Joe Biden spent Monday campaigning in Florida, including a town hall with NBC News, and he continued to show leadership on the coronavirus, with distanced events and repeatedly emphasizing the importance of mask-wearing. In some cases, that was pointed: “Anybody who contracts the virus by essentially saying masks don’t matter, social distancing doesn’t matter, I think is responsible for what happens to them,” the former vice president said at the town hall in response to a question about whether Donald Trump bears responsibility for getting COVID-19.
”I was glad to see the president speaking in recorded videos over the weekend,” Biden said Monday afternoon as he campaigned in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. “I would ask him to do this: Listen to the scientists! Support masks! Support a mask mandate nationwide. Require a mask in every federal building, facility in their state. Urge every governor in America to do the same. We know it saves lives.”
Biden spoke on other issues at the town hall as well, taking a question from a younger voter about the future of Generation Z. Biden referred to his plans to reduce student debt and help first-time homebuyers, but he also went more abstract. “I made the comment that I view myself as a transitional president … it’s a transition to your generation,” he said. “You’re the best educated, you’re the most open, you’re the least prejudiced generation in American history and the future is yours and I’m counting on you.”
But Biden also—in an attempt to counteract the “Biden-as-socialist” messaging the Trump campaign is using to appeal to Cuban American voters in Florida—distanced himself from Sen. Bernie Sanders, a politician very popular with many young people who is actively campaigning for Biden, describing himself as “the guy who ran against the socialist.” At the campaign events earlier in the day, Biden also strongly criticized Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, calling him “a dictator, plain and simple.” Biden connected that view of Maduro to other world leaders, saying that “President Trump cannot advance democracy and human rights when he has embraced so many autocrats around the world, starting with Vladimir Putin.”
Biden, of course, was drowned out in the national media by Donald Trump’s gasping return to the White House, but meanwhile he was on the ground in the key swing state of Florida and speaking directly to voters with his characteristic empathy and bluntness at the televised town hall. Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien (who has COVID-19) is definitely seeing his plan to win every day fulfilled.