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Bernie Sanders, from his house in Vermont, offered a full-throated endorsement of Joe Biden, sitting in his Delaware basement, during a Monday afternoon live stream. After a half-hour colloquy in which they emphasized areas of agreement and presented a unified front, the independent senator jokingly suggested that they play a game of chess for the reporters who had tuned in to watch what they were told would be the former vice president laying out his economic agenda to respond to the recession caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
"I've been playing on my cellphone," Biden said. "I've got a beautiful chessboard upstairs, and I haven't got anybody to play with."
Sanders had a chessboard sitting on the table behind him. "We'll bore everybody for a few hours," he told Biden.
It was a warm, light-hearted moment, and a marked contrast to the somewhat awkward New Hampshire rally during which Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton in July 2016 after more than a month of negotiations following the California primary.
It was also immediately overshadowed by President Donald Trump's off-the-rails coronavirus briefing at the White House, which lasted two hours and 24 minutes. "When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total," he declared. With 23,604 deaths in the United States from the coronavirus and 581,000 confirmed cases, the president also falsely claimed that Biden - whom he called "Sleepy Joe" - apologized for calling him xenophobic.
Biden has been struggling to break through amid the pandemic, when Trump's bully pulpit is bigger than ever.
Former president Barack Obama endorsed Biden Tuesday. But Monday captured in miniature his continuing challenges.
Trump's reelection committees announced that they raised $212 million in the first three months of the year, meaning that they've now brought in more than $1 billion to support his 2020 bid and have $240 million cash on hand. Biden raised $33 million during the first two weeks of March and $18 million in February, his campaign has said. All told, he's raised about $121 million for the campaign but depleted most of that to win the primaries. He has still not created a joint fundraising operation with the Democratic National Committee.
And social distancing makes it harder to build up a traditional finance operation. Postponing the national convention will also delay by a month when he can access the pool of money for the general election.
Doug Sosnik, who served as Bill Clinton's White House political director, predicts that Biden will remain a bystander until sometime in May or early June, when the country shifts from facing "a health crisis with unimaginable economic consequences" to "a devastating economic crisis with continued health consequences."
"During the lockdown, Trump's organizational advantages will continue to expand - and so will his war chest - without ever leaving the White House," Sosnik said. "Meanwhile, the lockdown has imposed significant obstacles for Biden's campaign, further complicating his efforts to begin building a robust general election political operation."
To be sure, there are certain advantages for Biden of a front-porch campaign. And the more this election is a pure referendum on Trump's leadership, the better that could be for Biden. The economy had been Trump's biggest strength until this crisis. The president lashed out at the media on Monday partly because he's on the defensive over revelations about the litany of early warning signs he failed to heed.
Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could determine the election. Sosnik believes those six states will be decisive. "The electoral college math required to win the presidential race hasn't changed," he said. "While the pandemic has turned the world upside down in the last 30 days, some underlying dynamics of the race that were in play prior to the crisis have remained constant. Trump has been consistent about his singular goal of appealing to and maintaining his political base. . . . At the same time Trump has effectively appealed to his supporters, he has also solidified the anti-Trump vote in the process, making this a truly base election."
In a base election, which side turns out in greater numbers is obviously everything. "The debate as to whether states should expand voting options will be the single biggest fight that Republicans and Democrats will have in the run-up to the November election," Sosnik predicted. "In an election that will come down to six states, the health and economic consequences of the coronavirus in each of these states, as well as voter turnout, will determine who [wins]."
In a promising sign for Democrats on that front, a liberal challenger defeated the conservative incumbent for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in last Tuesday's primary. Ballots were finally tabulated Monday. "Jill Karofsky beat Daniel Kelly, whom then-Gov. Scott Walker, R, appointed to the state's high court in 2016. Trump endorsed Kelly and on Election Day urged Wisconsin voters 'to get out and vote NOW' for the justice," The Washington Post reported. "The contest prompted a rancorous partisan debate over whether to proceed with in-person voting April 7, which Democrats opposed and Republicans supported. It was also hard-fought because of potential implications in the November presidential election, with a judicial decision about whether to purge the state's voter rolls hanging in the partisan balance of the court."
In other potentially significant presidential campaign news, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash said Monday that he's looking "closely" at a third-party bid, which could divert votes from Trump. Amash, who quit the Republican Party last July 4 to become an independent after endorsing the president's impeachment, tweeted that "Americans who believe in limited government deserve another option." The Libertarian Party is planning to nominate a candidate for president at its convention in Austin on May 25. So far, no well-known figure has entered the race.
Sanders said he is "not going to paper over" his differences with his ex-rival. But the senator said Trump must be defeated. "We need you in the White House," Sanders told Biden during their joint appearance. "I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe."
In turn, Biden promised Sanders that he would govern as "one of the most progressive" presidents since Franklin Roosevelt. He also announced that he has agreed to include former Sanders supporters on six new policy working groups he's creating to offer proposals and "creative new ideas" on the economy, education, climate change, criminal justice, immigration and health care. Biden also said he also wants to create a new Cabinet-level position on pandemics.
"We're apart on some issues, but we're awfully close on a whole bunch of others," Biden told Sanders. "And you don't get enough credit, Bernie, for being the voice that forces us to take a hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves: Have we done enough? And we haven't."
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