sand good day, brian williams. a busy wednesday afternoon. 3:00 p.m. hour here in the east. 12 noon out west. our friend nicolle wallace is off today. chris jansing standing by to take you the rest of the way at the next hour for "deadline: white house." we begin with historic day in politics. joe biden and kamala harris are scheduled to share the stage for their first joint appearance for running mates. within the last hour, we saw senator harris leave her hotel in wilmington on the way to this

event, it comes almost exactly 24 hours after joe biden made history by announcing that he had selected the california democratic senator as the first black wm to be a part of the party's mticket. >> right now, america needs action. in the middle of a pandemic, the president is trying to rip away health care, while small businesses close he's given breaks to his wealthy donors and when people cried out for support, he tear gassed them. america is in crisis and i know joe biden will lead us out of it. >> first of all, is the answer yes? >> the answer is absolutely yes, joe, and i'm ready to work. i'm ready to do this with you, for you, i -- i'm just deeply honored and i'm very excited. >> the last time these two shared a stage together was just

over five months ago in detroit, where xhal kamala harris endorse biden. the daughter of jamaican and indian immigrants is the only third woman to serve as a major party nominee. biden says harris' relationship with his late son beau which was formed when they both served as attorneys general of california and delaware respectively, played a role in his decision to choose her as his running mate. but there was some doubt about their eventual partnership after the first democratic presidential debate, primetime, miami, florida, when senator harris launched a haymaker and confronted biden to his opposition of busing. however, as biden wrote on a note card that was widely seen, picked up by a photographer last

month, he holds no grudges, to quote him, something that he made clear when he chose the candidate. we want to begin our coverage with our own andrea mitchell, a veteran of many presidential campaigns who joins us now by phone. from inside the ai dupont high school in wilmington, that part of country has been pounded by summer thunderstorms and severe weather today. hey, andrea. >> reporter: brian, in fact we're still outside. we were pounded by those storms, knocking out a lot of our gear, they're preparing to check our temperatures to bring us in, so this is going to start an hour later than originally expected. as you point out, that video really captured what they're trying to capture here.

they share the same goals. the video clearly showed a good part of it, it opened with her saying, are you ready to go to work? and she then answers that at the end of the video. she goes through the story of america, immigrant family and of an achieving daughter who really says her mother was her guide post in telling she could do anything she wanted to do. she went to protests at berkeley as a toddler with her parents and then chose to go to howard university, a great school in washington, which is one of the great historically black colleges and now one of the real places where african-americans have found so much of a home and was very active in the civil rights movement. that's how she identifies herself. she has indian american strains as well.

they're campaigning virtually pretty much from now on. today, we'll see them together and that's big moment because it's going to be a chance to see how they interact and one of the narratives that has emerged as you pointed it out, beau, attorney general in delaware, she was the attorney general in california, they worked closely together, one of the reasons why she was so surprised when she went after him in that first debate. he wrote himself, "hold no grudges." brian. >> i'm sitting here trying to imagine where or when either ticket is going to appear to anything approaching what we called a crowd, the business of campaigning has been plunged back into the 1880s. >> absolutely, that event in detroit was the last rally that biden held and coincidentally or

not was his event with kamala harris. they raised more money last night. in one hour when they made that announcement around 4:15 east coast yesterday, online, than at any other time during the campaign, any other hour during the campaign. the rollout they think has worked really hard. we'll see what kind of chemistry they have when we see them together. clearly it's going to be the paradigm for the rest of this campaign. they think it was a virtue. president trump was derided by the -- biden was derided by president trump for wearing a mask. you cannot continue as the administration has with mixed messages and telling people not

to wear masks and to reopen qui quickly and sending kids back to school when it can still be dangerous. andrea, get your temperature taken, we know that you're just a phone call away and we have you as an inside source at this event, andrea mitchell, known by her warmth to her colleagues, let's hope is no warmer today than 98.6. next mike memoli, joe biden experts, having covered him for about a dozen years now. mike, first of all, process question, we've seen a lot of presidential campaigns leak like sieves over the past couple of decades, this was a close hold as they say in the business, this was a tight secret. >> reporter: yeah, that's right, brian, you know these vice presidential selection processes

and the rollout that follows the secretive process. one thing that wasn't a secret about this process was the fact that joe biden talked more publicly over the course of the last few months, the qualities he was looking for in a running mate, time line he was expected to make a decision. the team itself is a loyal team, lot of them have worked with biden for quite a long time, none of them wanted to be the person that let this secret out. when we were preparing for the announcement yesterday, the campaign had told me there was some of 4-hour plan for it, they would release the selection digitally and then 24 hours later, we would see them on a stage together. talking in this hour yesterday when we knew a selection had

been made, today at 4:00, we'll see them on stage together, ready to introduce themselves to the country as what they hope to be the next president and vice president of the united states. >> mike, we know former connecticut democratic senator chris dodd is in close and played a tight coordinating role in this selection, who else would you define as members of the wilmington kitchen cabinet for joe biden? >> reporter: well, chris dodd was one of four official co-chairmans of this process. cynthia hogan, a longtime staffer of joe biden's and then of course eric garcetti, the mayor of los angeles. biden has a kitchen cabinet team of political advisers who have been with him for a long time. the chief strategist of this campaign, the real voice, those

two have a real mind meld in terms of their view of the country. then we should mention of course his wife, dr. jill biden and his sister valerie, his sister ran his first campaign for the senate here in 1972, ran a lot of his campaigns through his 2008 presidential race and as we've been reporting out about this process the secretive process, it began in april officially with that team of co-chairmen beginning to divide interviews, narrowing to a field of 11 finalists. biden himself had talked about narrowing it to potentially less than that. biden whether or not we look at kamala harris as the obvious choice, even with that sparring that happened on the debate stage, he wanted this process to elevate a lot of women in this party, in fact i was told about

a conversation that happened between biden and a top aide two years ago, lot of women candidates and he said for the first time to one of his close advisers, should he run for president he would want to pick a woman on his ticket. you talked about wit andrea, one of the pieces curren 1i that kamala harris had is that relationship with his son beau, i expect that we'll hear beau's name quite a bit today in the conversation inside. we talked about miami too much if you talk to some biden advisers, biden has always had personal chemistry with kamala harris in that video. >> mike memoli, part of our team in delaware. we should get used to covering

these confines to our viewers it's possible to wake up in the morning at the dupont hotel and drive to the dupont high school and still pass at least three places named after the family that founded the chemical company that built a lot of the state of delaware. mike, thank you very much. let's bring in our panel on this wednesday afternoon. "the new york times" chief white house correspondent peter baker. donna edwards and cornell belcher. >> let's talk about the numbers, if you're advising this ticket in that living room, in delaware, socially distanced yes, what are the pitfalls, what would you warn them about as you look at the numbers across the country, do you believe any of the numbers this far out? >> those are all really good questions. let's start with the numbers. couple things, one is the

numbers that you're seeing joe biden garner now across the battlegrounds and national are unprecedented for a democrat, as you know brian, for democrats historically don't garner and hold a ten-point, 12-point, 13-point lead not over a couple weeks but a month here, four, six, seven weeks here, joe biden, since lbj signed the civil rights legislation, it's been hard to do that. so something is changing. suburb sub there's structurally things that are different about the polling and data here that are unique and he's garnering sort of the energy that i think this

ticket brings, one of the things they was most concerned about in the data, i look at it as a reminder, the pitfalls of 2016, a lot of younger minorities not excited about the ticket. we got to slap our young people around, you're not going to get barack obama again, you got to be excited and vote of the lesser of two evils it's okay. giving a shot and a boost of energy to a lot of the base voters and lot of african-american voters are both excited and relieved by this pick, so i think there's a lot of good news in the data and frankly i don't know how the trump campaign's going to attack this, if you look at the reporting now, they're attacking her as crazy too liberal or too close to wall street and big tech in california, so i think they're flailing right now on how they attack this ticket.

>> yeah, cornell, lot of people were surprised that their lines of attack weren't more mature and thought through, knowing she was the leading contender for this post. congresswoman, here's the tweet that cornell just mentioned, people would be forgiven for waking up this morning and checking the calendar to make sure it wasn't 1958. the suburban housewife will be voting for me. they want safety and are thrilled that i ended the long-running program where low income housing would invade their neighborhood. biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with misspelled democratic senator from new jersey, corey booker in charge. congresswoman, believing that there's a silent majority, it's clear this president is going deep with white american.

>> well, he thinks he is. i think the president is really greatly misjudging the broad swath of american people and frankly if you look at america's suburbs, america's suburbs are black, brown and white and everything in between. when the president feels like he wants to go on an attack it's telling that he goes directly to race. whether directly or indirectly. and i think that says something obviously about him, but it also says that this campaign and the president for his re-election doesn't have a play. they've inept in terms of trying to go after joe biden and now they're proving themselves inept in going after kamala harris because they can't talk about the economy anymore, they can't talk about this pandemic because they're literally killing hundreds of thousands of americans, they can't talk about

what they're going to do in the future and so his play is to swing back about 50 years and to try to build a campaign as though he's going to garner a majority in that way and as cornell would probably tell you that's not where the majority of american people are. >> peter baker, indeed, i know you happen to live with history books close at hand at all times, you probably didn't imagine you'd be reaching for them and check out the first time some of these references and some of these campaign points and some of these talking points were slid out to the american public, but here's a hint, you have to go back a couple of decades. >> yeah, you do. we wrote a story recently about president trump's rhetoric and how much it seems to match george wallace's in 1968. nixon ran a little bit on the moderate side in 1968, yes, he

ran on law and order but he talked about civil rights as well. it was wallace who was playing to the law and order concerns of many americans, playing to this idea, we need to retake the country, that president trump is using today and so i think some of these similarities. . the attacks on kamala harris are interesting, they're so cookie cutter, what they would have said about any of the people that joe biden was considering, too far left, pulling the strings because biden isn't really smart anymore, radical, nothing specific to kamala harris at this point, that probably validates biden's pick, he picked kamala harris as the do no harm choice. first priority of picking a running mate, don't pick someone who's going to hurt you.

you don't want a candidate who can do you harm. we know a lot of about her already. the trump people didn't have something to roll out from day one that surprised us. >> our guests have kindly agreed to stay with us for our hour of coverage and get to watch whatever transpires in wilmington, delaware. a quick break for us, when we continue -- how kamala harris can help what is now our biden/harris ticket. a look at where senator harris will make the biggest impact on biden's election chances across the country as we await our first glimpse of these two as a ticket. joe biden. kamala harris. first campaign e. together as

the democratic ticket.

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the announcement of kamala harris generated a surge of enthusiasm as we have been reporting for the biden campaign. after the presumptive democratic nominee chose senator kamala harris to become the nation's first black and asian american woman on a major party presidential ticket. nbc news, the choice of harris says a lot of representation of women of color. it lays down a marker for the democratic party of avoiding 2016's blunder with black voters. hillary client whereon's narrow loss to donald trump wouldn't have happened with underperformance of black voters in swing states. with that, we turn to correspondent allison barber, live from miami. dade county one of five counties

in select battleground states that we're tracking this election report and allison, you're in such an interesting place politically. >> reporter: yeah, brian, and we spent the last 15 hours or so trying to talk to as many as voters we can in this area. we spoke to a life long republican who voted for president trump last election cycle and voting to biden and one who voted for president trump last election and voting for trump again. here's what they told us. >> it balances out the ticket. i mean, she's a definitely sharp, sharp legislation lay or the, she's done a good job in the senate, she was tough on

crime as attorney general for california and she's young, she's energetic, she's smart. >> in this case, it's pretty important. you have to acknowledge that joe biden is 77 years old and so if he finishes this term, if he's elect td he'll be 81 or 82. so in this case, i think it's pretty important choice. >> aside from obviously being female and being black, which are all very much needed in this society, clearly she has a lot of -- she's been in politics for a very long time and shown her worth. >> reporter: the miami-dade area is such a diverse community and it's really not hard to find first a generation american, second generation americans as we spoken to people in this community, the last 15 hours or so, a number of people have said that one thing they're familiar with about senator harris is her

background the fact that she's child of immigrants and they say that's something that matters to them, it's a point of pride for them and they see this on both sides of the political spectrum in this community as something that does represent the american dream for them. we talked to republicans and democrats who both point out that aspect of her background something that they see as valuable and significance and progress of the country regardless where they fall ideologically. >> ellison barber, she was able to find some really smart, really interesting voters to interview in the midst of this pandemic. thank you. steve kornacki, standing by at the big board for more on the impact of senator harris on this race, steve, i've been thinking about you because this represents so many firsts and this overturns so much of the political doctrine that we've all been raised with.

>> and we'll see here, democrats hope will happen here, one of the things, you mentioned this in the introduction here, black voter turnout, i stressed the number you're seeing here, the turnout rate for black voters, this is 2004 voted for john kerry and john edwards, 60% of voters turned out to vote in 2004 election. the progression since then. 2004, going to obama in 2008, first black president, black turnout jumped significantly with obama leading the ticket, from 60% to 65%. big difference there for democrats, they lost in 2004 and they won big in 2008 and then take a look at to 2012, black voter turnout increased from 2008 and 2012 in obama's

re-election. then take a look at what happened in 2016 with hillary clinton and tim kaine, the turnout rate dropped significantly, to a level that hadn't been seen since 2004, this was a democratic loss, a democratic loss, these were the two democratic victories, the key ingredients to those victories was very strong turnout from african-american voters, you saw this, the national numbers in big states as well, 2008, 2012, black voter turnout when barack obama was the democratic candidate then take a look at what happened in these states in 2016, black voter turnout dropped, it dropped substantially, it plummeted in wisconsin, from 79% to 47%. every single one of these states in 2016 didn't go for the democrats. it went for the trump/pence ticket. one of the key ingredients for democrats they've seen in 2008 and 2012, they didn't see in 2016, they want to get very

strong african-american turnout from black voters, missing in '16, we'll see as this campaign unfolds if this vice presidential pick has that effect in 2020. >> fascinating. fascinating stuff. steve alt the big board, thanks. we'll be talking much more in the weeks ahead. another break in our coverage here as we await the first glimpse of the democratic ticket as a ticket. they were assembled just yesterday. appearing in person today at least as close as cdc guidelines will allow these days.