump will, to some degree, solidify, they believe, in voters' minds. Their thinking is that in the case of some Arab American and Muslim voters, even if they are not fully on board with how the President has handled the war in Gaza, that once they see that Donald Trump is on the other side, they'll come home to the Democratic Party.

I have some reservations about that theory in part because I do think there is deep anger and frustration that I've not seen. I've covered many campaigns, I've not seen this in many, many years, and I don't think it's solely limited to Muslim voters or Arab American voters. There are many young voters who are frustrated. This goes beyond the conflict in the Middle East.

They're frustrated about economic issues, not being able to afford certain things. They're frustrated with the lack of student loan debt forgiveness, which of course, the President has tried, but that was stopped to some [unintelligible 00:13:29] in the Supreme Court. I think the administration, and we'll see this on Thursday with the President's State of the Union address, has really struggled to articulate how certain economic policies, how certain broad policies relate to people's lives. The President's weakness is much deeper than the conflict in the Middle East.

Brian Lehrer: We have a few minutes left with NPR, White House correspondent, Asma Khalid, a lot of you who just tuned in saying, "I know that voice from NPR. It's Asma Khalid. What is she doing on WNYC's local show?" Well, she's giving us a few minutes this morning, good enough to do that. We have just a few minutes of those minutes left. I'm glad you brought up Trump in that last answer because I don't know if you've seen it yet, but we have some breaking presidential campaign news, just in the last few minutes. Listeners, heads up, because a lot of you have been waiting for this.

Just in from the Supreme Court, Colorado was one of the states that votes on Super Tuesday tomorrow, and the Supreme Court just handed down a ruling moments ago that strikes down Colorado State Supreme Court removing Donald Trump from the ballot there. The Colorado court had determined that Trump disqualified himself by violating the insurrection clause of the US Constitution but SCOTUS said no, and Asma was nine to nothing on the court, nine to nothing, restoring Trump to the ballot, not just in Colorado but on any other state that was in the process of doing that, and there were a few reaction to that. Since you covered the White House, does this rolling affect how Biden campaigns in any way?

Asma Khalid: I would say, don't think it's a particularly surprising decision based on how and what we saw from the quarterly. I think there was a general assessment that this is the way the court would rule. Look, I think that it further cements the inevitable reality that many of us who've been covering politics for a while have been saying, which is that this is not a normal election cycle. I know tomorrow, we're going to focus a lot on Super Tuesday, because a third of Republican delegates are at stake. Donald Trump really has a stronghold on the current Republican Party.

No doubt, Nikki Haley chips away a certain percent. You could argue whether it's, 25%, 30%, 40% in some states, but it's Donald Trump who has been winning primary after primary. I would argue that he will become very quickly the Republican nominee likely quicker than he did even in years past. That is because his campaign has been systematically working with a number of state parties to turn the rules, the delegate math further in favor of Donald Trump. Yes, I think that this is not particularly surprising. It is the inevitable scenario, what many of us had expected.

Look, now I think that we're going to see after Super Tuesday, a shift towards a general election campaign in earnest. I don't know entirely what that means, because I think both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have weaknesses amongst the coalitions of voters that they have depended on in the past. We're going to spend the next several months looking at whether or not each candidate can actually put that coalition back together again.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, well said. Last question, do you know where Biden will be tomorrow night as the returns come in from 15 states plus American Samoa? Do you expect a victory speech in primetime on the East Coast, or will we have to wait until California comes in?

Asma Khalid: For Biden, you're saying?

Brian Lehrer: Correct. Either that you want to answer.

Asma Khalid: Yes, I think, really, this is a formality, Joe Biden is the incumbent president. We are going to see him after the State of the Union make some campaign stops. There'll be both, I believe in Pennsylvania. In Georgia, we'll also see the Vice President visit some key swing states. The focus this week is on the State of the Union. There is heavy expectation for what this President needs to accomplish, both in the delivery of the message, the content but also how he says this, and they need to quiet some of those concerns about his age.

There is also, I think, correctly an assessment from this White House that not all voters are going to view the State of the Union in the same way on television sitting down. They will see it in different ways on different platforms, truncated in clips. There's been a very, I would say, a deliberate effort to try to reach out to different kinds of people, whether it's content creators, regional news outlets. I think that is this White House's primary focus this week is that Thursday, State of the Union address.

Brian Lehrer: NPR White House correspondent and co-host of The NPR Politics Podcast, Asma Khalid. Asma, again, thanks a lot for a few minutes on a very busy morning day before Super Tuesday. Thank you very much.

Asma Khalid: No problem. Take care.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.

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