The notion that governors are delaying primaries to hurt the Democratic Party is insane bullshit.

[Drunken Irishman]

13. I'm embarrassed too.

I'm embarrassed that some don't see the dangerous precedent this is setting. For the first time in our country's history, we're establishing parameters on when it's okay to delay an election.

Ohio is the worst of the lot because they're doing it at literally the last hour and this might be the best time to actually hold an election as things are going to get considerably worse between now and the potential Democratic Convention.

Here's a reality that you haven't mentioned:

Because we've established this idea that postponing an election is perfectly reasonable, what happens if, in June, we're worse overall than we are today? What if in June, we're seeing mandatory quarantines because things have progressively gotten worse? In Italy, mail delivery has been suspended - you can't send or receive mail. That could even impact mail-in ballots.

We've already set the precedent that an election is expendable. That has been established with these moves. That is not up for debate anymore.

So, let's assume for this argument that things aren't better in June. Maybe they're worse. Everything has pretty much shut down. Now these postponed primaries are canceled.

The DNC has a tough choice on its hands. Their convention may be in a month, which likely means, in this scenario, it's not going to happen live - they'll probably have to do a virtual convention. But now there's a big problem: no candidate has a majority of delegates. No candidate has anywhere near a majority of delegates. Here's a more problematic issue: after today, and counting Ohio, there's still HALF the primary process left to play out. Now imagine not being able to cast any votes for those primaries. Again, we've already established it's perfectly reasonable to postpone an election. That's the precedent set with these moves.

July rolls around with Biden at 1,200 delegates and Bernie at 900 delegates. That puts Biden well short of the majority of delegates. And that also means there's over 1,600+ delegates potentially left on the board due to no primaries.

How do you propose the Democrats choose their nominee in that scenario?

Ideally, it'd be Biden because Biden is the delegate leader. But Bernie's argument absolutely will be that nearly half the primary voters, and more delegates than either have won, never cast their vote. What incentive does he have to drop out and support Biden? Do you not see how that scenario could potentially plant the seeds of discord if the party turned around, and in an emergency session, changed the rules to divvy up the outstanding delegates based on, I guess, popular vote at the time?

It'd be a nightmare. Bernie supporters would cry that the establishment picked Biden without anywhere near a majority of the vote.

And they'd have a compelling case since those states technically didn't vote. Sure, we could assume, based on polls, that Biden would have won big - but that's assumption and the assumption a week before South Carolina was that Biden would be trounced on Super Tuesday.

That is exactly what Trump wants. He wants the Democrats to have as much disunity as possible coming out of their convention and the best way for that to happen is to not have a primary process.

With Ohio deferring its election until later, it raises the probability that this scenario becomes more possible. Is it likely? I do not know. The concern is that coming out of Super Tuesday, I doubt ANYONE would have expected this. Two or three weeks from now? It might be way worse than it already is and we're looking at no election between now and November.

That's not going to help the Democratic Party.

However, had Ohio held its elections today, and let their people vote (they're concerned - but not concerned enough to close the grocery stores or factories), it could have offered Bernie the knockout I think we needed to avoid that scenario above.

But now I'm not so sure. Maybe Bernie getting killed in Florida, Arizona and Illinois does just that - but if it doesn't? If he stays in? We're going to be picking a nominee, I'm afraid, without half the party voting. And that's a recipe for disaster in November.