Every day, at the White House briefing about the coronavirus, Donald Trump gets the undivided attention of the media, a national television audience bloated by crisis and as many minutes as he wants to play a “wartime president,” as he grandiosely calls himself. Never mind that he flubs his lines and turns tragedy into farce. He’s the star. His billing communicates that he’s in command.

And every day, Joe Biden watches from the far reaches of the upper balcony as he waits and waits to be declared the de facto Democratic presidential nominee and assume leadership of his party. The coronavirus has postponed state primaries, prolonged the contest, yanked him out of the news and left him in political limbo, where he wonders if Bernie Sanders will ever acknowledge defeat and shivers in the shadow of another Democrat, Andrew Cuomo, who didn’t even run for president.

There was never any doubt that this pandemic would scramble November 2020, but how much — and how? At first, all the great oracles augured Trump’s long-delayed reckoning and his certain demise, given his hemming, his hawing, his lying and his economy, which was suddenly in tatters. This was it. He’d finally met his undoing. It couldn’t have happened to a more cavalier guy.

But over the past two weeks, that prophecy has changed — or at least turned cloudier. In recent polls, his approval rating ticked upward. His disapproval rating inched downward. There’s talk of a “Trump bump,” an appallingly cute phrase for an unthinkably dire development. Now more than ever, it’s hard to fathom four more years of this president.