 Good evening and welcome to CalTV Election Desk. I'm your host Laili Ipsa. Now this show is going to be an all-encompassing roundup of all things politics leading up to the 2020 election. From propositions we'll be voting on to the candidates themselves. We'll be tracking local elections, congressional races, and of course the path to the White House. So join me as we talk to political experts, politicians, and get your reaction from around the country. Let's dive right in. Today of course we are talking about that breaking news that dropped down yesterday. Former Vice President Joe Biden has selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Now to help me break down that decision let's please welcome the President of Cal Berkeley Democrats Elizabeth Grubb. Elizabeth thank you so much for being here today. All right let's get right into it point blank. Do you think that Biden made a good decision by selecting Senator Harris? I think he made a great decision. I also think that she brings a lot of energy to his campaign and I just can't underscore the significant historical significance of his choice and I know his choice is important to so many women and especially women of color and for those reasons I think he made a really good choice. All right now talk me through this duo what do you think are some of Biden and Harris's greatest strengths and what do you think are some gaps that they still really need to work out in order to pull more voters in? One strength that I will give them both is I think that they're willing to listen to progressives and they're willing to move towards the left which is really important. I think in terms of weaknesses though I think both of their you know when you have a long political career there are just a lot of things that you know can come up that can hurt you later so I think their records with criminal justice are definitely a pretty big weakness especially in this current landscape so you know hopefully that I you know my hope would be is that they you know get on top of that explain you know why they made the decisions they did and more importantly how they will be better. All right now let's turn to Cal Berkeley Democrats. Campus is closed you know we're starting off the semester virtual right now so how are you hoping to reach students during your campaigning? So we want to make sure that people are prepared to vote by mail so starting in like mid-september we're going to start doing outreach to students and our friends I'm just making sure people are prepared. We definitely want to focus on you know local ballot measures, California ballot measures you know defending some house races like with Josh Harder and T.J. Cox so we have all kinds of things we want to do and I think that you know 2016 was definitely disappointing with youth turnout but 2018 youth turnout gives me a lot of hope. Elizabeth thank you so much for your time I really appreciate you joining us. All right so what has the reaction been like from Washington? Well former president Barack Obama tweeted out his support early yesterday saying in part I've known Senator Kamala Harris for a long time she's more than prepared for this job. Now Joe Biden and Kamala Harris didn't make the announcement together like what usually happens due to the pandemic but they did share this video of them talking to each other once the announcement was made. That's all right you're ready go to work. Biden and Harris made their first public appearance today in Delaware where they talked to supporters about how they plan to win the election. Now within minutes of the announcement President Trump tweeted out a new attack ad calling Harris a phony and saying that she had embraced the left's radical manifesto. Now a lot of other criticism that Senator Harris has been receiving does have to do with her track record so let's take a deeper look into her career. Now Harris served as district attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011. During her time she received criticism for refusing to call for the death penalty and increased prosecution of drug related crimes. Moving forward she was elected attorney general in 2011 and then elected as California senator in 2017 which is of course the position that she holds right now. During the latter part of her career Harris has been praised for clearing a backlog of rape kits and winning a multi-billion dollar settlement for state homeowners hit by the foreclosure crisis. Well of course we'll have much more reaction from both sides as the race continues but for now what's next? Well the Democratic National Convention will kickstart this upcoming Monday and the Republican National Convention is going to start a week later. As for Senator Harris she's going to start gearing up because her and Vice President Mike Pence are going to kick start a round of debates starting in early October and of course you can count on us to provide an in-depth analysis and a breakdown of all those debates. Now be sure you're following us on all of our platforms linked in the description below because you can always count on a new election desk episode every Wednesday but our team is always active on social media providing you real-time updates of the latest breaking news about everything related to news, sports and entertainment and sometimes we even offer a little behind-the-scenes look into what our lives are like as journalists. Well for tonight that's going to do it for me so thank you so much for joining and I'll see you next week.