Joe Biden did a town hall about coronavirus last night on CNN, and I don't think there is a single news article about it...

... other than on CNN itself, which doesn't seem to have a transcript, only "5 takeaways from Joe Biden's CNN town hall on the coronavirus response."

We watched most of it, and I was going to do a substantial blog post about it — if I had a transcript. But I've just go this stupid "5 takeaways" format, which is highly protective of Joe Biden. I watched to see what kind of shape he was in, because I didn't think he had the ability to string cogent sentences together. I can report that when I switched it off somewhere after the midpoint, I said, "He wasn't that bad." Nevertheless, he was not challenged by any of the questions — from Anderson Cooper and various citizens — and he never said anything clear that distinguished himself from Trump or that hit Trump in any serious way.

Biden relied on a rhetorical device that has been driving me crazy throughout the campaign season. It's the phrase "make sure." There's a question about how some desired goal can be reached, and the answer is: We need to make sure that we reach that goal. That's no answer! If I had the transcript, I'd pick out the examples. But — just hypothetically — assume the question is "What would you do about the shortage of ventilators?" The "make sure" answer is — with verbiage to pad the nonanswer — "I would make sure that we have plenty of ventilators." Start looking for it. It's everywhere!

But there's no "make sure" in the few snippets in the pathetical little "5 takeaways" article. We used to scoff at junky little articles like that and call them "listicles." They were the stuff of Buzzfeed. But now it's all we get when the major-party opponent to the President goes on TV for an hour (or was it 2 hours?) to enlighten us about his positions on a mind-crushing crisis.

CNN tells us he offered "an uplifting message — one in tune with his campaign's core theme — about the soul of the nation being on display in Americans' reaction to the crisis." That's a paraphrase of this quote from Biden:

"We are seeing the soul of America now. Take a look at what is happening. Everywhere you look, you see people reaching out to help people," Biden said. "This is an incredible nation. The American people are generous, decent, good, fair, bright, and it makes you so proud to be an American."

Thanks for the message, but it contains absolutely no information about what Biden would do any differently from Trump or even if Biden has any notions that are not equally floating around in the mind of nice, elderly folks scanning memes on their Facebook feed.

The second of the "5 takeaways" is the part I'd like to take from a transcript, but I'm going to settle for this summary, though I realize I could do my own transcription. Biden was, I believe, asked to respond to Trump's talk about emerging from the current shutdown:

Biden backs temporary nationwide shutdown

Biden is with Bill Gates, not Donald Trump.

The former vice president said that he, as president, would recommend governors temporarily lock down their states for a period of time to stop the spread of coronavirus, aligning himself closer to the billionaire Microsoft founder's suggestion that the country needs a lengthy shutdown, not the President's hope that the country reopen in mid-April.

"For the time being, I would, yes," Biden said. "Here is the point. ... You don't know who doesn't have it. You don't know who doesn't have the virus. So, a lot of people walking around looking like they're pretty healthy and they may very well have the virus and transmit it."

States have moved at different paces in closing some or most businesses. Biden also said on Friday that he had talked to a group of the nation's governors, including Washington's Jay Inslee, Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania's Tom Wolf. He said he missed a call on Friday afternoon from Louisiana's John Bel Edwards, and that he has spoken with Republicans as well.

Got it? What the transcript would show is that the answer began with Biden's saying that he saw Bill Gates on TV, and Bill Gates seemed to have a lot of "insight" into the subject. Biden wished that everyone could have seen Bill Gates on that TV program. Most of us understand there's a problem coming out of the shutdown because even if it's as long as the incubation period, it doesn't smoke out all the positive cases because some of them are asymptomatic. So what can you do? Where's the answer?!

Anderson Cooper pushed him to say whether he would follow a top-down single policy treating all parts of the country the same or whether he would treat different places differently depending on the conditions. Where's the answer?! The "5 takeaways" listicle tells us Biden has been talking on the phone to some governors, and he missed that one call from the governor of Louisiana. That's not an answer!

So annoying! I don't know what Anderson Cooper's problem was. He clearly had no intention of challenging the candidate. At times, I thought Cooper looked tired and scared. Sometimes it seemed as though he wanted to laugh. I must say we laughed a lot, and the subject is not funny at all.

Let me give you another one of the "takeaways":

Pitting public health against economic health is a 'false choice'

Biden rejected Trump's assertion that public efforts to combat the crisis could do more damage to the economy than the virus itself.

He did? What's the actual quote? Everyone knows there's a massive dilemma and there's good and bad on both sides of keeping the economy shut down.

Describing Trump's view as a "false choice," Biden argued that the economy could only rebound once the public health emergency was brought under control.

That's just restating the question. How much damage to the economy can we accept in exchange for how much control? Here's the quote CNN deigns to provide:

"It's a false choice to make, saying that you either open the economy or everything goes to hell," Biden said. "You cannot make this economy grow until you deal with the virus."

That's just saying that you don't like that there are 2 things to consider at once. To call them a "false choice" is just to say I want both. What's his position? First "deal with" the virus? What does that mean? And why is he talking about making the economy grow? It's a problem of keeping the economy from collapsing!

Notice that he called it a "false choice" and then he seemed to make a choice: health first. Does that mean we stay in lockdown for 6 months, a year, 2 years — whatever! — with no attention to the ruined economy? Anderson Cooper did not push him at all. He was allowed to answer the question as if it were easy.

Trump this week repeatedly warned that "the cure" -- in the form of efforts like social distancing and stay-at-home orders -- could "be worse than the problem" and suggested Easter as a potential date for "opening up" the economy, well ahead of when most medical experts believe would be safe.

"They're one and the same," Biden said of the twin dangers. "You can't deal with the economic crisis until you deal with the health care crisis."

If they're "one  and the same," how can you do one before the other? Oh, I'm just exasperated putting it in a mindless abstract form like that. And notice the repeated reliance on the phrase "deal with." That seems to me the lesser cousin of "make sure." The answer to every problem could be: You need to deal with it. At least he's revealing that he would "deal with" one problem before he would "deal with" the other (even though the problems are "one and the same"). I think I know what he's trying to say, but it's something too abstract to work as an answer to the question how would you be different from Trump.