New Hampshire state Rep. Tim Egan said Sanders should “follow through on what he talks about” and could have “made his point” from the Senate floor.

“Not being in the Senate was a bad sign. It’s like when John McCain, during the financial crisis, said, ‘I’m going to suspend my campaign,'” Egan told the Washington Examiner, referring to the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

For Egan, a backer of presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, the two-term former vice president was in a different position as a public official who no longer holds elected office, though Biden’s situation was tricky because he doesn’t want to “lose respect” by “sticking his nose” where it doesn’t belong.

“Sen. Sanders needs to sort of say, ‘I’m a senator. I need to focus on that stuff first and the campaign second. And if it’s going to make me take a back seat to Joe Biden, well, then I’ve done the right thing in my office,'” he said.

Sanders, who trails Biden in the delegate count, attracted negative press Monday by scolding congressional reporters for ignoring social distancing precautions while asking about his absence.

“Right now, the most important thing that anybody can do and that the progressive movement can do is to make sure that working people get the protection that they need. I’m going to use every tool that I have to make sure that that happened,” he said.

His Senate communications director Keane Bhatt added in a statement that Sanders had been talking with aides over the weekend and “engaged directly with Democratic leadership and Republican senators by phone during negotiations.”

“The cloture vote would fail, and his absence was effectively a no vote, so he was engaging on policy remotely,” Bhatt told CNN.

Sanders himself said Monday night his second presidential bid is “in a bizarre moment,” admitting he’s disappointed White House and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines prevent him from holding rallies and having staff and volunteers drum up more support through door-to-door canvassing.

“What we are doing is transitioning our campaign to a virtual campaign,” he told MSNBC, describing the process as “day by day.”

One of the ways the Sanders campaign continues to flex its muscles is through grassroots fundraising, not for their candidate but for charities helping those affected by the pandemic. The Sanders camp said its network raised $2 million in 48 hours over the weekend. While not tapping donors for himself at the moment, Sanders brought in $47.6 million during February and started March with almost $18.7 million cash on hand.

Although he’s suspended most advertising from roundtables to concerts, Sanders’s digital events are drawing 65,000-plus viewers. He’s also ramping up his online organizing in states such as New York, where Democrats go to the polls on April 28. That effort includes digital house parties where volunteers “do voter outreach through phone-banking and the BERN app,” according to his team.

Shortly after his poor showing in the March 17 primaries, campaign manager Faiz Shakir said the next contests weren’t for another three weeks and that the senator would “be having conversations with supporters to assess his campaign.”

“In the immediate term, however, he is focused on the government response to the coronavirus outbreak and ensuring that we take care of working people and the most vulnerable,” Shakir said.

But Sanders is clearly growing frustrated with questions about his future plans, indicating he’ll debate in the April round if he can.

“I’m dealing with a f—ing global crisis. You know, we’re dealing with,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill last week.

Although Sanders won the Democrats Abroad primary this week, Biden has 1,174 pledged delegates to the senator’s 862. A total of 1,991 delegates is required to become the 2020 Democratic nominee.

The next series of voting will take place in Alaska, Hawaii, and Wyoming on April 4.