The 2020 Primary Elections have been interesting. For anyone looking back at these primaries, they can see an obvious split between the pre-lockdown and post-lockdown electorate. More people have access to absentee or mail-in voting due to Coronavirus. Kentucky is on track to having its highest voter turn out in over ten years. Most exact numbers will not be known for days due to the nature of mail-in voting.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has clinched the Democratic Nomination for President. If this were a regular election year we would be waiting until the Democratic Convention to hear who Biden has picked for his Vice President. I do not think we will be left waiting until August 17th for that information, but who knows.
In any other election season, it would be a straight forward fight between an incumbent Republican president and his Democratic opponent. But 2020 has not been a normal year. The first great issue to be dealt with in 2020 is the Coronavirus, upending the economy and regular social structures in the United States. The economy is not going to recover for a while. My husband works for a school district and they haven’t decided what school will look like next year. If school doesn’t start up again in the fall as normal, the economic decision for parents with primary school-aged children to work or not work will hinder the economy.
The second issue that I hope will stay an issue into the general election is the race reckoning that the United States has been going through over the last month. If this movement can stay strong, and active there is real power to elect different people into state, local, and federal positions that can help change things. I know I am just learning what it means to be anti-racist. But pushing out racist officials out of power is one step that must be taken, and we can’t allow the 24-hour news cycle to forget what the protests of the summer of 2020 were about.
So the only result so far for the 2020 primaries is that Joe Biden will be facing Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election. The House of Representatives is always up for grabs. Some political commentators believe that the Senate may be up for grabs, due to how some senators have felt with impeachment, Coronavirus, and the Black Lives Matter Movement. Delaware and New Jersey have their primary elections on July the 7th and Louisiana will have their primary on July the 11th. I wouldn’t imagine that we will have the final result for anything until early August, but I will keep you posted.
