Democratic debate live updates: Biden and Sanders go head to head in Washington, D.C.

 

Underdog Bernie Sanders came to fight, and front-runner Joe Biden promised a woman vice president.

The Democratic debate Sunday began as a genteel conversation over how to address the coronavirus and descended into a testy battle over records and who has the courage to do the right thing. The candidates clashed over issues ranging from bankruptcy policy and same-sex marriage to health care and immigration and highlighted their differing visions for the country.

Here are five key takeaways from the evening.

President Donald Trump's re-election campaign attacked Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders for their debate performance, arguing that neither candidate provided a sufficient response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Unable to articulate a coronavirus plan, both Bernie and Biden offered little more than plagiarizing President Trump’s response, which will now be the model for all future pandemics,” said Kayleigh McEnany, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign.

Trump has been heavily criticized for his bungled reaction to the virus. He insisted for weeks that the virus was under control and misled the public about the severity of the situation. 

Biden and Sanders have both delivered speeches outlining how they would have responded to the outbreak from day one.

“It doesn’t matter which of these two is the Democrat nominee, either one would reverse the hottest economy in modern history and the great gains we have made under President Trump,” said McEnany.

Joe Biden’s commitment in Sunday’s debate to name a female running mate tonight was not an accident or ad lib: The former vice president entered the debate looking for an opportunity to make that commitment explicit as he seeks to reinforce the perception in the minds of Democrats that he is very close to being, if not is already, the presumptive nominee, a senior campaign official told NBC News.

Biden has often been asked in town hall-style events about his vice presidential pick. In answering that question, he has given variations on wanting or hoping to choose a woman running mate — but never gave such a clear-cut commitment until now.

Biden has enjoyed getting that question on the trail in part because it has allowed him to pivot to discussing, often at considerable length, what made his working relationship  with President Barack Obama so effective. He often says historians considered their relationship one of the best working relationships between a president and vice president in history, and adds that the reason they worked so well together is because Obama had complete trust in him and their views were “simpatico,” to use one of his favorite words.

Among the current or former officials Biden has either explicitly or implicitly included in his list of potential VP picks are Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., former Deputy Attorney Gen. Sally Yates, who recently endorsed Biden, former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, and New Hampshire Democratic Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen.

 

Sanders, in an interview on CNN after the debate concluded, slammed Trump over his response to the coronavirus pandemic, accusing him over undermining his own scientists.

“The truth of the matter is that you’ve got a president who is arrogant” and “who is literally undermining the good work” of government scientists and public health experts dealing with the outbreak

Trump, Sanders said, “underestimated” and “diminished the initial threat facing this country.”

“A president who has a brain in his head would have brought the scientists together,” he said.

Later in the interview, Sanders, who is trailing Biden in the delegate count, was asked about his path ahead in the process — and he didn’t suggest he was dropping out any time soon.

“The path ahead is to bring as many people who do not traditionally vote into the political process,” Sanders said.

Asked if he was helping to bring those people in so they could vote for Biden, Sanders answered in the negative.

“They’re not going to vote for Biden,” he said.

 

The two candidates were asked to close the night on the topic that began it: the coronavirus.

Sanders went first, saying that, “our hearts go out to everyone” and that “we need to move aggressively to make sure vey person in this country who has the virus, who thinks they have the virus, understands they have all the health care they need.

But he added that it was also “time to ask how we got to where we are,” before pushing for his proposals to tackle income inequality.

Biden, meanwhile, called for people to make sacrifices and said it was a time to “start to listen to the science again.”

“This is bigger than any individual,” he said. “This is about America. This is about the world.”

Bernie Sanders cast doubt on Joe Biden’s ability to win the general election against Donald Trump, highlighting the former vice president's weak spot with some voting groups.

Sanders argued that in order to win, Democrats would need to turn out Latinos and younger voters — who he characterized as “not great voters” — and stressed that Trump will be a “very, very tough” competitor. 

“I have my doubts that Vice President Biden's campaign can generate that energy and excitement,” Sanders said.

Biden shot back.

“The energy and excitement that has taken place so far has been for me,” Biden said, adding that he “virtually had no money” but was still able to pull ahead in the delegate count. 

See the full list of topics and time spent on each during the 11th Democratic debate here.

Two days before Florida’s Democratic presidential primary, Biden sought to both criticize Sanders for past praise of Cuba’s authoritarian regime and to stand by the Obama administration’s move to normalize relations with the island nation. 

Florida is home to the nation’s largest Cuban-American population, a group which includes millions of people who fled the island’s communist government and their descendants. But, a 2019 Florida International University poll found that U.S.-Cuban relations do not figure as prominently as they once did in the voting decisions of Cuban Americans. Just 8 percent of those polled identified Cuba policy as the thing that motivates a vote for a specific candidate.

Sanders was asked why Cuban-American voters in Florida would vote for Sanders “when they hear you praise a program of Fidel Castro, a dictator who jailed, tortured and killed thousands of Cubans.”

(Sanders, in a recently aired “60 Minutes” interview, said it would “unfair” to say “everything is bad” about Castro, citing the regime’s literacy program.)

Sanders replied that he “opposed authoritarianism everywhere.”

But faced with a follow-up question, Sanders said that it “would be incorrect” to say that nothing done by authoritarian regimes “had a positive impact.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden may have helped his campaign’s effort to step up his wooing of Latinos by stating “our future rests on Latino integration” and pushing for quality education for Latino schoolchildren, now roughly a quarter of the public school population.

Tuesday’s primaries include Florida and Arizona states where 20.5 percent and 23.6 percent of the their electorates are Latino, according to the Pew Research Center. The large Cuban and Puerto Rican populations in Florida make immigration less of a priority for Florida’s Latino voters.

Immigration is a major issue in Arizona, but often also is a top issue for Latinos. 

Climate change takes a seat at the 11th Democratic debate, with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders devoting 10 minutes of the previous 30 to the topic. Follow along with the minute-by-minute breakdown of what's being talked about here.

By promising to name a woman as his running mate, Biden is offering voters another chance to make history with him on the ticket. At 77, and coming from the centrist wing of his party, he'll be looking to add a little flair to excite the Democratic base if he wins the nomination.

Now, if he wins the presidency, his No. 2 would be the first woman elected to federal executive office. Biden was the VP candidate for the first black president, Barack Obama.

Two women have run for vice president and lost: Republican Sarah Palin in 2008 and Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the only woman to win a major party's nomination for president, and she lost to President Donald Trump.

Biden's options are virtually limitless, but a trio of senators may be high on the list: Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. One factor he will probably keep in mind is the benefit of choosing someone who is seen as capable of taking over.

“If I’m elected president, my cabinet, my administration will look like the country and I committed that I will pick a woman to be my vice president,” Biden said on Sunday.

Sanders said that “in all likelihood,” he would pick a woman, as well.

 

After spending more than 10 of the first 30 minutes talking about the coronavirus, the candidates moved onto other topics in the second half of the first hour of tonight's debate. See the full list of topics and how much time has been spent on each.

“If Bernie’s the nominee, I will not only support him I will campaign for him and I believe the people who support me will do the same thing, because the existential threat to the United States is Donald Trump,” Biden said, adding that he believed Sanders and his supporters would do the same. “It’s much bigger than any of us.”

Biden argued that he and Sanders agree on the issues, just not the “details.”

Sanders, when asked directly if he would campaign for Biden, said, “Sure.”

Explaining his decision to adopt two of Sen. Elizabeth Sanders’ chief policy proposals — bankruptcy reform and free college for families making less than $125,000 a year — Biden said quite simply they were good bills.

Warren’s bankruptcy reform was “what we couldn’t get done in a Republican administration,” Biden said, arguing that he’d made the bankruptcy bill he worked on years ago better by prioritizing women, children, and lower American Americans.

Sanders argued that true leadership is supporting the right policies even when they’re unpopular. 

In one of the most prolonged exchanges of the night, Sanders repeatedly attacked Biden, accusing him of having supported cutting Social Security and other entitlement programs.

“You have been on the floor time and time again about the need to cut Social Security,” Sanders said.

When Biden rejected the claim, Sanders expressed shock and told viewers to “go to the YouTube right now” to look up past speeches and comments Biden had made on the topic from the Senate floor.

 

Biden repeatedly replied, “that’s not true” although at one point acknowledged that “everything was on the table” during the Bowles-Simpson commission during the Obama administration, which was formed to issue recommendations to the administration about how to best reduce the national deficit.

“I did not support any of those cuts,'' Biden said.

Joe Biden attacked Bernie Sanders’ plan for Medicare for All, suggesting that Sanders’ call for a political revolution would not lead to any concrete policy results. 

“We have problems we have to solve now. What's a revolution going to do? Disrupt everything in the meantime?” Biden said, urging people to support his more incremental health care plan.

“Bernie still hasn't told us how he is going to pay for it,” Biden said of Medicare for All. 

Bernie laughed off Biden’s attacks and defended the need for “real change.”

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are both washing their hands a lot.

Both candidates detailed their own virus-avoidance practices — lots of hand washing and hand sanitizer — during Sunday’s debate.

“Joe and I did not shake hands,” Sanders said.

 

“I don’t have any of the underlying conditions that you’ve talked about,” Biden said, omitting that him being 77 years old puts him at higher risk for worse outcomes with coronavirus. “I’m taking all the precautions everyone should be taking. I wash my hands God knows how many times a day.”

When asked whether China should be held accountable for initially covering up the coronavirus, both Biden and Sanders criticized the Chinese government for their actions but highlighted the need to work with other countries during a time of global crisis. 

“One of the consequences is we have got to learn that you cannot lie to the American people. You cannot be less than frank about the nature of the crisis,” Sanders said. “Now is the time, by the way, to be working with China. They are learning a lot about this crisis. And in fact, we have got to work with them, we have got to work with the World Health Organization, we have got to work with Italy, we've got to work with countries around the world.”

Biden also touched on the need for researchers to have been in China early on in order to better understand the virus.

“I insisted the moment this broke out, that we should insist on having our experts in China to see what was happening and make it clear to China there would be consequences if we did not have that access,” Biden said. 

Chinese scientists reportedly knew about the virus as early as December, but were ordered by government officials to suppress evidence.

Biden took a swipe at Sanders after the Vermont senator responded to a question by saying the pandemic crisis could be an opportunity to tackle income inequality.

“People are looking for results, not a revolution,” Biden said.

Sanders, responding a moment later said, “God willing, this crisis is going to end, and we’re going to have to develop an economy where people aren't living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to put food on the table.”

Biden once more hit back, saying that the federal government needed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic first — “and then we move on to change the economy.”

“First things first,” Biden said.

In a sense, that “first things first” mentality has been at the heart of Biden’s campaign messaging since he launched it.

From the start, Biden’s campaign was built  around one priority: Getting rid of Trump. And now? A new top priority is combating the pandemic. 

Either way, it’s a convenient way to fight off Sanders’ longer-term goals of tackling broad, structural changes in the federal government.

Follow along with the NBC News debate topic tracker.

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden had trouble remembering which virus has got the world shutting down businesses and avoiding gatherings and handshakes. Several times, Sanders referred to the Ebola virus before catching himself followed by Biden, who mentioned SARS.

Sanders argued the economic fallout would be another huge part of this pandemic. 

“What happens to the millions of workers who may end losing their jobs?” he said.

Sanders began to argue that the federal government should create a way to send checks to Americans to make them “whole,” but moderators said they’d be discussing economic affects later.

Biden, asked if he’d call up the military to help combat the pandemic, answered clearly in the affirmative.

“It is a national emergency,” he said. “I would call up the military."

“They have the capacity to build out 500-bed hospitals,” he said.

“This is like a war,” Biden had said a moment earlier. “And in a war, you do everything you need to take care of your people.”

It didn’t take long for the Coronavirus Debate to turn to a back and forth over the wisdom of Medicare for All.

Joe Biden called for “free” coronavirus services and special powers to address a crisis that is “like a war,” where you “do whatever is needed to be done to take care of your people.”

“It is not working in Italy right now and they have a single payer system,” the former vice president said.

Sanders raised the high cost of American healthcare and said that “one might expect” that we would have enough doctors and that we would be “ready with the ventilators, with the ICUs, the test kits that we need — we are not.

The coronavirus dominated the start of the Democratic debate on Sunday night, with Bernie Sanders ripping President Donald Trump and Joe Biden laying out his plan to contain the outbreak.

“Shut the president up, right now,” Sanders said. Biden said, “We're at war with the virus,” and called for measures to contain the spread and bulk up the health care system. Sanders said the virus issue showed the importance of "Medicare for All," while Biden said the country first needs to deal with the crisis. 

The much dwindled Democratic field to just two candidates gave viewers a chance to get an earful on the coronavirus and the positions of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders without interruption from moderators or cheers or groans from the audience. Because of coronavirus fears, a live audience was canceled.

Biden, asked if he’d put in place a national quarantine to help combat the spread of coronavirus, did not answer the question.

Instead, he said he’d “call a meeting in the Situation Room” of all his experts and ask them, “what is it that we need.”

Ten minutes in and the coronavirus dominates the debate. See which topics get the most talk-time with our 11th debate topic tracker, updated live through the night.

With the first question of the night, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked each candidate what they had to say to the American people in “confronting” the “new reality” of the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden replied first, saying the pandemic was “bigger than any one of us,” and that he would propose that every state have at least “10 places for drive-through testing” for the illness.

Sanders, up next, opened his answer by saying the biggest need was to “shut this president up right now.”

Sanders accused Trump of “undermining” his own public health professionals.

The threat of the spread of coronavirus was present on the Democratic debate stage with the podiums of the two candidates — Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders — placed six feet apart and Biden and Sanders trading an elbow bump rather than a handshake. 

In a direct rebuttal to President Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders delivered somber, and at times searing, speeches Thursday slamming the administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and detailing how they believe the government should be responding to the crisis.

"If there ever was a time in the modern history of our country where we are all in this together, this is that moment," Sanders said in Burlington, Vermont, after suggesting the death toll may exceed that of American service members during World War II. "Now is the time for solidarity."

Earlier, in an address from his hometown, Wilmington, Delaware, Biden said, "Downplaying it, being overly dismissive or spreading misinformation is only going to hurt us and further advantage the spread of the disease."

"But neither should we panic, or fall back on xenophobia," he said. "Labeling COVID-19 a foreign virus does not displace accountability for the misjudgments that have been taken thus far by the Trump administration."

Read the full story here.

The coronavirus pandemic could pose big problems for the two marquee political events before Election Day — the Democratic and Republican national conventions this summer.

Party leaders are being forced to consider the possibility that the four-day gatherings may have to be dramatically scaled back or essentially cancelled, while the candidate nominating process and fundraising tens of millions of dollars for the events could be severely hampered, former convention officials told NBC News.

The economic impact on the host cities — Milwaukee for the Democrats on July 13-16 and Charlotte for the Republicans on August 24-27 — could be devastating. While the economic benefit for both 2016 conventions fell short of some projections, the GOP's Cleveland effort generated $142 million while in Philadelphia, the Democratic event brought about $231 million.

Read the full story here.

Two weeks ago, Bernie Sanders was the Democratic presidential front-runner, the U.S. economy was humming and President Donald Trump had reason to be optimistic about his re-election prospects.

Then the first American died from the coronavirus. The campaign as we knew it would soon be over.

The pandemic subsumed businesses and sports leagues, hammered the travel industry and caused some analysts to project an economic downturn, if not a global recession. Democrats who rated the coronavirus as important to their vote picked former Vice President Joe Biden by wide margins in primary contests, padding his victory margins and handing him a commanding delegate lead.

The president and his two main rivals canceled rallies, allowed or directed staff to work from home and began shifting their events to online gatherings. Democrats moved their Sunday debate from Phoenix to Washington and eliminated the live audience, while Louisiana became the first state to postpone its primaries due to the virus. American public life was grinding to a halt.

Read the full story here.

Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris are the leading Democratic vice-presidential picks among members of She the People, an influential group of women of color, according to an internal poll the group released on Wednesday.

Women of color are among the most loyal Democratic voters in the country — 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016, according to exit polls — making their preferences especially relevant to Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, the only two presidential candidates to emerge from the most diverse field in the party's history.

Because both are white men in their 70s, whoever wins the nomination is expected to face pressure to pick a woman and/or a person of color as a running mate.

Read the full story here.

The conventional wisdom is that this moment of crisis plays right into the stabilizing hands of Joe Biden.

But if Bernie Sanders can't convince Democratic primary voters that the coronavirus response is reason to consider the progressive alternative now, it's the wrong policy for them, he's the wrong messenger, or both.

The House and the White House agreed to provide free tests to people who can't afford them, to expand paid leave and to ensure that certain benefits like food stamps aren't disrupted because work requirements can't be met. The bill, which passed easily, raises obvious questions: The free testing and incentives to stay home are good for the rest of the population as well as the recipients, but why aren't treatment costs covered? Is coronavirus the only disease or injury for which the currently uninsured should have any costs covered, and, if so, why? What about people who lose food stamps or other government benefits when they get sick from diseases other than coronavirus?

Moreover, the Federal Reserve is slashing interest rates and buying stocks and bonds to the tune of more than a trillion dollars to prop up Wall Street, but it's not using its authority to give direct assistance to the bottom tiers of the economy.

These are the kinds of issues that Sanders talks about all the time. If he can't pound them home now, he'll never do it.

Joe Biden's campaign rolled out two new policy positions that borrow from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren ahead of Sunday's debate, both aimed at courting progressive voters as he marches to the Democratic nomination.

The former vice president said on Sunday he'll support a policy to make public colleges and universities tuition-free for students with family income under $125,000. It's a significant shift in the direction of Sanders, who wrote a bill to the same effect in 2017 but has since called for free college to be universal regardless of household income. 

At a virtual town hall with Illinois voters on Friday, Biden also endorsed Elizabeth Warren's proposal to bolster bankruptcy protections for those struggling financially, including by restoring some that were eliminate in a 2005 law championed by Biden when he was a senator.

Senior Sanders' campaign adviser Jeff Weaver lauded Biden for supporting the education proposal, but said an education platform should "go much further." "We need to make all public universities, colleges and trade schools tuition free for everyone like our high schools are," he said. "We need to cancel all student debt. And we can fund it with a small tax on Wall Street speculation."

Read the full story here.

Senior adviser to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign Jeff Weaver said Thursday that Sanders will support former Vice President Joe Biden "wholeheartedly" if Biden is the Democratic nominee. 

In an interview on MSNBC, Weaver said that the Sanders campaign is looking at the rest of the Democratic primary on a "week by week" basis, but that if he does not win the nomination, he would campaign for the former vice president. However, Weaver wouldn't say if that decision would come before or after the Democratic convention in July. 

Read more here.

While the traditional campaigning in the 2020 race has come to a halt due to concerns regarding COVID-19, the Democratic presidential candidates have increased their TV and radio ad spending for the upcoming March 17 primaries, with millions of dollars on the airwaves in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio.

Here’s a look at the ad spending in these four states through March 17, according to data from Advertising Analytics.

The virtual campaign is proving a bit complicated, after a Friday event for former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign encountered some technological glitches. 

Biden is the first Democratic candidate to hold a virtual town hall due to concerns surrounding COVID-19 and public events. The attempt to broadcast the first of two scheduled “virtual events” in the next several days involved a garbled-voiced Biden and ended roughly four minutes after the Facebook Live video began streaming in Illinois.

Still, the short event garnered more than 5,000 viewers. 

Read more here.

With the Democratic nomination race now down to a one-on-one contest between former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Democratic primary voters now back Biden — who was a distant second to Sanders just one month ago — by an overwhelming two-to-one margin, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The survey found that 61 percent of Democratic voters support Biden, while just 32 back Sanders. Four percent choose Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has not yet dropped out of the race despite failing to finish in the top three in any U.S. state primary or caucus to date.

Read more on the survey results here.

Former Vice President Joe Biden asked voters in a slew of Tuesday primary states to "please vote" as the coronavirus crisis has led to widespread closures and cancelations as officials try to corral the COVID-19 outbreak.

Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Arizona are slated to hold primaries on Tuesday. Already, Georgia and Louisiana have announced they are pushing back their primaries from March and April to May and June.

"The right to vote is the most sacred American right there is," Biden tweeted. "State election officials are working closely with public health officials to hold safe elections. If you are feeling healthy, not showing symptoms, and not at risk of being exposed to COVID-19: please vote on Tuesday."

Read the story here.

The Democratic National Committee on Thursday announced that Sunday's primary debate will be moved from Phoenix to Washington, D.C., as the nation grapples with the coronavirus outbreak.

Earlier this week, as Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders began canceling campaign rallies, the DNC announced the debate would no longer feature a live audience while CNN, the debate's host, said the traditional spin and press rooms would be scrapped.

"Out of an abundance of caution and in order to reduce cross-country travel, all parties have decided that the best path forward is to hold Sunday’s debate at CNN’s studio in Washington, D.C., with no live audience," DNC communications director Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement.

Read the full story here.

The last time Democrats debated, Bernie Sanders had just won two consecutive states and Joe Biden’s campaign was on the brink of collapse. The two men will debate one-on-one Sunday in a transformed campaign landscape.

The stage has shrunk from six to two candidates, Biden has taken a dominant lead in the race, and the coronavirus outbreak has ground much of American public life to a halt. Biden and Sanders have been forced to cancel their rallies and host online events instead, while the party moved Sunday's debate from Phoenix to CNN's Washington studio to avoid cross-country travel.

Here are five things to watch at Sunday night's faceoff.

The 11th Democratic debate is set for Sunday night, and the first one-on-one face off between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders will look much different than was originally planned.

Here's everything you need to know about the debate: