This was the week that the coronavirus outbreak dramatically impacted the race for the White House – as large rallies – long a staple of presidential campaigns – quickly vanished.
While campaign aides had been distributing sanitizer to supporters and members of the media at rallies the past couple of weeks, on Tuesday everything changed.
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont – the two remaining major contenders in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination – were scheduled to give primary night speeches in front of packed crowds on Tuesday at competing events in Cleveland, Ohio.
Both campaigns afternoon abruptly cancelled their Tuesday night rallies after heeding public warnings from Ohio state officials. They acted a day after a state of emergency was implemented in Ohio and less than an hour after Gov. Mike DeWine warned against large crowds for any indoor sporting events.
What that news was being digested, the Democratic National Committee announced that Sunday’s presidential nomination debate in Arizona between Biden and Sanders would be held without a live audience. Two days later – out of an abundance of concern – the DNC moved the debate to a TV studio in the nation’s capital.
The Biden campaign on Wednesday cancelled rallies they were scheduled to hold on Friday and Monday in Illinois and Florida, two of the four states holding primaries next week. Aides for the former vice president said that virtual campaign events would be held in their place – with people connecting in on-line.
On Thursday – the day after President Trump gave his first major address on how the nation would combat the pandemic, officially known as COVID-19, both Biden and Sanders gave what were billed as major speeches presenting proposals to deal with preventing the spread of the outbreak and assisting workers, families and small business hurt by the increasingly painful economic downturn caused by the disease.
“We’ll continue to assess and adjust how we conduct our campaign as we move forward and find new ways to share our message with the public while putting the health and safety of the American people first,” Biden said in his speech.
A couple of hours later, Biden’s campaign announced that starting on Saturday all its employees will work from home.
While larger rallies and town halls are out – and are being replaced by virtual events – Biden officials said smaller gatherings like house parties will still be held. Fundraisers – crucial to keep the campaign’s coffers full – will now become virtual events.
And it’s not just the Democrats. President Donald Trump’s campaign on Wednesday abruptly cancelled the president’s political trip scheduled for Thursday to Nevada and Colorado.
A presidential campaign without a campaign trail has become the new normal.
Sanders vowed on Wednesday to stay in the Democratic nomination race, emphasizing that “I very much look forward to the debate in Arizona with my friend Joe Biden.”
The progressive lawmaker who’s making his second straight White House bid spoke the day after he was pummeled by Biden in Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi and Idaho and fell further behind the former vice president in the crucial race for Democratic convention delegates. But the senator pledged to press the former vice president and nomination front-runner at this weekend’s primetime showdown with a series of progressive policy questions.
But if you read between the lines of Sanders short 10-minute address, it seemed like he was setting the terms for his likely upcoming exit from the race by laying down markers for Biden to accept – such as embracing the self-described democratic socialist’s progressive agenda and a commitment to the younger voters who’ve fueled both of Sanders presidential campaigns.
“Bernie Sanders is clearly laying down a marker for Joe Biden that he is going to press him on to provide answers,” veteran Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas noted.
“The question that is still up in the air is whether Sanders is providing a road map for Biden or is he going to use those issues as a hammer to weaken Biden. I think we’re going to get an answer to that at the debate on Sunday,” said Petkanas, who served as the Hillary Clinton campaign’s director of rapid response in the 2016 race.
Sanders – whose chances of winning the nomination are quickly evaporating – acknowledged he’s losing the electability argument to Biden but declared that he’s won the “ideological debate.” And he touted the appeal of his progressive message and took aim at the former vice president for not resonating with younger voters.
Then the senator – in what appeared to be a progressive litmus test – shared some of the questions he plans confront his rival with on the stage.
Another telling sign – Sanders refrained from slamming the former vice president over policy differences. It was a major departure after weeks of slamming Biden for his support and past votes for free trade deals, the Iraq War, and his acceptance of top-dollar contributions from millionaires and billionaires and major corporations.
The upcoming primary calendar appears to only make matters worse for Sanders as his chances for winning the nomination continue to diminish.
The large states of Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Arizona all hold primaries on Tuesday, followed a week later by Georgia. Sanders lost all five of these states in the 2016 Democratic race to eventual nominee Clinton.
The latest public opinion polls in Florida and Arizona – conducted after Super Tuesday but before this week’s impressive wins by Biden – indicated the former vice president holding very large double-digit leads over Sanders.
At last count, Sanders had slipped roughly 150 Democratic convention delegates behind Biden, and it’s now extremely challenging for the senator to make up such ground in the upcoming contests.