Grappling With the Impact of Coronavirus: This Week in the 2020 Race

How to campaign during the coronavirus outbreak

As President Donald Trump has appeared before the nation for daily briefings and labeled himself a “wartime president,” former Vice President Joe Biden — the candidate who seems all but certain to face Trump in the general election — has faced questions online and even at virtual fundraisers about why he has kept a relatively low profile.

The outbreak has, of course, forced Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont off the physical campaign trail. And the unusual situation has left Biden trying to figure out how to position himself as a prominent voice on the crisis.

“I want to be in daily or at least, you know, significant contact with the American people and communicate what I would be doing, what I think we should be doing and how we should be doing it,” Biden said Sunday.

Reshaping the health care debate

If you’ve watched any of the Democratic debates or attended any campaign events, you know that health care has long been a central issue in the 2020 presidential race. Adding the coronavirus pandemic to the equation has made the stakes even higher and made the difference between Democratic and Republican visions of what the system should look like even more stark.

Advancing “Medicare for all” has, for two cycles now, been Sanders’ central policy priority, and The New York Times’ Sydney Ember reports that he “believes he can meld this moment of national crisis with the progressive policy agenda that has been his life’s work.”

Will there be another debate?

Sanders would like to debate Biden again if, in fact, a debate is held in April as originally planned.

“Senator Sanders is still running for president,” Mike Casca, one of his top campaign officials, said Tuesday. “If there is a debate in April, he plans to be there.”

Biden, not so much.

“I haven’t thought about any more debates,” he said a day later. “I think we’ve had enough debates. I think we should get on with this.”

The Democratic National Committee said previously that there would be a debate in April, but one has not been scheduled and the committee has not announced a media partner or a site host.

How about another Super Tuesday?

Thanks to multiple postponements connected to public health concerns, as many as 10 states and the District of Columbia may now hold primaries June 2, making it suddenly quite important to the Democratic race.

As of this writing, June 2 would confer a trove of delegates so large it would be second only to Super Tuesday in early March. And as such, the June Tuesday that was once an afterthought could now represent Biden’s first chance to clinch the presidential nomination.

Wisconsin is plowing ahead with plans to vote April 7. Now the governor wants to send everyone an absentee ballot in under two weeks.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .