An Extremely Chill, Intimate Evening With 2 Adult Men… It's Your Democratic Debate Liveblog, Pandemic Edition

Tonight in Washington, DC, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden will face off in the most intimate Democratic primary debate this season: Not only have all other challengers bowed out, draining the stage populace from like 53 people to just two, but there won’t be an audience to support them—just moderators from CNN and Univision and the two challengers, positioned six feet apart, the same social distancing you are hopefully practicing at home playing out on the national stage.

This should be interesting, to say the least: A hotly contested primary in the most consequential presidential election in recent memory amidst a growing national pandemic, two candidates with wildly disparate platforms (though Biden’s Sunday afternoon announcement that his platform will now adopt parts of Sanders’s free college and Warren’s bankruptcy ideas was certainly a strategic move to try and close the gap between Biden’s base and more progressive voters who think his platform is disappointingly—enragingly?—status quo). But the dynamic from last Tuesday’s primaries has changed dramatically, as the nation faces a rapidly expanding public health crisis, with Trump and his cronies displaying none of the gravitas required for the moment. Is it an appropriate time for everyone to get more seriously progressive on Medicare-for-All, as we witness the fissures in the healthcare system play out in real-time? Damn, probably! Please join us as we liveblog this shit and try not to panic from the cold comfort of our indefinite self-quarantines!