On the Democratic side, Sanders was forced to stop campaigning. His main vehicle was large mass rallies, which couldn’t be held. He had hoped to win some more delegates to the Democratic convention in the remaining primaries, even though Biden had moved decisively ahead in the early March primaries with the party’s establishment backing him.

But the remaining primaries were postponed to June due to the virus by the Democratic establishment in those states. It remains to be seen if they will be held even then. The Democratic convention was postponed from July to August.

There was one exception, Wisconsin, where there was a bizarre development. The state Democrats wanted to postpone their primary to June also. But the state Republicans, who have a majority in the state legislature, ruled the primary had to be held as scheduled.

The Democrats appealed to the state Supreme Court where they were overruled by the Republican majority. They then appealed to the national Supreme Court, where the Trumpist majority overruled them again.

After cancelling his campaign, Sanders endorsed Joe Biden, who is now the presumed Democratic candidate to oppose Trump in November.

Biden, however, is now looking very week. As the pandemic has taken center stage along with its severe impact on the economy, Biden has been scarcely heard of. Trump, on the other hand, is conducting daily TV shows, ostensibly on the virus but in reality campaign events, where he rants and lies. Biden doesn’t have much to say in reply.

Biden carries much negative political baggage, going back to the 1970s.

In the mid-1970s, there was a major war in Boston over court ordered busing of Black and white students to schools in different neighborhoods to achieve school integration that pitted the Black community and its supporters against racists in the city government and in white neighborhoods in the segregated city. Schools for Black students were significantly underfunded and inferior to those for whites.

It was the most important anti-racist struggle in the country at the time. The racists launched violent attacks against Black students going to “white” schools, as well as other random attacks on Blacks. These were met by organized resistance. There were also a series of major demonstrations defending school desegregation.

In 1975, in the midst of this battle, Senator Biden supported a sweeping anti-busing bill offered by the segregationist Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and submitted his own anti-busing amendment to an appropriations bill.

In an interview in the same year Biden said “I oppose busing. It’s an asinine concept.” He went on to say that busing to achieve integration was – racist! He used racist language to justify his racist stand. He said that integration of schools means “in order for your child with curly black hair, brown eyes and dark skin to be able to learn anything, he needs to be able to sit next to my blond-haired, blue eyed son.“

No, Joe, it was an attempt to provide equal education no matter who sat next to your son.

In one of his speeches during the primaries, he recalled this incident proudly, claiming it showed is ability to “work with” Republicans. When Black candidate Kamela Harris called him out on this, he tried to make a hasty garbled retreat.

Biden supported president Clinton’s legislation that intensified the “war on drugs” that led to the mass incarceration of African Americans and Latinos, whose felony convictions bar them from many jobs after they are released from prison, and loss of rights. This affects their families and indeed the whole Black community, creating what Michele Alexander correctly calls a new form of oppression, “The New Jim Crow.”

He supported legislation that makes it impossible for people who are burdened with large student debt to use bankruptcy laws to gain relief, unlike corporations which routinely use those laws to minimize their debts. Trump’s corporations have done this at least six times.

Biden, despite his denials, has repeatedly supported – caught on video — cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He claims he visited Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and to have participated in the civil rights movement, both lies.

He says his vote to approve the Iraq war was only a “mistake”. Others who voted for that war say the same thing, because it turned out badly for the U.S., not because it was wrong.

Biden has a history of behaving inappropriately toward women. In the early 1990s, President Bush nominated a far right African American, Clarence Thomas, to the Supreme Court. Biden was the the chair of the Judiciary Committee that held confirmation hearings on the nomination.

An African American woman, Anita Hill, who had formerly had a job where Thomas was her boss, testified at the hearing that she was subjected to sexual harassment by Thomas on that job. The hearings were televised. The cool and collected Hill’s testimony contrasted sharply with many Senators on the committee who derided and defamed her. Biden led the attack, and jammed through Thomas’ nomination.

Biden, now that he is seeking the presidency, has apologized, three decades too late, to Hill.

New allegations from women of Biden’s past sexual harassment and even assault have been made, paralleling the similar accusations against Trump. We may see two old men under the same cloud running against each other.

Biden supports the positions of the right wing of the Democratic Party, its establishment. One example is his opposition to “Medicare for All” even in the face of the pandemic, where millions of workers have lost employer-provided health insurance because they have been laid off. He’s short on proposals concerning climate change. Etc.

This is the creep that Sanders now says his followers should vote for. A discussion has developed among them over this. An article in the April 19 New York Times was headlined, “The Army of Sanders Supporters Isn’t Ready to Stand Up for Biden”. The sub headline said, “Sanders’s primary voters say Biden doesn’t inspire them”.

The article quotes several Sanders supporters. Most say they will hold their nose and vote for Biden. Others will support a third party candidate. A few say they will not vote at all. In polls, 15 percent say they will vote for Trump.

“A challenge for Mr. Biden in the fall,” the article says, “is that even if he has the support of Sanders voters, many may not go out of their way to vote, either by applying for absentee ballots or by travelling home if they are students [there are restrictions on student voting where their schools are located].”

It also says “Younger voters, who overwhelmingly backed Mr. Sanders in this year’s primaries, said Mr. Biden seemed just like another politician with wishy-washy positions on climate change and healthcare.”

Another indication is after Sanders endorsed Biden, the national office of the Green Party was swamped with calls expressing interest in the Greens.

The Times article concluded, “Taken together, the [Sanders] voters doubts raised questions about how many would show up for Mr. Biden in November, including their likelihood to volunteer and organize for him, an important measure of enthusiasm.”

The Democrats need the youthful enthusiasm and organizing of the Sanders people to win in November, many in the pro-Democratic media fear. Will the Democrats look around for a more acceptable establishment candidate than Biden at the convention?

On the Republican side, there is unanimity around Trump. His response to the pandemic has weakened him. He at first pooh-poohed the danger. In the first 70 days after the virus reached U.S. shores, he did nothing to prepare and organize to fight against it, even as cases mushroomed and deaths mounted.

Up to this day, April 21, he has gone back and forth on proposals to shut down and quarantine, sometimes advocating that and other times he demanded such measures be halted and the economy be opened up. Right now most states are shut down, which he wants ended soon.

One thing has been consistent through his denials, evasions and lies, is his opposition to the federal government taking responsibility for providing the equipment for massive testing, the only way to begin to open the economy in a gradual way with the medical experts leading the way to guarantee that the virus has been contained so that the opening won’t lead to another mass outbreak. Right now, only about one percent of the population has been tested.

There is only one conclusion. He doesn’t want testing on a mass scale (which is what is required) because he doesn’t want the full extent of the pandemic to be known. That would get in the way of his quixotic drive to get the economy returned soon to what it was before the pandemic, so that his election prospects would be good. This is the madness of an autocratic narcissist, who claims he “has absolute power” and “can do whatever he wants”, and could lead to disaster.

He has also taken no responsibility for the federal government to make sure that there are adequate supplies of personal protective equipment for medical personnel, many of whom are contracting the virus and some have died.

Trump’s deliberate failure to deal adequately with the pandemic to further his own electoral prospects is causing a drop in his poll numbers. He and the Republicans are fighting back by charging that the real cause of the present situation, including in the economy, is the Chinese, the Democrats, the media, etc. and he has done everything “perfectly.”

This will go over with his hard core supporters, something like 30 percent of the population. It remains to be seen if it is successful with a broader section.

With Trump issuing contradictory things in his daily TV rants and tweets, and the governors of the states each saying what they want, there is no coherent message to the people on what to do from the governments. Polls show most people, about 80 percent, are wisely following the proposals of the medical experts.

With attention on the pandemic, Trump has stepped up his attack on environmental regulations. Right wingers in some states have declared that providing abortions is not an “essential” medical procedure and have banned them for the duration.

This is of a piece with autocrats in other countries who are using national emergencies because of the pandemic to further consolidate their power.

Barry Sheppard

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