The glob­al coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has had a dra­mat­ic impact on the entire coun­try, shut­ting down trav­el, large gath­er­ings, sports events, bars, and restau­rants. The effects of the cri­sis were imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent to any­one tun­ing in to last night’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial debate between for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Instead of a packed audi­to­ri­um in Ari­zona, the two men met in a ster­ile-look­ing CNN stu­dio in Wash­ing­ton D.C. with only each oth­er and the mod­er­a­tors for com­pa­ny (the risk of infec­tion in a live audi­ence was deemed to be too high).

And instead of shak­ing each other’s hands, they opt­ed for a friend­ly elbow bump.

The debate itself was over­whelm­ing­ly focused on the pan­dem­ic, with the can­di­dates being asked about their plans to deal with the emer­gency, their own per­son­al prac­tices to avoid infec­tion, and how they would reas­sure Amer­i­cans suf­fer­ing from the ill­ness or afraid of con­tract­ing it.

Both can­di­dates went into the debate with clear objectives.

Biden holds a con­vinc­ing lead in del­e­gates and will like­ly cruise to a major­i­ty through a sheer sense of inevitabil­i­ty. All he had to do in the debate was stay calm, appear pres­i­den­tial, and not fall into some dis­as­trous gaffe (as he has a habit of doing in debates). Sanders’ task was much hard­er; he had to knock the aura of invin­ci­bil­i­ty off of Biden and per­suade Biden’s key base – African Amer­i­cans and old­er vot­ers – to aban­don the for­mer Vice President.

The debate began with how each can­di­date would respond to the coro­n­avirus if they were pres­i­dent. Biden, draw­ing on his expe­ri­ence as Vice Pres­i­dent, sum­ma­rized a wide vari­ety of mea­sures he would have pur­sued, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of nation­al lead­er­ship from the White House.

Sanders took a slight­ly dif­fer­ent approach.

While lay­ing out sim­i­lar emer­gency mea­sures he would take, he used the cri­sis to expose the U.S. health­care system’s many weak­ness­es – one of which is the fact that “we don’t have a sys­tem, we’ve got thou­sands of pri­vate insur­ance plans.”

He used the pan­dem­ic cri­sis to per­sua­sive­ly argue for pub­licly-fund­ed health­care, because right now the fear of costs is caus­ing peo­ple to avoid treatment.

How­ev­er, Biden argued that Medicare for All had “noth­ing to do with” this nation­al emer­gency. Instead of look­ing at the broad­er prob­lems of U.S. health­care, Biden sim­pli­fied the issue, say­ing “we’re at war with the virus.”

This was the first in a series of disin­gen­u­ous moments for Biden.

Whilst declar­ing that Medicare for All was not a solu­tion to the pan­dem­ic, Biden pro­claimed that he would “pass a law say­ing you do not have to pay for [COVID-19 treat­ment], peri­od.” He seemed not to real­ize that his pro­pos­al to deal with COVID-19 is akin to Sanders’ pro­pos­als for uni­ver­sal sin­gle pay­er healthcare.

The dis­cus­sion moved on to the pandemic’s eco­nom­ic fall­out. Both can­di­dates argued for dra­mat­ic fed­er­al inter­ven­tion in the econ­o­my to pro­tect ordi­nary Amer­i­cans, but had very dif­fer­ent emphases. Sanders repeat­ed­ly asked the ques­tion, “how did we get here?” He point­ed to the vast eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty that has been sim­ply exac­er­bat­ed by the pan­dem­ic cri­sis. Biden, in con­trast, sought to divorce the cri­sis from its con­text, say­ing that “peo­ple are look­ing for results, not a rev­o­lu­tion.” Biden repeat­ed­ly went back to the idea of “mak­ing peo­ple whole.”

From then on, the debate got testi­er as the can­di­dates harsh­ly scru­ti­nized each other’s vot­ing records. Biden admon­ished Sanders for his votes against the 2008 Wall Street bailout bill and gun respon­si­bil­i­ty, but Sanders got in far more hits on a wide range of issues. He and Biden were on dif­fer­ent sides of votes on mar­riage equal­i­ty, the dis­as­trous bank­rupt­cy bill, the inva­sion of Iraq, trade deals like NAFTA and PNT, and the anti-repro­duc­tive health Hyde Amend­ment. Sanders’ mantra through all these points was that “it takes courage to do the right thing.

Biden can’t match Sanders’ pro­gres­sive record, so he sought to mud­dy the waters by tak­ing a series of disin­gen­u­ous posi­tions, and fib­bing on the stage.

He crit­i­cized Sanders’ nuanced posi­tions on author­i­tar­i­an regimes (“look at the world the way it is!”) with blunt refusal to see nuance. He said look­ing at China’s pover­­ty-reduc­­tion pro­grams was like prais­ing Jack the Ripper.

Biden also took a disin­gen­u­ous stance on the Iraq occupation.

He said that he vot­ed for Bush’s AUMF because “they assured me they would not use force.” In fact, Biden sup­port­ed an inva­sion of Iraq as far back as 1998, as well as after U.S. troops were on the ground in Iraq.

Biden went even fur­ther on the issue of pro­tect­ing Social Security.

When Sanders pressed him about speech­es he had made argu­ing for the “need” to cut Social Secu­ri­ty (which he did as ear­ly as 1984 and as recent­ly as 2018), Biden sim­ply denied that he had ever made such com­ments. This led to an increas­ing­ly exas­per­at­ed Sanders push­ing the point, bit to no avail.

Biden also dis­tort­ed his involve­ment in the Bush error bank­rupt­cy bill, claim­ing he was­n’t for the pro­pos­al and only worked to make it less awful despite hav­ing vot­ed for it on final pas­sage, and spo­ken in favor of it.

Espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that Biden had to resort to fibs to defend his posi­tion, Sanders undoubt­ed­ly won the argu­ment in Sun­day night’s debate.

Addi­tion­al­ly, in advance of the debate, Biden promised to adopt a num­ber of Sanders and Eliz­a­beth Warren’s pro­gres­sive plans.

How­ev­er, Sanders didn’t do enough.

The debate was Sanders’ last oppor­tu­ni­ty to turn the tables on the for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent before vot­ing in Flori­da, Illi­nois, Ari­zona and Ohio on Tuesday.

Sanders did his best, but he failed in his main objec­tives. He didn’t go after Biden over Biden’s posi­tions on issues like bus­ing, as Kamala Har­ris did last summer.

His attempts to shake Biden’s hold on old­er vot­ers over Social Secu­ri­ty were negat­ed by Biden’s fibs. And he failed to goad Biden into mak­ing a major gaffe – although Biden did have some word-sal­ad moments.

Com­ing out of the debate, Biden seems like­ly to increase his lead in del­e­gates in the com­ing states, and Sanders’ cam­paign is unlike­ly to be able to catch up. The ques­tion is increas­ing­ly becom­ing not who will win, but how the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty can even hold nom­i­nat­ing events amidst an unprece­dent­ed pandemic.