The coronavirus crisis has continued to escalate in recent days, with Dr. Anthony Fauci predicting Sunday that up to 200,000 Americans could ultimately die as a result of the pandemic and even Donald Trump—who has consistently downplayed the threat and had wanted to relax social distancing precautions in two weeks—shifting expectations. Now claiming that he’d have done a “very good job” if he can keep the United States death toll to 100,000, Trump pushed his target date to reopen the country from Easter—his initial “beautiful” but entirely arbitrary timeline—to April 30, an extension more in line with the recommendations of public health professionals.

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“It’s very important that everyone strongly follow the guidelines,” the president said in a daily briefing Sunday, taking a break from bragging about the ratings those news conferences have gotten. “Have to follow the guidelines.”

That extension—and it could go on longer, depending on the trajectory of the outbreak—not only pushes back the anticipated reopening of the U.S. economy, but continues to keep candidates off the campaign trail, as well. Just as it has upended everyday life, so, too, has the virus dramatically altered the 2020 race. Trump has not held a rally, the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign, in close to a month. The Democratic primary between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders has been left in limbo, with states postponing their contests and the former vice president—likely the party nominee—drowned out by the pandemic. And then there are the down-ballot races, which tend to be overlooked in presidential election years anyway, which have been pushed further out of the attention of voters.

“This is the question that is going to dominate the election,” Republican Rep. Tom Cole told the New York Times. “How did you perform in the great crisis?”

Indeed, as the crisis continues to mount, claiming lives and livelihoods, other issues that had been expected to figure heavily into November’s election have taken a back seat—at least for now. “Nobody wants to talk about my thoughts on carbon pricing,” Illinois Democrat Sean Casten told the Times, explaining that his campaign has shifted from touting accomplishments to providing “health and safety information” to constituents. Of course, in shifting the focus of the race, the crisis has also thrown into relief some of the issues at play. In addresses and media appearances from his Delaware home, Biden has used Trump’s abysmal handling of the emergency to draw a stark contrast between the leadership he would provide and that of the current president; Biden has made Trump’s dismissals of the COVID-19 threat and attacks on governors the subjects of recent advertisements.

Meanwhile, for Sanders, the pandemic has been something of a culmination of the issues he’s spent decades focused on, from the country’s healthcare system to its income inequality. “If there is any silver lining in the horrific situation we now find ourselves in,” the Vermont senator tweeted Sunday, “it is the need to understand how we got here and how we can prevent future disasters like this.” “I think many of his ideas, which were deemed radical just a few months ago, are now being promoted,” Ana Maria Achila, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, which endorsed Sanders, told NPR.

But it’s not just that the focus of the campaign has changed; the campaign itself, which would typically be dominating the news cycles at this point in an election year, clocks in far behind the efforts to combat the pandemic and its economic fallout. And, with the timeline for defeating the virus still up in the air, it’s unclear when things in the U.S. will be normal enough again to turn attention back to the 2020 race. That, as the Times observed, could make this cycle look less like the drawn-out races we’re used to in America and more like the six-week general elections of Britain. Who comes out on top when all is said and done, of course, could depend largely on the toll the pandemic ultimately takes on the country and whether voters believes their leaders—from Trump on down to state and local officials on the 2020 ballot—rose to the challenge.

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