STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to a joint meeting of Congress today.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Republicans support Netanyahu and Israel in the war in Gaza. Democrats are divided and increasingly critical.
INSKEEP: This occasion matters politically in both countries, and NPR's Greg Myre is watching from Tel Aviv. Hi there, Greg.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: What does the Israeli prime minister hope to gain?
MYRE: Well, the view from here is Netanyahu is going to one of the few places he can find support, which is among Republicans in the U.S. Congress. But even in Washington, he'll face critics among the Democrats. A growing number plan to boycott the speech, and street protests against him are also expected. You know, on the flight to Washington, Netanyahu had a baseball cap emblazoned with the words total victory, which sums up his belief, often stated, that Hamas must be completely destroyed in Gaza. That's likely to be a central theme in his speech, but there is ongoing pressure, including from President Biden, to work out a cease-fire with Hamas.
INSKEEP: OK, so he'll surely meet with President Biden during this visit. What about the people who are still running for president, Vice President Harris and former President Trump?
MYRE: Yeah, he plans to meet all three, and all come with some complications. You know, Biden is increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu over the huge number of Palestinian civilian deaths, so there could be some tensions when they meet Thursday. Regarding Kamala Harris, the vice president traditionally sits behind a foreign leader who's addressing Congress. But Harris has cited a scheduling conflict, though she is expected to meet privately with him tomorrow. And the Trump-Netanyahu relationship soured after the 2020 U.S. election. Netanyahu recognized Biden as the winner, and this greatly annoyed Trump, who falsely claims the voting was rigged.
INSKEEP: Well, how are Israelis responding to the news that President Biden has stopped running against Trump this time?
MYRE: Yeah, here in Israel, political leaders and the media acknowledge Biden's unwavering support for decades, and they say this tradition among many but not all U.S. presidents may actually end when Biden leaves the White House. Biden still talks about backing Israel a half-century ago in its 1973 war against Egypt and Syria. This was Biden's first year in the Senate, and it clearly shaped his views on the Middle East. But as this current war grinds on, even Biden has expressed some criticism. He wants this cease-fire, we mentioned, and he wants an Israeli plan for Gaza after the fighting stops, and Israel still hasn't produced this so-called day-after plan.
INSKEEP: Well, how does Biden's handling of the Middle East fit into his larger foreign policy record of a presidency that we can now see the end of?
MYRE: Yeah, Steve, I think three foreign wars have defined a good deal of not only his foreign policy record, but even his presidential legacy overall. The first was Afghanistan and the messy U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban's return to power. Then came Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Biden generally got high marks for coordinating a strong Western response, though now Republicans are pushing back, saying the military aid is too expensive and the war is largely a stalemate. And his embrace of Israel in the war faces this growing criticism from some in his own party, liberal voters, opposition in many parts of the world. So Biden won't be able to dictate outcomes in these conflicts in his - the final months of his term, but he does have a consequential foreign policy record, and it's been driven by his desire to see the U.S. play a leading role on the global stage.
INSKEEP: NPR's Greg Myre is in Tel Aviv. Greg, thanks for your insights as always. Good to hear from you.
MYRE: Sure thing, Steve.
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MARTIN: Today, as we said, is the day the prime minister is scheduled to speak. I'm in Washington, D.C.
INSKEEP: And I'm in Western Pennsylvania, talking with voters about a transformed presidential race. We'll be hearing the voices on NPR. One Democrat, Michel, said that he wasn't thinking of voting at all this year, but the change in candidates means he's going to show up for Kamala Harris. We also heard from an immigrant from India here who said he was not going to vote for Harris because he felt that she was chosen as vice president for her race and gender.
MARTIN: Interesting. Meanwhile, Harris is working to define herself as she begins her campaign for the top job. She's speaking with a Black sorority in Indianapolis today, and she spoke in Milwaukee yesterday.
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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: When Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as president of the United States, I will sign it into law.
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MARTIN: By the way, Steve, the campaign had to move the event to a larger venue.
INSKEEP: NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram was with Harris. Hi there, Deepa.
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Hey, good morning.
INSKEEP: What was it like to be there?
SHIVARAM: I mean, there are roughly 100 days - right? - until the election. And yesterday in this sweaty, humid, high school gymnasium, there were 3,000 people gathered to see Kamala Harris, and it felt like there was this huge jolt of enthusiasm into this campaign that was honestly lacking when Biden was the nominee. I talked to one voter - her name is Celia Jackson - who was in the crowd.
CELIA JACKSON: This is the energy. This is the shot in the arm that the Dems needed in order to turn this around. So I'm really hopeful.
SHIVARAM: I also asked Celia if she had been involved at all in the Biden-Harris campaign before to donate or volunteer, and she hadn't. But she said that that changed this weekend.
JACKSON: I've already signed up. I'm ready to go.
SHIVARAM: And Celia is one of many. The campaign has seen a huge boost in donations and volunteers. And, you know, I'll note, I've covered Harris for five years now, and I've seen her on so many different stages. And I think even she, coming on stage yesterday, was a little stunned by the energy in the room, people chanting her name, the size of the crowd. I think it really all speaks to the intensity and the rapid pace of everything that's happened in the last three days.
INSKEEP: Well, how did she sound in that new environment?
SHIVARAM: Yeah, she talked about Trump a lot, but, you know, she was also talking about herself. And for the first time she was saying when I'm president, which is something we haven't heard before, after years of her being number two in the White House.
INSKEEP: Sure.
SHIVARAM: She also talked a lot about her history as a courtroom prosecutor and the kind of crimes that she dealt with. And that rhetoric is to partly show how she's going to take on Trump in this election. And it's also partly biographic. She's trying to show people who she is and who she was before being Joe Biden's vice president. A new poll from NPR, PBS and Marist shows 15% of voters haven't heard of Harris or were unsure how they felt about her. And that same poll also shows that more people are undecided in this race now that Harris is likely going to be the nominee. And that's why I thought it was really interesting to see Harris lean into her history as a prosecutor. There's a bit of reintroducing her to the country that the campaign has to do and, keep in mind, in a really condensed period of time.
INSKEEP: Yeah, we'll hear more about that poll in a moment. But how does the campaign plan to reintroduce her?
SHIVARAM: I mean, it's happening in a few ways. Online, there's a whole rebrand of Kamala Harris going on. She is brat. There are coconut emojis. There are things here that I can only sort of explain, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK.
SHIVARAM: But there is...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
SHIVARAM: ...A whole section of the internet that is popping off. And then, of course, you know, her travel is really going to ramp up. Harris has been doing maybe two to three stops a week before all this, and by the end of this week, she will have been to five different states.
INSKEEP: OK, Deepa, thanks so much.
SHIVARAM: Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Deepa Shivaram.
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INSKEEP: We have a snapshot now of the presidential race.
MARTIN: Yes, a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds that a significant number of voters now say they are undecided. Vice President Kamala Harris now has an opportunity to try to win them over. She brings different strengths than Biden and different vulnerabilities.
INSKEEP: NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro helped put this survey together and joins us. Domenico, good morning.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: So as I'm talking to voters here in Western Pennsylvania, I've been asking them about Biden's decision not to run. Widespread bipartisan agreement that it was the right move, a lot of sympathy also for Biden - that's what I hear anecdotally, but what do the numbers show?
MONTANARO: Yeah, we found the same thing in our survey. Nine in 10 Democrats, Republicans and independents all said it was the right thing for Biden to step aside, and there aren't too many things in this world that Republicans and Democrats agree on almost unanimously. But Biden getting out apparently was one of them. That's where the agreement ends though when it comes to Biden. On whether he should finish out his term, for example, two-thirds say that Biden should do so. That includes 9 in 10 Democrats and two-thirds of independents. A slim majority of Republicans, though, think that he should resign now. And we've heard Republicans like House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance, saying that he should resign, but that's probably not going to happen.
INSKEEP: I would imagine when you talk about disagreement, Republicans do not agree with Democrats about whether he's been a good president.
MONTANARO: No, no surprise there. What was a little more eyebrow-raising for Biden, I think, was the fact that almost 6 in 10 independents think that he'll be remembered as either a below average or one of the worst presidents in history. This is a group that he won in 2020. And this question might have been a canary in the coal mine for just how difficult it would have been for Biden to win them back.
INSKEEP: Do the initial signs suggest that Harris would be any different with independent voters?
MONTANARO: Well, like Biden, she's statistically tied with Trump, but under the hood, there are some interesting things to look at. When it comes independents, a lot more of them are undecided, so that's one thing to look at. She does much better than Biden in holding onto Black voters and younger voters when they're given the chance to vote for other candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Professor Cornel West, who's running as an independent, or the Green Party's Jill Stein. In fact, RFK Jr. is only getting 7% in this survey. West and Stein are down to 1% each. Those are the lowest numbers we've seen for all of them since Marist has been asking about third-party candidates this year. And that's directly because Harris doesn't shed young voters and nonwhite voters the way that Biden was when given - when people were given another choice, even in our poll two weeks ago that compared Trump and Biden.
INSKEEP: Oh, that's really interesting. So voters were parking with third, fourth, fifth-party candidates, maybe drifting away again, but where does Trump have an advantage?
MONTANARO: Well, Trump has what we call a high floor and a low ceiling. He's going to get his base of supporters. In 2016, he got 46% of the vote. 2020, it was 47% rounding up. In our poll, he's at - surprise, surprise - 46% against Harris.
INSKEEP: OK.
MONTANARO: Trump's strength in our survey is with white evangelical Christians and white men without college degrees. It's been that way for years. Harris does not do as well in this survey as Biden was doing with suburban voters, white voters overall and independents. If it stays that way, it could usher Trump back into the White House. But like I said, 1 in 5 independents now say that they're undecided, up from just 4% two weeks ago. So Democrats feel at least like they might have a fresh start here.
INSKEEP: Yeah, this race felt so static and now feels a little different. Domenico, thanks.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
INSKEEP: NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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