The coronavirus, which came to America from China, has now officially spread to all 50 states. Essentially every public event in the country has been cancelled. Many cities have shut down bars, restaurants, coffee shops, gyms and hair salons. Public schools have been closed. University students have been sent home.
No event in recent memory – not Pearl Harbor, not 9/11, not the stock market crash of 2008 – has so thoroughly disrupted the American economy.
Life in America is grinding to a halt.
Yet the process to choose a Democratic nominee for president continues. The decision in Ohio to postpone their primary notwithstanding, the Democrats’ march to Milwaukee continued yesterday with primary votes in Florida, Illinois and Arizona.
In the now two-man race for the nomination between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, it was a Biden sweep yesterday.
In the interesting – but ultimately meaningless – popular vote, Biden crushed Sanders, outpolling him by just under 1.1 million votes.
In the race for delegates – the only race that matters – Biden won 441 delegates yesterday. Sanders took 249.
Biden now has a total of 1,147 delegates of the 1,991 that he needs to win the nomination on the first ballot in Milwaukee. Sanders is considerably behind at just 861. Sanders needs 63 percent of the delegates in the remaining primary states. Biden needs just 47 percent.
That’s daunting math for Bernie Sanders.
Little noticed amid the coverage of the coronavirus is how far left Joe Biden has tacked in order to meet the challenge posed by Sanders’ s avowed socialism. On the subjects of immigration and free college tuition – two of Sanders’s biggest issues – Biden has taken a 180 on positions he previously held, embracing most or all of the positions long held by Sanders. Those reversals will be duly noted by Donald Trump once the general election campaign gets fully underway this summer.
But on the subject of Trump, his math is becoming a problem, too. His biggest advantage – his insurmountable advantage many on both sides said – was the robust American economy. That advantage – at least for now and for who knows how long – is gone. American economic activity is grinding to a halt. Mass layoffs are underway. The airline, hotel, restaurant and entertainment industries are in particularly deep trouble. The 28 percent selloff in the stock market has hammered retirement savings for millions of Americans who were, prior to the virus outbreak, feeling pretty good about themselves.
None of that helps an incumbent.
Yet, sometime between now and the conventions this summer, the coronavirus outbreak will abate. Life will start returning to normal.
Then – assuming nothing from out of left field happens in the remaining Democratic primaries – it will be a two-man race between Donald Trump and an ever-more-left Joe Biden. If Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak is judged adequate or better (still an open question), and if the economy is seen to be on the mend, one would expect Trump to regain the advantage.
But as we have learned in just one week, it’s what we don’t expect that makes all the difference.