From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is The Daily.

Today, Joe Biden is the first candidate in U.S. history to wage a presidential campaign

in quarantine. Alex Burns on the strange new reality of the 2020 race.

It's Thursday, April 30th.

Alex, the last time that we spoke with you, Joe Biden had just become the de facto

Democratic nominee. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. And the pandemic was just really

beginning to wash over the United States. Now, of course, the coronavirus is very much here.

So I wonder if you could describe the state of the Biden campaign.

Well, the state of the Biden campaign is super weird, which is a technical term.

Of course. You know, since the last time we spoke, Joe Biden has not held one public event

in person as a candidate. And his campaign has been really restricted to the telephone

and to zoom in FaceTime like so much of life for so many Americans. He is campaigning.

He likes to say from his basement, kind of as a joke, but it's true that he has a video uplink

in a refurbished rec room in his enormous house in Delaware. But he is basically unable to do

almost any of the traditional activities of a presumptive candidate. There was no unity rally

with his defeated primary opponents, and there certainly no in-person fundraisers.

So what does the virtual element of this campaign actually look like? The part where he's on zoom

in his basement with all those books behind him. Right. It's kind of a work in progress.

Look, folks, I want to say good evening and thank you for taking the time to speak with me.

So they've tried a bunch of different formats. We're going to take a question now from Maureen Jenkins.

Maureen, you are unmuted. We're ready. Are you there? They have done what they call virtual

replines where Biden gets on his video stream and talks to a succession of voters the way he would

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