A debate for this moment of utterly warranted panic

Both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden volunteered proudly that they hadn’t shaken hands. Both sang the praises of soap. And both spoke of hand sanitizer as if it were holy water.

The pandemic caused by the coronavirus changed and governed everything about their one-on-one debate, in ways overt and oblique. It determined the first question the two candidates were asked. It informed the last. It was the focus of many of their remarks in between.

Above all, it was the terrifying context in which their inevitable policy disagreements, aspersions on each other’s characters and exhumations of each other’s records took on a wholly different cast. All that stuff was unquestionably important — and yet.

There was a life-threatening, nation-shuttering, wealth-decimating crisis at hand. Did Biden’s decades-old comments about Social Security or onetime support of the Hyde Amendment matter even an eighth as much? Did Sanders’ longago votes on gun control or kind words about Fidel Castro?

And wasn’t the most important takeaway that neither of the candidates dwells in the truthfree, information-barren, delusion-rich bubble surrounding our current president, whose irresponsibility is having epic consequences? The two Democrats’ criticisms of each other, which grew heated at times, seemed almost immaterial next to what needed to be said — and sometimes was — about the denier in chief, Donald Trump.

That dynamic favored Biden, for several reasons. He’s now the far-and-away front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, with a lead in delegates that Sanders probably can’t overcome, so any sense of urgency for the party to unite in common cause against Trump becomes a summons to send Biden into the general election in the strongest shape imaginable.

I suspect many Democrats tuned into this debate, almost certainly the last of the Democratic primaries, not to see

Biden tested but to will him onward unscathed.

Biden’s position in the race, coupled with his message of national healing, meant that he more than Sanders had an interest in floating above the details of issues and painting a larger, gauzier picture. That approach suited this moment of utterly warranted panic.

So practiced riffs that were somewhat pat before the pandemic were wholly pertinent, such as Biden’s recognition that while he and Sanders differ on how to improve health care or tackle other problems in America, “We don’t disagree on the principle. We fundamentally disagree with this president on everything.”

“So,” he added, “this is much bigger than whether or not I’m the nominee or Bernie’s the nominee. We must defeat Donald Trump.”

And Biden was able to portray Sanders’ grander plans for transforming the American economy as luxuries unaffordable in the face of a scourge, as distractions from the emergency upon us.

Biden smartly understood that his eight years beside the last Democratic president and his foreign-policy seasoning are more reassuring to voters now than they were even a week ago. So he marinated in them.

The candidates may have stood at a greater distance from each other than normal, but somehow they were closer.

You can’t tell Americans to pull together at this juncture if you’re pushing them apart.

The Democrats get that. If only the president did, too.