WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders square off in the first one-on-one debate of the Democratic presidential campaign on Sunday amid a widening crisis over the coronavirus that has dramatically upended the daily life of Americans.
FILE PHOTO: Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidates Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden brush hands as they have an exchange in the tenth Democratic 2020 presidential debate at the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. February 25, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
The showdown between front-runner Biden and his last viable rival in Sanders, originally scheduled for Phoenix, will take place in a Washington, D.C., studio with no audience, a move made to limit possible exposure to the virus – a sign of how deeply the campaign routine has been reshaped by the global pandemic.
The debate, perhaps the last in the Democratic race to pick an election challenger to Republican President Donald Trump, will give Biden and Sanders an opportunity to project leadership and a sense of calm and stability in a deepening crisis.
“People have been anxious to beat Trump, but now with coronavirus they are just anxious,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Hillary Clinton. “This will be a chance for both of them to look presidential.”
The encounter will provide clues about how far Biden, the former vice president and centrist standard-bearer, might go to seek party