Welcome to The Lit from Meet the Press. I'm Carrie Dan. There have been many unsettling news cycles in the last few years, North Korean nuke tests, the Iran crisis, the mass shootings that all too often make us hold our loved ones a little tighter every time. But the last day or two have felt like the coronavirus news cycle is simply spinning almost too fast to keep up with.
Stocks dropping again. The NBA is suspending its season. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson testing positive for the virus. And then the president restricting travel from Europe in a statement that needed numerous clarifications after the fact.
We are in unprecedented times. And one word that you're hearing a lot of, especially from critics of the administration's response to the virus is leadership. That's what Joe Biden aimed for today in remarks from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, where he addressed the global health crisis. Here's a listen to what he said.
Whether or not you're affected or know someone who is infected or have been contacted infected person, this is going to require a national, a national response, not just in my elected leaders or public health officials, but from all of us. Now we should know here that Biden did not plan to do this speech directly in response to the president's Wednesday night address from the White House. The remarks were already on the calendar before that Oval Office speech was even announced. But after the president's speech fell short of a level of reassurance that many, and certainly the financial markets, were hoping for, the opportunity was evident for Biden to create a contrast.
And that contrast was pretty clear. The administration's failed on testing is colossal. It's a failure of planning, leadership, and execution. Now the Democratic primary is not over.
Bernie Sanders is still in the race and is also addressing this crisis, particularly talking about what it says about America's health care system. But what Biden did in his remarks laid out what reality would look like under his presidency. And if in fact Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee, you can probably expect to see a lot more of this. And what that does is veer the race back into what a lot of political observers call a referendum on President Trump.
What is a referendum? Well, if you like the current president, you can vote for him. If you don't, you don't have to work hard to imagine what life would look like with a president who's mostly in the model of previous presidents. That's Biden's intent, which of course is very different from the more aspirational revolutionary promise that a president Bernie Sanders would want to make.
There's another problem for Republicans here too, because the fundamentals of the general election and the economy have both changed in the last month. This time in February, it sure looked like they could run a playbook assuming that Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic nominee. Their message could be the economy's doing great and the other guys a Democratic socialist. Fast forward a month and markets, at least at this moment, look very not confident indeed.
And Sanders looks closer to an exit strategy than the Democratic nod. And meanwhile, Biden is putting down this marker. My president, you will be better prepared, respond better, and become better. That's a lid for us.
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