Bernie Talks Aspirations. Joe Talks Logistics

[TomCADem]

For example, in how to respond to the coronavirus crisis, Bernie goes back to Medicare for All, and gives his standard stump speech in support of single payer.

Joe responds by pointing out that Italy is single payer, and that the real issue is how you respond to a crisis, then he points to his experience responding to the Ebola Crisis and notes how the Obama administration and the CDC took a lead role globally.

Interestingly, Bernie then dismissed the ebolas epidemic as not being a full fledged pandemic, and Joe sort of smiled with a look like, "Why do you think it ended up not being a pandemic." Then, Joe went back to what he would do and said he would do what he did back when facing a pandemic.

When asked about use of the military, Bernie sort of gave a broad answer about using all available resources. Biden responded by saying yes, we would use the military if needed to set up hospital beds.

In short, Bernie's default is to fall back to a generalized line about the working class is getting screwed, the rich are getting rich, etc., which is once again aspirational, while Joe seems to be more focused on logistics.

My minor critique of Biden is that he could have hit Bernie more on the fact that a lot of European countries have single payer, yet the virus is getting out of control, though perhaps this was his point of repeatedly emphasizing crisis management over single payer as some sort of magical cure all.