In January 22nd, President Donald Trump told CNBC that he and his administration had the coronavirus “totally under control”. Just a little over three months later, tens of thousands are infected, the American healthcare system has reached its breaking point, and the global economy has been effectively brought to a standstill. As of today, the United States has overtaken Italy and China to lead worldwide in total COVID-19 cases. Already, hospitals in New York City and other overwhelmed outbreak centers have run out of life-sustaining ventilators, and this is on top of shortages in hospital beds and personal protective equipment. And despite a steepening curve, many experts project that the virus’ peak has till yet to come.

This was not an unavoidable, unprecedented crisis. Indeed, the United States had bought itself over a month of spare time before the outbreaks truly escalated and social distancing became the new normal. But instead of implementing the robust, nationwide testing protocol that South Korea immediately adopted, or mandating self-isolation and quarantine like in China’s Hubei province, the federal government sat idly by. Now, America stands on the brink of a caving-in healthcare system and an unprecedented economic downturn. And as unemployment spikes past 3 million, President Trump has already signaled that he wants the social distancing to end “by Easter“.

Ultimately, the impact of the coronavirus on the  2020 presidential election are still far too early to call. The rare bitarsianship that crises often inspire seems to have finally reached Congress, where the Senate recently passed a relief bill with a vote of 96-0. With a vote pending in the House, Trump’s pivot towards economic messaging comes at a time where his job approval rating has reached new highs. But as President Trump’s ratings continue to rise, so too does the death toll.

Although the delegate gap between Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden seems to be growing with each passing primary with rumors circulating about Sanders exiting the race, for now at least, the fight for the Democratic nomination is still on. However, the next chance the two will get at facing off at the ballot box may not be for some time. As the global coronavirus pandemic continues shuttering businesses and bringing everyday American life to a grinding halt, the rippling effects of the public health crisis have started to seep into our elections. Voting booths can be frequented by hundreds, or even thousands of potential carriers, which means they’d require routine sanitation to reduce substantial health risks. Furthermore, poll workers tend to skew older and retired, thus putting them at even greater risk. This past Tuesday, Ohio was originally planning on holding its primary elections alongside Arizona, Florida, and Illinois. It was only after a last minute decision from the governor and Secretary of State that the elections were ultimately postponed. Many other states have followed suit, like Connecticut, Georgia, and even Puerto Rico has indefinitely postponed their elections to April 26th, at the very earliest.

In the meantime, quarantines around the country have spurred new support for mail-in ballots. Before the coronavirus truly hit the United States, many election experts were projecting 2020 to hit high figures in turnout statistics. 2018 set records for a midterm election, and many voters were expressing high levels of enthusiasm in early February polling. But with most of the country stuck indoors, turnout has suffered. In response, many states have turned to vote-by-mail as a solution. However, this isn’t a solution that exists across all 50 states. While most states are willing to provide absentee ballots with “no excuse”. there are many that demand a valid reason for . But with no end in sight for COVID-19, there’s only so much farther these states can push back their elections before the Democratic National Convention comes rearing its head (assuming it’s still held!).

Since the last time this blog was updated, the race has narrowed down tremendously. With Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard announcing the suspension of her campaign this morning, the two remaining candidates in the Democratic Primary are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Gone are the days of a crowded, diverse field with multiple candidates vying for viability across the early primary contests. Indeed, since the surprising upset victories across the country on Super Tuesday, the Democratic primary has become a one-note race. Even though there are still thousands of delegates still up for grabs, the writing is on the wall: Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee and the former Vice President will be taking on President Donald J. Trump come November.

With the end of his 2020 bid in sight, all eyes are now on the next moves that Senator Bernie Sanders will take. After suffering three more devastating losses on Tuesday evening in Illinois, Arizona, and Florida, campaign manager Faiz Shakir for Sanders stated that the senator was now planning to “assess his campaign“. Earlier this week, Axios reported that the Sanders 2020 campaign suspended all Facebook advertising, a move that mirrors many previous candidates that soon dropped out. Amid cries from Democratic partisans to drop out for the sake of unity, many Sanders supporters have expressed discontent with the primary results and massive policy differences with the Biden campaign.

As Biden has shifted his attention towards the general election, Sanders has an important political calculus to make: how will he use the political capital he’s accumulated in the past years of campaigning to affect November? Already there are signs that Sanders is attempting to pull Biden leftward, and recent changes in Biden’s policy platform in regards to tuition-free universities and adopting Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy bill have shown that the former Vice President is shifting to the left. But with a raging pandemic drawing all the world’s attention, pressure is mounting for Bernie Sanders to once more bend the knee.

After the utter disaster that was the Iowa caucuses, many were looking towards New Hampshire with bated breath. And as the votes trickled in, it became quite clear that the race is going to remain fluid for a long time. Coming out of New Hampshire, Senator Bernie Sanders once again won the first primary with 25.7% of the vote, repeating his victory in the Granite State, However, unlike in 2016 where he trounced Hillary Clinton by a margin of 20%, this time Sanders was narrowly trailed by former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, who came in second with 24.4%. Both will be leaving New Hampshire with 9 national delegates, and Senator Amy Klobuchar’s upset 3rd place secures her the remaining 6 delegates at a shocking 19.8% of the vote.

No one else reached the 15% viability threshold for delegates,meaning that all candidates outside of the top 3 didn’t win any delegates and came out of the Granite State with a heavy loss. Notably, Senator Elizabeth Warren severely under-performed . However, it appears that the Massachusetts senator has no plans to drop out in the near future, asking her supporters to keep her fundraising efforts going through Super Tuesday. Former Vice President Joe Biden crashed into a low fifth place finish, further detracting from his once-commanding lead in the race. He previously admitted on the debate stage last Friday night that he was probably going to take a “gut punch” in New Hampshire. Before the night was even over, Biden had already fled the state to his last stand firewall in South Carolina.

Since then, it appears that Bernie Sanders has overtaken Biden’s front-runner status. As Nevada creeps closer, Sanders has begun leading the pack in his RealClearPolitics national average, and his fundraising is more robust than ever. After Nevada comes South Carolina, which many have pointed to as Joe Biden’s last chance at mounting a comeback before losing all energy behind his campaign. And with Super Tuesday on the horizon, soon billionaire Michael Bloomberg will finally begin competing directly against the rest of the field.

On February 3rd, Iowans gathered across the state to vote in their first-in-the-nation caucuses. While the Republican side was an overwhelming stomp from incumbent President Donald J. Trump, observers were waiting with bated breath for the first votes in the Democratic primary to be counted. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go as planned. As the hours rolled on by, no results were transmitted to the people, to the media, or even the campaigns themselves. Instead, the Iowa Democratic Party cited an “abundance of caution” and postponed the release of vote totals to Tuesday afternoon.

So what exactly happened? Well, according the IDP, precinct chairs were given a newly implemented app (designed by a contracted firm called Shadow Inc.) to use for reporting vote totals to the state party. This had already raised red flags regarding cyber-security concerns, and many critics pointed to possible breaches from foreign hackers as reason to abandon the app. Nevertheless, caucus managers totaled up votes after realignment and attempted to use the app to submit votes. Across the state, the app failed spectacularly. As party officials were unable to submit their results, they then tried to use the traditional method of calling in to the state’s headquarters. This resulted in severe backlogs across the state, and a total meltdown of the caucus system.  Since then, the Nevada Democratic Party has announced that they will not be using the same app for their own caucuses on February 22nd.

As of 2/5/2020, only 71% of results have been fully confirmed and released by the IDP. Based off of these results, Senator Bernie Sanders is currently leading in the popular vote, while former mayor Pete Buttigieg is ahead in terms of state delegates. Senator Elizabeth Warren sits in 3rd place, and Former Vice President Joe Biden trails far behind in 4th place, severely under-performing expectations for such a high profile campaign. For now, it doesn’t appear that any other candidates will reach the necessary threshold for national delegates. But as we walk away from Iowa, the very legitimacy of the caucus format and Democratic primary has already been thrown into jeopardy.

After over two years since candidates first started announcing their presidential bid, we are finally almost ready to begin casting votes. And of course, the first state that gets the ball rolling is Iowa. The Hawkeye State actually has a provision in its constitution that demands that Iowa be the first state across the country to vote in presidential primaries. And with such a neck and neck race going into February 3rd, all eyes are on Iowa to see which candidate can clinch a victory and come out on top. So with only a handful of days left until Iowans make their voices echo across the country, let’s go over just how these caucuses work.

What’s a caucus?

When most people think of an election, they picture voters heading into a private booth, pulling a lever or casting a ballot, and then leaving to pick up their “I voted!” sticker. While this holds true for the majority of states that have primaries, caucus states are an entirely different animal. Firstly, caucus locations are spread across 1681 precincts in Iowa, ranging from school gymnasiums to movie theaters to even barns, based on the precinct’s size. Rather than cast private votes, caucus-goers publicly group themselves at their voting locations based on which candidate that they support. This means that the process typically takes much longer than normal primaries, and voters have to display their decision in front of friends, family, and neighbors. But even with Iowans voting with their feet, the process gets even more complicated.

15% Threshold

After caucus-goers choose a candidate, votes are tallied up by election officials. All candidates that received at least 15% of the vote are safe. However, candidates that fail to meet this threshold are considered “nonviable”, and their supporters are forced to make a difficult choice. These voters for nonviable candidates can either realign with a second-choice candidate, try and gather more supporters from other campaigns to become viable, or just go home. Once realignment finishes, the precinct officially counts the final total and awaits the statewide results to apportion delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Because voters’ second choices are so crucial to this fluid process, campaigns with robust ground games and passionate supporters have an edge, thus leading to many upset victories and unpredictable results on caucus night.

Healthcare, if I’m to be blunt, is a complete mess. Health insurance is a mess, the pharmaceutical industry is a mess, and above all, our politicians. Among the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for President of the United States, healthcare is perhaps the most divisive issue. And for good reason, a plethora of polling data says that healthcare reform is the top priority among Democratic caucus-goers and primary voters. Yet despite a party consensus that something needs to change about our current system, no one can seem to agree on what that change entails. With terms like “single-payer”, “public option”, and “Medicare for All” being thrown around, there’s a lot of confusion when politicians use intentionally opaque language. By the end of this article, hopefully there will be a bit more clarity on what these different healthcare plans actually mean. 

What is a public option?

During the Obama administration, there were attempts to tie in a health insurance program with the Affordable Care Act. The federal government would offer health insurance that would directly compete against private insurance plans. This would serve as an alternate plan that typically would still include certain premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.

What is single payer?

Single payer healthcare is a system where the government provides coverage to all its citizens and pays for the plan by generating tax revenue. There are many different ways to implement such a system, and many developed countries differ in their approach to balancing public and private health insurance. For example, Australia’s version of single-payer allows for government coverage and private insurance to coexist.

What is Medicare for All?

Medicare is a health insurance plan that the federal government primarily offers to Americans over the age of 65, as well as certain disabled people. While he is perhaps the most vocal advocate of universal healthcare, Bernie Sanders was not in fact the first senator to propose a bill titled “Medicare for All”. In 2006, Senator Ted Kennedy proposed the “Medicare for All Act”. Today, there is much debate over politicians using the term “Medicare for All” in describing various healthcare plans. Generally, the most accepted definition of Medicare for All includes a lowering of the eligibility age for Medicare and implementing a new taxation scheme in order to fund universal healthcare.

When the average voter thinks about the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, two names immediately come up: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. For the past decade, these two powerhouses of the American left have been close friends staunch political allies in the Senate. Indeed, during the initial primary season back during 2015, there was a concerted effort to push Senator Warren into the presidential race as a challenger to Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t until she declined to run that Senator Sanders jumped into the race, paving the way for his historic campaign in 2016.

In today’s race for the White House in November 2020, many . While they ultimately differ in implementation, the two share many policy positions. These position overlaps range from a wealth tax, to offering free public college, to the progressive litmus test of Medicare for All. And until recently, the two candidates have had maintained a sort of non-aggression pact both on and off the debate stage. Although they both present a similar vision for the country, Sanders and Warren have mostly refrained from policy attacks on one another, opting instead to team up against the remaining moderates in the race.

However, recently that tentative alliance between the two camps has finally started to break down. Earlier this week, Politico reported on an apparently leaked memo sourced from a field organizer working for the Sanders campaign. The memo gained national attention for including a response script for supporters of Elizabeth Warren, categorizing them as ” highly-educated, more affluent people” and asserting that the Senator brings “no new bases into the Democratic Party”.

This tension was brought to a whole new level after a CNN report dropped on Sunday night about a conversation between the two senators in 2018. According to sources listed in the CNN article, Sanders told Warren that he didn’t believe a woman could defeat . Sanders himself has denied these comments, whereas Warren has doubled down on the assertion but also appealed for an easing of tensions. This came to a head during last night’s 7th Democratic Debate. By the end of the night, the post-debate displayed a testy exchange by the podiums where Warren appeared to snub a handshake from the Vermont Senator. With this break finally emerging, one can only watch to see if further escalation will arise before the Iowa caucuses on February 3rd.