With the daily increases in coronavirus deaths and Donald Trump's escalating meltdowns, it's easy to forget there's also a presidential election going on, or would be, if things were normal, which just reminds you again how non-normal all this is. But while Trump continues lying about the fantastic job he's doing, Joe Biden is busily doing what presidential candidates are supposed to do: getting ready for the fall, and, he hopes, getting read to president come next January.

And as the dual health and economic crisis has played out, it's starting to look like Joe Biden, Mr. Moderate, is thinking about all the things that will need fixing if he defeats Trump (provided Trump doesn't launch the entire US nuclear arsenal at coastal US cities), and is inclined to do some serious Franklin D. Roosevelt, New Deal-style responses to get America back in shape. As reporter Gabriel Debenedetti puts it, Biden's original centrist pitch, a promise of a return to the pre-Trump norm, seems "almost moot" now.

And so suddenly Joe Biden is talking about far bigger plans than his "first day" goals of rejoining the Paris climate agreement, issuing executive orders to put ethics back in government, and pushing for the Equality Act to protect LGBTQ rights. Now he's talking about big government spending on green energy and infrastructure, payments to families, student loan forgiveness, and the like. He's consulting regularly with Elizabeth Warren and Jay Inslee, and talking about creating "a 100,000-plus worker Public Health Jobs Corps and the doubling of the number of OSHA investigators to protect employees amid the pandemic." And isn't that some neat stuff!