Hey, Polpa Chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy.

Well Murphy, it's the morning after the strangest debate in history in some ways because it came in the midst of this burgeoning national crisis, the likes of which we really haven't seen.

Certainly in the midst of a campaign. Yeah, it's funny. The whole thing is shoved the campaign out of its traditional spotlight. So it seems kind of like a side show. It's almost like you're tuning into Canadian politics, seeing what's going on there.

And you know what did get me was the youth and energy of the two candidates, spaces that were, you know, in approved 20 feet apart. But yeah, there's a bizarrely in field of the whole thing, which is part of kind of the culture.

And the race where people are a little more interested in a competent president than a fiery candidate. So the world has kind of changed on Bernie who was already way in the hole for a million other reasons. People don't want a big dramatic contest now. Nobody is looking for a revolution other than maybe a quarter of the primary voters. So, you know, Bernie was in trouble to begin with. Then the world changed on him. And so I thought it augured well to Biden. And I thought Biden more or less with some wobbles performed up to the task to have, you know, the be the right kind of Biden at this moment.

It was like a tale of two debates and tale of two Biden's. I thought he was sensational, honestly, in dealing with the coronavirus. And it was so interesting because you know, Bernie, everyone strength is there. We can as Bernie is is so locked into his point of view. And he wasn't going to adjust really. So he basically used the coronavirus to make his pitch again for Medicare for all.

And generally stuck to his script during the debate. He did have some pretty harsh language for the president and his handling of it at the top. But Biden was super focused on the crisis at hand. And he sounded like a guy who knew how to handle it. He sounded experienced, knew where the levers were that one had to work in a crisis like this.

Talked about it in terms of war.

This is like we are being attacked from abroad. This is something that is of great consequence. This is like a war. And in a war you do whatever is needed to be done to take care of your people.

The vibe of it was somebody had this smart idea. Maybe it was Biden himself. The town. Look, whenever you can in this debate act like you're the president, it's a cabinet meeting. All right, you're in charge of respirators. We got to do this. We got to do that.

Facts, plans, how to apply the federal government, which in a normal to mate, people would probably criticize his boring and technocratic. But in this moment, I thought it was. It was exactly what he ought to be doing. And as you said, he is that guy.

So he's very happy talking about government system. And he's had that experience. I mean, he was there for the H1N1 flu. He was there for Ebola.

He's run big emergency operations. He managed the recovery act and did so amazingly effectively. These played to his wheelhouse. And it comes on the thing that everybody is thinking about now. There's no other issue right now than the Corona virus.

I would have leaned a little bit more into the economics of it because I do think the health and safety aspects of this haven't fully sunk in yet. But the economic impacts of it are beginning to become clear.

And there are a lot of people who are scared, witness. He was late in getting into that. But he got into that as well. I say it was a tale of two debates, though. The second part really confounded me because look, Joe Biden is going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party.

I mean, you know, I think Nate Silver's probability of about Biden getting a majority of the delegates is now up to 99%. He's gotten an inexorable delegate lead. And even if he didn't get to majority, Bernie's already said whoever gets the most delegate should be the nominee.

And I thought Bernie came into that debate and all his signals all week long leading into it had been that he kind of knows the score.

He knows that he's probably not going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party. And so I don't think he I thought he came a little bit toned down.

And for whatever reason, Biden provoked him. Yeah, for Bernie on the Bernie scale. Yeah, he was still doing the act on a Bernie scale. Yeah, but I mean, you know, when he really when he wants to, he can decimate people. It was clear. He likes Biden.

At one point they were having an exchange about climate change in which Bernie, even as he was a tag, I'm saying Joe, I know your heart is in the right place. Now that's not a normal Bernie move. Yeah, you know, no, no, it

Bernie's been going to counseling and we're trying to turn over a new leaf here, but no, I agree. Bernie's material is always aggressive. There's a big evil corporate gala of the Pan American only I have the guts to go crush it.

Everybody else's complicit, including you. You take all your money. Blah, blah, blah. But he didn't do it with the moral loading that therefore you're evil that he often hints at because I think he does like Biden.

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