On Monday, New York’s Board of Elections held a vote to cancel the planned closed primary, which was originally scheduled to vote April 28 but got postponed to June 23 because of the Coronavirus pandemic is effectively becoming the first state to cancel its primary. No word on whether it will be rescheduled in time before August’s Democratic Convention.
Apparently that has made Bernie Sanders supported a little infuriated by the move, despite the obvious fact that Sanders withdrew from the race three weeks ago. Adding salt to the wound is the fact that New York has removed his name from the ballot. The only name now appearing is Joseph Biden.
Jeff Weaver, a senior advisor to Bernie’s 2020 campaign, disapproves of the move and is calling on the DNC to reverse it’s decision, suggesting that the move is “a blog to American democracy”, adding that:
"No one asked New York to cancel the election, The DNC didn’t request it.
The Biden campaign didn’t request it. And our campaign communicated that
we wanted to remain on the ballot…Given that the primary is months away,
the proper response must be to make the election safe – such as going to all
vote by mail – rather than to eliminating people’s right to vote completely."[1]
He wasn’t the only one.
An organizing group known as Our Revolution issued a series of tweets after the fact, some of which I screen grabbed and will add now. Basically these series of tweets suggest that because there will be no primary, there will be a challenge to New York’s delegates at the convention in August.
The first one was done seven hours ago[2], expressing shock and disdain over the fact that:
The next tweet came an hour later, stating that “New Yorkers should be pissed. They may not get credentialed at the convention,” read a tweet by the group, and going on to add that: “Suppressing the Sanders vote [in New York] will again lead attacks on the Party across the nation and harm the volunteer effort that our group and others are building for Joe Biden.”
The third tweet was almost like a follow-up/add on to the second tweet (which was broken up by other tweets revolving around corporate interests) three hours later in which they quoted the group’s chairperson, Larry Cohen. Cohen’s quote is also seen as a continuation of what he said earlier, so I’m assuming this is either said before the word "Supression" or after "Joe Biden"[4].
On the other end of the spectrum, you get a different response. Democratic Commissioner Douglas Kellner, who voted Monday in favor of cancelling the race, said it was ”a very difficult decision." but it ultimately boiled down to an "unnecessary and frivolous" in the age of a COVID-19 environment.[1]
One of the things Sanders said was that he would continue to amass delegates, a move widely viewed as a way to have increased leverage in crafting the party platform. He ended up endorsing Biden a few days later.
So the question now becomes: is the whole thing non-chalant at this point?
Don’t get me wrong, I do like both candidates and their respected positions, but this to me is a different story than four years ago when Sanders stayed in the race all the way until the end with the last presidential contest. He ended up not winning the ticket, but he certainly did a hell of a lot better than I thought he would. This time, he dropped out after a handful of contests (and a strong start).
With New York's contest being downright cancelled, it would seem that Biden basically won by default and that he would pick up the state’s 274 pledged delegates (out of a total 320). If that’s the case, then the delegate count increases Biden’s lead from 1,305 to a whopping 1,579.
I guess there may be some good news however, and we’ll see if it holds true, in that primary polls will continue to take place in 20 counties that have no other contests scheduled on June 23. We’ll see what happens.
As Rachel Maddow says on her nightly show, watch this space.
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