We know you probably didn’t come to a politics roundup for more news about the coronavirus. But it has upended the Democratic primary, Washington and politics writ large just as it has upended sports, culture and the rest of society.
So let’s get you caught up on that and the rest of the week in the 2020 race.
Coronavirus changes the campaign
Both former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont canceled primary-night campaign events on Tuesday.
The Democratic National Committee moved Sunday’s debate to Washington and announced that it would go on without an audience or the news media (more on that later).
Mr. Biden swapped out in-person campaigning for “virtual events” (not entirely without issues), and Mr. Sanders, too, curtailed travel and canceled big gatherings.
“This virus laid bare the severe shortcomings of the current administration,” Mr. Biden said. “Public fears are being compounded by pervasive lack of trust in this president, fueled by adversarial relationships with the truth that he continues to have.”
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Four big states — Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio — will hold their primaries on Tuesday, and election officials say they are taking extra precautions. Meanwhile, Louisiana announced on Friday that it would postpone its April 4 primary until June 20.
Another super (small ‘s’) Tuesday for Biden
A week after dominating on Super Tuesday, Mr. Biden “took command of the Democratic presidential race in decisive fashion,” as our colleagues wrote, winning at least four more contests this past Tuesday on the strength of a multiracial coalition that proved especially powerful in the South and the Midwest.
Mr. Biden’s victory in Michigan — the biggest prize of the night — was particularly damaging to Mr. Sanders, who won the state in the 2016 primary. Mr. Biden is also ahead in Washington State with nearly all of the vote counted. That’s another place where Mr. Sanders won four years ago and had hoped to do well again.
So far, Mr. Sanders has won only one of the six states that voted Tuesday: North Dakota, which awarded just 14 delegates.
Before Tuesday, several high-profile figures offered their endorsements. Mr. Sanders got the backing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Mr. Biden received endorsements from Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, both of whom dropped out of the presidential race before the first nominating votes.
Sanders stays in (for now)
Mr. Sanders did not give a speech Tuesday night as race after race was called for Mr. Biden. Instead, he elected to wait, assess and ultimately speak to reporters the next day.
He declared that he would stay in the primary race and participate in Sunday’s debate with Mr. Biden. But he also made what our colleagues called “a defiant case for his liberal policy agenda,” asserting that “a strong majority” of Democrats supported his progressive ideas.
He did not, however, attack Mr. Biden or vow to carry his fight to a bitter end.
Changes to the Biden campaign
As our colleagues Katie Glueck and Thomas Kaplan have noted, Mr. Biden’s campaign organization has for months been flimsy, underfunded and filled with operational challenges. Thankfully for him, it did not end up hurting him on Super Tuesday or this past week.
Nonetheless, on Thursday Mr. Biden announced that he had hired a new campaign manager: Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, a veteran Democratic strategist who managed former Representative Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign and before that was a top aide on President Barack Obama’s re-election team.
The move, our colleague Jonathan Martin writes, is a way for Mr. Biden to signal to Democratic donors and elected officials “that he knows he has to broaden” his operation as he prepares for a general election fight against Mr. Trump.
Updates on Sunday’s debate
As we mentioned above, there will be yet another Democratic debate on Sunday, but because of the coronavirus, it has been moved from Phoenix to Washington, D.C. And as another precaution, the event will take place without a live audience or assembled press corps.
For the first time in this campaign, only two candidates will be onstage: Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders. And as our colleague Shane Goldmacher writes, this debate will be different from most others in modern politics: “Both men will be auditioning for the presidency amid an unfolding national emergency.”
Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is still running, too, but she has not qualified for a debate in months.