Debate tonight
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will face key questions tonight — but not an audience.
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are set to meet tonight in their first one-to-one presidential primary debate and the last debate before Ohioans head to the polls on Tuesday.
Some key questions to look for about the debate, which takes place before the next round of primaries on Tuesday, when 577 delegates are at stake in Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and Illinois.
A new opening, but for which candidate?
The coronavirus outbreak has overturned American life, but it is unclear whether the unfolding crisis changes a race that Biden controls with more than half the delegates already awarded.
Both candidates have used the COVID-19 pandemic as a hook to try to justify their main themes, and can be expected to do so again today.
Sanders has been saying that the pandemic demonstrates the need for his “Medicare for All” universal health insurance plan, along with other expansion of a social safety net. He said the shortage of medical goods, from masks and rubber gloves to diagnostic testing kits, is a consequence of decades of establishment trade policy that sent U.S. manufacturing prowess overseas. (Biden, Sanders has noted repeatedly, voted for some of those international trade deals as a Delaware senator.)
To Biden, it’s a moment to make the case against President Donald Trump’s competence.
The former vice president has run against Trump from the beginning, so much so that it cost him embarrassing finishes in early-voting Iowa and New Hampshire. But Biden has rebounded in recent weeks.
On Thursday he outlined his own government-wide coronavirus response during an address in front of American flags, and he introduced a group of blue chip advisers.
How does private studio affect style?
Coronavirus forced network host CNN to dispense with a live audience in Phoenix and move the debate to Washington.
Sanders’ style is to speak before large audiences. Of course, he’s also mixed it up with debate audiences, most recently in South Carolina, jeering back when people grumbled at one of his answers.
So far, the debates have highlighted the overall uneven nature of Biden’s campaign.
His aides have said for months that he would do better if he got a shot on a smaller stage. Tonight is just that.
How aggressive is Sanders?
Sanders recently shut down a rally crowd that booed Biden. “Nope, nope, nope,” Sanders admonished, calling Biden a “friend of mind” who’s “wrong on the issues.”
But will that hold with Sanders now needing 57% of the remaining delegates to win the nomination?
He hasn’t been shy about highlighting Biden’s record. Sanders has cited Biden’s Senate votes for international trade deals, his participation in budget negotiations that would curtail some entitlement spending, his support for the war powers that allowed President George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003 and Biden’s fundraising from wealthy donors.
But does Sanders only highlight differences and emphasize his own vision? Does he argue simply that Biden’s ideas such as tuition-free college for two years instead of four and adding a “public option” to existing health insurance markets rather than replacing private markets with a government system, amount to compromising before the legislative fight even begins?
Or does Sanders risk dividing the party by attacking Biden as another “corporate Democrat” selling out the working class?