During the first head-to-head debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, the former vice president pledged to name a woman as his running mate while Sanders declined to make the same guarantee.
“If I’m elected president, my cabinet, my administration, will look like the country and I commit that I will in fact pick a woman to be my vice president,” Biden said during Sunday’s televised debate from Washington. “There are a number of women qualified to be president tomorrow and I would pick a woman to be my vice president.”
When the question was put to Sanders, the Vermont senator said “in all likelihood” he would also choose a woman, but that there was more than just gender for him to consider.
“For me, it’s not just nominating a woman,” he said. “It is making sure that we have a progressive woman and there are progressive women out there. So my very strong tendency is to move in that direction.”
In the first Democratic debate since Feb. 25, much of the two hours were spent discussing the coronavirus pandemic, as Sanders and Biden expressed how they would act to curb the spread of COVID-19 if they were president.
Sanders, who had written a CNN op-ed on the coronavirus, said the crisis is revealing the flaws in the current health care system and that the country would be able to more effectively combat the spread of the virus if his Medicare for All plan was in place.
“Half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. We’ve got people who are struggling, working two or three jobs to put food on the table. What’s going to happen to them?” Sanders said.
“As a result of the virus here, the coronavirus, what we have got to do also is understand the economy and how unjust and unfair it is that so few have so much and so many have so little,” he said.
While the Vermont senator and Biden agreed that there should be a wartime-like response to situation, the former vice president said now is not the time to completely reinvent the health care system.
“It’s not going to be solved by a change in tax policy now. It’s not going to be solved by how we deal with health care,” Biden said about the pandemic and the growing concern throughout the country about its spread.
“We have to act dramatically, boldly if we are going to save lives in this country and around the world,” Sanders said.
The debate, which was held without a live audience, began just hours after the national Centers for Disease Control had released new recommendations to cancel or postpone all events and gatherings with 50 people or more for the next eight weeks.
Sanders also explained how as a 78-year-old who has had a heart attack, he was taking precautions during the outbreak.
He said his campaign has decided against holding large rallies — a staple of his campaign efforts in 2016 and 2020 — and that his staffers are all working remotely.
“On a personal level, I’m not shaking hands,” he said. “I am very careful about the people I am interacting with, I am using a lot of soap and hand sanitizers.”
“Right now I do not have any symptoms and I feel very grateful for that,” Sanders added.
While the two mostly agreed on ways to attack the coronavirus outbreak, they sparred over foreign policy — including the Iraq War and the Vermont senator’s comments that Fidel Castro had made strides in making health care and education more accessible to the Cuban people — and their records on climate change.
“I have led the effort against all forms of authoritarianism, including America’s so-called allies in the U.A.E. and in Saudi Arabia,” Sanders said. His statement was in response to Biden’s claim that the Vermont independent’s record of praising the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua and visiting the former Soviet Union illustrated a fondness for dictatorships.
“In a world moving towards authoritarianism, the United States has got to be the leader, where people all over the world look to us for guidance,” Sanders added.
Since late February’s South Carolina primary, where Biden scored a decisive victory, the former vice president has leapfrogged Sanders as the frontrunner and odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination.
After strong showings on Super Tuesday and the March 10 contests, Biden has 890 pledged delegates, while Sanders has 736.
Sunday’s debate comes two days before another round of primaries on March 17 in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio.
Sanders path to victory seems to be slipping away as he has fallen behind Biden in national polls, but last week his campaign announced that he was adding staff in Pennsylvania, signaling he is at least looking to stay in the race until April 28 when the Keystone State and others vote.
The former vice president meanwhile has been trying to shore up support among the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Just before the debate, his campaign announced Biden now supports making public colleges and universities tuition-free for many students whose parents make less that $125,000 per year — adopting a proposal similar to Sanders’ free university and college loan forgiveness plan.
“It’s great that Joe Biden is now supporting a position that was in the Democratic platform four years ago,” the Sanders campaign responded on Twitter.
