MILWAUKEE – In what turned out to be the last “contested” primary of the Democratic nominating fight, Joe Biden easily defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin.

It was a primary with too many asterisks to name.

Among the biggest:

There was a pandemic.

There was no campaign because there was a pandemic.

This was the only April primary in the country with in-person voting that wasn’t postponed.

The Democratic race was all but over.

And Sanders suspended his campaign the day after the state’s April 7 primary but before the results were announced six days later.

Sanders endorsed Biden on Monday.

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Even before the pandemic had blown up the political calendar, Biden turned the race on its head. After Sanders won the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Biden won South Carolina at the end of February.

Then he quickly inherited the support of other Democratic rivals after they dropped out — Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Mike Bloomberg — leading to a series of conclusive Biden victories in March.

Under different circumstances, Wisconsin might have provided either a dramatic Biden-Sanders showdown or a desperate Sanders last stand. The Vermont senator won Wisconsin handily four years ago against Hillary Clinton, capturing 71 of the state’s 72 counties.

But the pandemic froze a contest that had drastically changed in early March, rendering Wisconsin a truly invisible primary, with no visits by the candidates, no TV ads, no election night exit polls, no debates, no suspense.

What could be more anticlimactic than learning the results of a race that is no longer contested?

But while it became irrelevant to the presidential race, the primary continued to figure into Wisconsin’s biggest April 7 election contest, for state Supreme Court.

Before the pandemic, a contested Democratic primary was expected to generate a turnout edge for Democrats in this election that could boost liberal court candidate Jill Karofsky against the conservative incumbent, Justice Dan Kelly. There was no contested GOP primary to mobilize Republican voters since President Donald Trump had no opposition on the GOP primary ballot.

But that Democratic turnout boost may have dissipated as the Democratic nominating fight petered out, turning a race in which the liberal court candidate was once widely seen as the favorite into a truly open-ended contest.