- Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders outlined their responses to the coronavirus during CNN's Democratic debate Sunday night
- Biden insisted on focusing on the task at hand, while Sanders pointed to systemic failures and the need for reform.
- The virus as the backdrop let both candidates play to their strengths — Biden as a steady hand with experience in handling crises and Sanders as a prescient reformer being proven right by a lack of assistance for those affected by COVID-19.
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Both former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders managed to turn the coronavirus outbreak into a supporting argument for their presidential campaigns on Sunday night.
During the one-on-one debate on CNN without a studio audience, much of the evening was dominated by how each candidate would respond to the virus that has already killed more than 6,000 people worldwide.
Biden kept coming back to his experience handling the Ebola outbreak from the White House during the Obama administration, and how he could immediately steady the ship and unify not only the country but the global community to mitigate the damage.
Sanders outlined how he has unfortunately been proven right on the need to enact universal health care and paid leave as coronavirus ravages the American public and economy.
Bernie Sanders: "Let's be honest and understand that this coronavirus pandemic exposes the incredible weakness and dysfunctionality of our current health care system" #DemDebate https://t.co/166aRFdJui pic.twitter.com/Nf00GsB37F
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) March 16, 2020
"There are people who watching this program tonight who are saying, 'I'm not feeling well. Should I go to the doctor? But I can't afford to go to the doctor,'" Sanders said. "'What happens if I am sick? It's going to cost thousands of dollars for treatment. Who's going to feed my kids?'
"We are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people."
Biden countered Sanders' call for a single payer Medicare For All plan by pointing to the severity of the outbreak in Italy.
"It is not working in Italy right now, and they have a single payer system," Biden said.
Joe Biden says "it's not working in Italy right now" in regards to their healthcare system and the coronavirus outbreak #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/M316LBQ2AC
— MTV NEWS (@MTVNEWS) March 16, 2020
The night went on like throughtout several questions from the moderators.
Biden would call for a steady hand as President Donald Trump continually downplays and misrepresents the severity of the virus, while Sanders pointed to structural issues undergirding the current crisis.
If the campaign to remove Trump were a house fire, Biden is calling for a return to a competent fire department to put it out right away, while Sanders is demanding the building codes be rewritten to prevent the next one.
The delegate math may already be in Biden's favor to secure the nomination, but the decluttered debate — the first of this cyle in a one-on-one format, and the first without a live audience — allowed both candidates to distill their pitches on how they would try to defeat Trump and how they would govern.
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