During their first ever one-on-one confrontation in Washington, DC, last night, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders clashed on issues ranging from Social Security to health-care policy to the coronavirus pandemic. In an ideal world, with a more coherent democratic process in place, it’s a debate that would have happened much sooner. But the evening saw Sanders more combative than usual, and Biden frequently on the defensive over his record as a result, inarguably representing the most intense scrutiny he’s had to face since the campaign began.

The details of current plans and past votes notwithstanding, the debate underscored the radically divergent narratives that are at stake right now in the Democratic presidential primaries, and their respective embodiment in two figures who are well liked by liberal voters but nevertheless couldn’t be further apart. In mainstream media lingo, it might be called a clash between moderation and revolution. More accurately, it was a clash between a vision of conservative restoration and one that sees the past as deeply complicit in the present.

At a moment when entire national economies are rapidly shuttering, states are implementing sweeping measures in response to the coronavirus and its ripple effects that are unprecedented in the modern era. The structural failures of the American model could not be more glaringly evident right now, yet Biden’s principal message amounted to a vague plea for a better tomorrow and a return of basic competence to government. Though the former vice president repeatedly invoked the language of urgency and decisive action, any deeper analysis of present social injustice or political dysfunction was entirely absent.