By Maeve Reston | Apr 5, 2020
(CNN) — For more than a year on the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic presidential contenders spoke at nearly every event about the number of families in America who were living at the precipice, one paycheck away from losing everything — even as the economy was booming.
Now that scenario is playing out in real time across the country, exposing the threadbare social safety net in America for minimum-wage workers and amplifying the drumbeat from labor unions for policies that would do more to protect the working class.
The monumental job losses sweeping the country are already reshaping the presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Sanders over universal health care coverage and how much more the government should be doing to help lower-wage workers.