DES MOINES, Iowa -- The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is taking almost all the attention away from the 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic Party's race between former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for the nomination.
"Democrats still have to settle that, yet in these present circumstances they get no oxygen in terms of carrying on active campaigns" says Drake University Political Science professor Dennis Goldford.
He says the 2020 Presidential race will center on President Trump's handling of the outbreak
"It will now be, certainly, a referendum on his handling of the coronavirus. Any Democratic challenger has to argue that he's the comforting and skilled alternative" Gordford says
He says it's not opportunistic for a challenger to put the sitting president's handling of a crisis at the heart of their campaign.
Goldford says Ronald Reagan did it in 1980 when he beat President Jimmy Carter by asking the American people a simple question--"are you better now than you were four years ago?"