Florida and Illinois would always have been bad states for Sanders. With a total cancellation of further primaries on the horizon, Sanders leading would have been all the more reason to go through with contests that slow his momentum and positive news cycle before the whole primary process comes to a halt.

By going through with Tuesday's contests, knowing full well that they'd be the final nail in the coffin for the Sanders campaign, Biden has de facto clinched the nomination - with the potential of months without primaries, it is extremely valuable for the Democratic party to have certainty, to have a presumptive nominee who can position himself on the unfolding crisis, who can more or less start his general election campaign.

Another factor to keep in mind: with a primary process which has stopped being competitive, it is much more easy to justify cancelling or postponing further rallies and contests out of health concerns. Can you imagine the shitstorm by the Bernie bros if Sanders and Biden had still been neck and neck and the party had then cancelled the contests?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 20 2020 12:57pm

If Bernie was leading, the voters would rally around him like they did in Nevada. There's a reason why a substantial amount of Biden supporters had Bernie as their second choice and vice versa. I don't think the DNC would have a strong opinion one way or the other if Bernie was ahead instead of Biden. I think the main concern now is how we have a convention. Will it be remote?

Ultimately, we're not a dictatorship, so we should always have elections. Obviously, states should do everything in their power to ensure SAFE elections, but we should definitely have them. If we could have elections when the Confederate army was 10 miles from DC, we can have them now. What's next? We suspend elections in November so Trump remains in office until the crisis is over?

Would it be possible to pull off a general election entirely by mail? 'Possible' in both a logistical and a legal sense.

It'd certainly be possible and there are several states that have the infrastructure to do it. Alternatively, you could set up more polling locations and have people stand at least 6 feet apart, sanitize the booths after each person votes, etc. You could also allow early voting for up to 2 weeks before the election as well. Each state will have to decide what they want to do.

Possible yes, but the constitution is explicit about states dictating the manner in which elections are held, so there's really no way to make sure everybody does it and it's legitimate.

Will be very low turnout, helping GOP immensely.

I don't think that's necessarily true.

the "low turnout favors the GOP" paradigm generally is based in the fact that lower turnout is due to long lines in the urban areas, and shorter lines or no line in rural areas. giving the more conservative rural areas a chance to outweigh urban districts.

but with everyone on lockdown, and presumably able to do a mail in ballot in their free time, the urban long wait lines are no longer an issue. and if u are a voter with an ID and valid address you can't blame 7 hour wait times at a polling station anymore. if u can vote and dont vote its on you, not the GOP.

of course there still might be issues with IDs or address verification, but at least the wait line issue wouldnt be valid.

Good thing you don't care about what the constitution says

Afaik, long lines in urban/Democratic leaning areas only one piece of the puzzle. Another factor is that older voters generally have higher turnout than younger voters, and whites have higher turnout than nonwhites.

Cant remember where I read it, but someone wrote in a newspaper article with respect to the 2016 election and the 2018 midterms: "Trump polarizes both sides and drives low turnout voters to the polls. In the Midwest, this group tends to consist of disillusioned working-class whites, which lean Republican in the age of Trump. But in the Southwest, in California, Arizona or Texas, the low turnout voters skew young and latino, so increasing their turnout helps Democrats. So which sides is helped or hurt by higher turnout depends on the region of the country."

indeed, many nonwhite nonmiddle aged-elderly dont vote. but what % of that is due to them not wanting to leave home? we dont know. if they could mail it in, who knows. they might.