Good week: Joe Biden<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The former vice-president cemented his lead over Bernie\nSanders in the Democratic race with another string of primary victories on\nTuesday \u2013 most significantly in Michigan, where the leftwing senator had\nsensationally beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden currently holds a lead of\n881 delegates to Sanders\u2019 725 and the race moves next week to four states the\nVermont socialist lost to Clinton last time: Arizona, Florida, Illinois and\nOhio. If Biden wins the swing state of Florida, especially, it could be a knockout\nblow to Sanders in the race for the nomination. Belying his usual gaffe-prone\nimage, Biden made a calm, statesmanlike speech on Super Tuesday election night\npraising Sanders and his supporters for their \u201ctireless passion\u201d and calling on\nthem to help him defeat Donald Trump together. And he took the same measured\ntone on Thursday when he made a statement about the escalating coronavirus\nemergency \u2013 attempting to draw a contrast with the chaotic handling of the\nepidemic so far by the man he hopes to replace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bad week: Bernie Sanders<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Biden\u2019s main challenger for the Democratic nomination was\nnot ready to quit after his disappointing run of primary results on Tuesday.\nAlthough he was silent on election night itself, the next day Sanders made a forceful\nspeech looking ahead to his debate with Biden on Sunday in Phoenix and\ninsisting his campaign was \u201cstrongly winning\u201d the contest of ideas. But the\nspeech had a strange tone \u2013 it was almost as if Sanders was now preparing to\nmove into a new role of holding Biden\u2019s feet to the fire and making sure the\nleft of the party is not crowded out by the moderate\u2019s likely victory. \u201cJoe,\nwhat are you going to do to end the absurdity of the United States of America\nbeing the only major country on earth where healthcare is not a human right?\u201d\nSanders asked. \u201cAre you really going to veto a Medicare for All bill, if it is\npassed in Congress?\u201d In 2016, his decision to stay in the race all the way to\nthe bitter end \u2013 only endorsing Clinton in July of that year \u2013 was perceived by\nmany of his supporters as helping push Clinton\u2019s platform to the left, for\nexample on healthcare. He may be trying something similar now. He made his own\nsober speech on the coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Worse week: Donald Trump<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The president lurched this week from transparently playing\ndown the threat of the coronavirus \u2013 it wasn\u2019t long ago he was promising the\nnumber of cases \u201cwithin a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero\u201d\n\u2013 to full-on nativist crisis mode, closing the gates to most Europeans, with\nthe exceptions, bizarrely, of the Brits and Irish. With over 1,600 cases in the\nUS so far, this seemed to be a case of slamming the door to what he called the\n\u201cforeign virus\u201d well after the horse had bolted. And by falling back on the\nkind of ultra-nationalist authoritarian gestures that delight his base, Trump\nis risking the one thing most analysts agree would decimate his chances of\nvictory in November: an economic crash. Wall Street plunged in the wake of his\nstatement \u2013 which characteristically was littered with alarming factual errors\nthat he and his administration had to rush to correct. If this was Trump taking\ncharge in an emergency, few seemed reassured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Worst week: Republicans<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Things were pretty bad for continental Europeans, suddenly\nbarred from travelling to the US and abruptly blamed for the coronavirus by\nTrump. But surely the biggest losers of the week were Republicans \u2013 whose\nunswerving loyalty to their president may actually now be risking their health.\nA Reuters\/Ipsos poll not only found Democrats to be about twice as likely as\nRepublicans to say the coronavirus poses an \u201cimminent threat to the United\nStates\u201d but also that \u201cmore Democrats than Republicans say they are taking\nsteps to be prepared, including washing their hands more often or limiting\ntheir travel plans\u201d. As if to illustrate this gulf, while Biden and Sanders\ncancelled rallies because of coronavirus fears this week, Trump pushed ahead\nwith scheduling a new one in Milwaukee for 19 March. \u201cWhile public health\nexperts caution us against large gatherings, the commander-in-chief schedules a\nrally,\u201d tweeted David Axelrod, former chief strategist for Barack Obama. \u201cWhat\nmessage does that send?\u201d As the coronavirus pandemic intensified further day by\nday, the rally was postponed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the Democratic frontrunner built on his lead, Trump and Republicans kept stumbling over coronavirus Good week: Joe Biden The former vice-president cemented his lead over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic race with another string…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[190,191],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-joe-biden","tag-us-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/towncryyers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/GettyImages-1189641985-biden-sanders-1580154411-e1580154525839.jpg?fit=1024%2C512&ssl=1\")
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