Discourse Blog

Share this post
Joe Biden Is Not Even Trying
www.discourseblog.com

Joe Biden Is Not Even Trying

Paul Blest
Apr 7, 2020
Comment
Share

It's not exactly surprising that the Supreme Court and the Wisconsin GOP are pioneering new and exciting innovations in election theft. What's more surprising is that the probable Democratic presidential nominee seems to be ambivalent at best about the whole thing.

Here's Joe Biden telling people it's safe to vote in-person in Wisconsin — where Republicans forced state and primary elections to go forward today— because you can make people stand "six to ten feet apart" and the machines will be "scrubbed down" afterwards:

Twitter avatar for @PepperOceanna#BernieOnTheBallot @PepperOceanna
Joe Biden is calling on people to come out and vote in Wisconsin during the middle of a Pandemic, yet he refuses to debate Bernie. He should #PostponeWisconsin and Debate Bernie. #BidenDebateBernie
Image

April 4th 2020

1,511 Retweets4,181 Likes

This is after the Biden campaign actively encouraged people to go out and vote on March 17, in Michigan, Arizona, and Florida. (Ohio, which was supposed to also hold its presidential primary that day, rescheduled it.)

At least three Florida poll workers have since tested positive for coronavirus. Michigan now has four times as many confirmed coronavirus cases (17.2k) as Ohio (4.4k), according to STAT's COVID-19 tracker, even though Ohio has done more testing and the states' governors issued stay at home orders just one day apart. In an interview with cleveland.com (solidarity with Plain Dealer workers!), Dr. Robert Salata of the University Hospitals Roe Green Medical Center in Cleveland speculated that the primary had something to do with it.

So we have some evidence of at least a correlation between in-person voting and coronavirus spread, and yet Biden is still telling people that it's not exactly dangerous to vote right now. This is not a claim he can back up with anything resembling evidence, and it's a notion that Wisconsin Democrats ardently oppose. One person who doesn't oppose it is Donald Trump:

Twitter avatar for @realDonaldTrumpDonald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Wisconsin, get out and vote NOW for Justice Daniel Kelly. Protect your 2nd Amendment!

April 7th 2020

27,635 Retweets119,590 Likes

One person who does is Bernie Sanders:

Twitter avatar for @BernieSandersBernie Sanders @BernieSanders
Let's be clear: holding this election amid the coronavirus outbreak is dangerous, disregards the guidance of public health experts, and may very well prove deadly. For that reason, our campaign will not be engaged in any traditional GOTV efforts.

April 7th 2020

4,010 Retweets19,918 Likes

A Sanders skeptic might say that Sanders is just trying to stop Biden's momentum, but it's hard to envision a world in which Biden would win Wisconsin by 30 in April but lose it in a few months, given that the coronavirus has so far not moved the polling an inch. (Part of the reason seems to be that the media is enamored with Democratic governors who are actually dealing with the crisis right now, and not the two remaining presidential candidates.)

But then you have this from Biden today, in which he shows himself to be skeptical of mail-in voting, which most Democrats are pushing to be a part of any future coronavirus relief package. It's something that has the potential to save countless lives, considering the potential for the coronavirus to come back in a second wave by the fall.

Twitter avatar for @JTHVerhovekJohnny Verhovek @JTHVerhovek
...I'd much prefer to have...in-person voting. But it depends, it depends on the state of play. But we cannot, we cannot delay or postpone a constitutionally required November election."

April 7th 2020

5 Retweets5 Likes

We already have voting by mail in many states, including the largest, California. They've managed to figure it out. With proper federal funding for implementation, why can't every other state?

Even beyond the coronavirus pandemic, Biden showing his uneasiness towards voting by mail flies in the face of a decades-long progressive push to make it as easy to vote as humanly possible. The very first bill the Democrats passed after taking back the House in 2019 was one expanding voter access. The concept is so central to the Democrats' success that Trump recently said that the GOP would never win another election if the Democrats' demands for voter access were to be included in coronavirus relief packages.

Maybe Biden doesn't understand mail voting. Maybe he thinks the coronavirus will be solved by then. Maybe he's bought the GOP line that making it easier to vote is injecting partisanship into politics or whatever. None of these reasons, however, excuse an approach to voting that's marginally better than Donald Trump's at best.

CommentComment
ShareShare

Create your profile

0 subscriptions will be displayed on your profile (edit)

Skip for now

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.

TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2022 Discourse Blog Inc.
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Publish on Substack Get the app
Substack is the home for great writing