How the Coronavirus Pandemic Influenced Decision 2020 & The Biden Campaign

INTRODUCTION

As with every Presidential Election year, the 2020 election and its surrounding politics dominated national conversation this year, generating a frenzy of media coverage on every action and reaction the Biden and Trump campaigns took since January. However, this has not been a normal year by any means. With the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 presidential campaign cycle took an unprecedented turn as the nation went on lockdown, the economy took a nosedive, and response efforts generating more polarization among the American electorate. Very quickly, it became apparent that this election was not just about the candidates and party platforms, but about what direction the country would take in recovering from this devastating pandemic and the deep-rooted, systemic issues it unearthed in our governmental and societal mindsets. As stated in my previous paper, the impact of COVID-19 on this election cannot be understated. Everything about our political process has changed as a result, the pandemic completely refocusing the nation’s attention on areas of concern that might not have taken such center stage during a normal election year; shaping the next four years of the Biden Administration and altering the way we analyze, conduct, and converse about modern American politics.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN ELECTIONS & PANDEMICS

It is easily forgotten that America has held elections without fail during times of war, disease, and uncertainty and that despite claims of unprecedented circumstances and novel conditions, this is not the first time that the United States has voted or conducted elections during a global pandemic. It won’t be the first time that such a public health crisis has altered our political processes as well. Entering into the 1918 midterm elections, Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic Party were fighting to maintain control of Congress amid the end of World War II and the beginnings of the Spanish Influenza Pandemic, the “most severe pandemic in recent history” caused by “an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin.”[1] Similar to the coronavirus pandemic, social distancing and quarantines were required, along with restrictions on social gatherings, rallies, and speeches that severely impacted the campaign season[2]; only, back then, there were no online alternatives available. “The campaign has been most unusual this year in that it has been one carried on principally through literature,” declared the Nov. 2, 1918, edition of Utah’s Deseret Evening News. Time further reports that states employed a large “corps of workers to distribute reading matter throughout the state on behalf of candidates” and in California, “letter-writing, advertising, and telephoning took place instead of speech-making.”

The influenza pandemic impacted voters depending on where they lived and how they were impacted by the virus outbreak. “Death rates in northeastern cities had spiked in late September and mid-October in 1918, and had sharply declined by Election Day on Nov. 5, while West Coast cities were in the throes of ongoing outbreaks,” reported Tom Ewing, a professor of history at Virginia Tech in an interview with Time[3]. However, unlike COVID-19, the pandemic did not take direct center stage in national dialogue, with Wilson never publicly addressing it and the federal government not expected to take significant action that would interfere with individual’s healthcare affairs.[4] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would not be established until 1946 under FDR[5], and systems like Medicare and Medicaid wouldn’t be in effect until the 1960s under LBJ,[6] allowing the government to leave managing the pandemic to individual state governments and legislatures. How officials handled the election amid the 1918 pandemic provided our national with a lesson and example of how to balance public health and safety with political participation: a lesson easily and most readily forgotten in contemporary society. The 1918 midterms were the first “masked elections” in American history, with places like San Francisco placing a heavy emphasis on mask wearing as people ventured outside to vote.[7] Without the option of widespread mail-in voting, smaller communities were especially hit hard by the pandemic after voting in person.[8] With the disruption of campaign tactics, the question of how to balance public safety with democracy, and an inactive government, it’s hard not to be cliché when comparing 2020 to 1918 by saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

COVID-19 AND THE YEAR 2020

Since he declared his intention to run for President, Donald Trump has dominated national conversation in the United States. From his campaign rallies, numerous scandals, unfiltered Twitter account, and his impeachment trial, Trump has the uncanny ability capturing national attention and driving the news cycle. However, since March, COVID-19 has taken center stage in American politics as systematic social justice issues, government mishandling, and societal polarization have been brought to light and exacerbated. As Time reported, “[Trump] has been displaced as the central character in his own campaign by a plague that answers to no calendar, ideology or political objective.”[9]

Unlike the Wilson Administration, the Trump Administration was expected to take action and provide direction in the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic; a task that reporter Bob Woodward found the Presidential Cabinet failed in doing. Through a series of interviews conducted from December of 2019 to July of this year, Woodward reports that Trump knew Covid-19 was deadlier than the flu before it hit the country but wanted to play down the crisis.[10] As of November 29, 2020, the United States has reported over 13.4 million cases of COVID-19, with over 266,000 dead. In the months leading up to Woodward’s breaking news, Trump had promised numerous times that the virus was under control, the pandemic would go away by April, that 99%” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless, and more false or misleading statements.[11] With more options available than in 1918, the American people found themselves facing a deadly pandemic as if they were living in the early 20th Century than in the 21st as federal and state governments provided contradictory forms of information and safety precautions and health officials and systems were ignored and overwhelmed as if they weren’t there.

As a historic number of Americans turned out to vote on Election Day, the United States saw a rise in COVID-19 cases[12], the deadly upward trend unmatched until this past Thanksgiving. With the pandemic looking to increase hospitalizations and deaths as the holiday season approaches in an approaching snowball effect, The Washington Post found that “it took only 10 days for the country to move from 9 million cases to 10 million cases on Monday, November 9th. By comparison, it took more than three months for the country to go from no cases to 1 million in late April.”[13] With good news hard to find as COVID cases continue to rise, for many, the 2020 Election became one of ‘life and death’ over ‘who do I agree with more?’, influencing how many voted on November 3rd.

COVID-19 & THE BIDEN CAMPAIGN

In order to fully realize the full impact of COVID-19 on this election, an in-depth analysis of both campaigns, their messaging, communication strategies, and their end successes and failures are required. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, Donald Trump had a strong chance of getting reelected, his unique ability to garner support while registering voters during his numerous campaign rallies unparalleled by Democratic challengers. The U.S. economy was going strong, Democrats were reluctantly settling for Biden, and support for the Republican candidate was resilient and every-growing with each scandal, rally, and tweet. However, as analyzed in my previous paper, the spreading of coronavirus and the havoc it’s wrecked on this country has made it so the end stage of Trump’s campaign, and the entirety of his presidency will forever be stained by COVID-19. As the American death toll rose and Election Day creeped ever closer, both Biden and Trump’s campaigns and messaging became dominated by the virus, altering the way they marketed themselves to their base voters and potential swing votes.

The Candidate: Joe Biden

Joe Biden’s victory against an incumbent Presidential candidate will mark a shift in the White House’s attitude in politics, but the question on every voter’s mind in the weeks leading up to November 3rd was how Joe Biden measured up to Trump and whether his character and leadership could lead the country towards recovery. Unlike Donald Trump, who has marketed himself as an outlier to the American political machine, Joe Biden is a career politician who has served as Vice President during the Obama Administration, was a six-term senator whose long career started in 1972 and has run for President twice in1998 and again in 2008.[14] With over half a century of experience in public service, Joe Biden has marketed himself as a seasoned Commander-in-Chief who can take the lead in a crisis like the pandemic and do so seasoned hand; this was done in direct contrast to the actions of Donald Trump, and probably would not have been as successful if the pandemic had not occurred or been mishandled. As a result of his character building, Biden has put himself “on the side of science,” promoting his reliance on scientists, healthcare workers, and other intelligentsia when formulating solutions for the pandemic and the economy. This has formed stronger bonds with his voter based and pushed away those who aren’t able to view the pandemic in the long term with the economy in disarray.

Now going to be the oldest president in American history at his inauguration in January, Biden’s time as Vice President has allowed him to claim many of the Obama Administration’s success and legacies as his own, including passage of the Affordable Care Act, as well as the stimulus package and reforms enacted in response to the financial crisis.[15] Simultaneously, this means that the negatives and failures of the Obama Administration are his as well, his lengthy tenure in the nation's capital giving critics ample material for attacks; this is seen through his siding with southern segregationists in opposing court-ordered school bussing to racially integrate public schools early in his senatorial career.[16] Biden is a political fixture in American politics and the Democratic Party, his association with Barack Obama appealing him to African American and other minority voters, his long-standing Washington credentials providing a contrast to Trump’s political “outsider” approach of leadership, and status as “Middle Class Joe” contributing to his electability as a candidate and success in the Democratic Primaries.

Biden was not the first choice of the Democratic Party as a Presidential Candidate. When candidates first declared their intentions to run on the Democratic ticket, the party was looking not at what the electorate wanted or desired—they were looking at who was electable and who could fulfill their goal of unseating Donald Trump.[17] FiveThrityEight found that a candidate’s electability was the determining factor in the primary vote, more so than where a candidate stood on policy issues or personal character.[18] However, as the factors for what made a candidate electable blurred, the Democratic Party honed in on a candidate it believed could defeat Donald Trump, forcing its voter base to settle for a candidate that did not necessarily represent their interests, but in their opinion, was better than the Republican alternative. This creates a problem further down the line in 2022 and 2024 as midterm and the next Presidential election come up as the Democratic Party and Joe Biden do not have a platform of supporters that matches the loyalty of Trump and the Republican Party.[19]

The Running Mate: Kamala Harris

Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris was a significant factor in his campaigns strategy to push voters towards the Democratic ticket. With her ascension to the Vice Presidency, Harris will be the first woman and woman of color to hold the position in U.S. history, a milestone that hits harder this year after the rise of social justice movements like Black Lives matter in the wake of social justice protests that continue to occur throughout the country. The New York Times put it best when they said, “Harris, 56, embodies the future of a country that is growing more racially diverse, even if the person voters picked for the top of the ticket is a 77-year-old white man.”[20] Harris has had previous historic firsts, becoming the first Black woman to serve as California’s attorney general, and only the second Black woman in the chamber’s history to be elected a United States senator; she also has made a name for herself in Washington with her “prosecutorial style” of questioning in senate hearings.[21]

While presenting herself as a diverse, novel candidate, Harris has had a hard time reconciling her time as California Attorney General with the new stance and morals of the Democratic Party and its voter base. The New York Times found that Harris “struggled to define her policy agenda, waffling on health care and even her own attack on Joe Biden’s record”[22] as her time as a prosecutor and Attorney General led to parents of habitually truant schoolchildren going to jail. However, Harris’ adaptable stance on ideology makes her an adequate foil to the Presidential seat; her biography is one of “solidarity and activism” with Harris fighting her entire political career to break glass ceilings and prevent herself from being defined and conformed into ideological boxes.[23] As the Biden campaign set out to show it accepts and promotes diversity, inclusion, and a new vision for America, Harris was chosen to not only win over votes but also to create a loyal base that rallies around its candidates in a similar manner to the Trump campaign.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Harris on social media and conservative news channels, calling her “the most liberal person in the US Senate” and a radical socialist among others. Many other critics take issue with Harris’ inconsistency, especially during her time running for President. In an interview with The Guardian, Mary Kay Henry, who heads the influential Service Employees International Union found that Harris “was consistently a champion of what workers were demanding”[24] As Vice President, it will be hard to predict Harris’ stance on issues due to her inconsistency and fluid ideology: she is to the right of the Democratic party on Israel, but to the left when it comes to the climate crisis; Harris supports the green new deal and will most likely open and promote more discussion about systemic racism, but it is unclear as to what she will do to solve and dismantle the issue.[25] Whatever happens during the Biden administration, any action Harris makes will be historic in nature and carefully scrutinized.

The Campaign Message

“A Presidency for All Americans.” “The Fight for the Soul of the Nation.” Poetic slogans, but hardly as well-known or marketable as Trump’s “Make America Great Again.” As soon as one thinks of Trump or sees his signs, the President’s four-word slogan instantly comes to mind; Biden’s, and by extension, the Democratic Party’s slogan and campaign message is a bit harder to recall and even harder to market. So how did Biden manage to win over so many voters with a seemingly unmarketable campaign message? The Biden Campaign website lists

“A Presidency for All Americans” and “The Fight for the Soul of the Nation” as its two main campaign messages it was trying to impart on voters, but the unspoken, more appealing slogan that won Biden the presidency was not these statements above, it was this: “Not Donald Trump.”

Even without the outbreak of COVID-19, the most probable campaign message of the Democratic Party and any candidate they voted to win the primaries would have most likely run under the message of “Not Donald Trump.” Scandals and unsolicited tweets follow the President around the clock, his Twitter account running like his own private 24/7 news channel. Trump’s masterful ability to become the center of national attention and conversation through his numerous scandals, unfiltered comments, and unapologetic actions has allowed him to dominate the news cycle and political conversation for the past four years. Yet despite his “unpresidential actions,” Trump has retained and built upon his loyal support base, and without the pandemic, it was unlikely a Democratic candidate would have been able to unseat him from the Presidency.

The pandemic and the Trump Administration’s mishandling of it allowed the Biden campaign to market Joe Biden as the perfect foil to Trump’s unpredictable and turbulent leadership style, his mishandling and down-playing of the deadliness of the virus playing a significant role in Joe Biden winning the title of President-Elect. Biden has had a consistent campaign message since he officially launched his campaign last year, the key takeaway being that he was running to restore human decency and character to the White House while “rescuing the country from a President who threatened American values.”[26] A simple message focusing on unity and character, empathy and bipartisanship, Biden was able to create a message that many saw as a much-needed healing balm in light of this past year’s civil and social unrest, hyper polarization, and widespread, deadly plague. NPR’s Asma Khalid analyzed Biden’s campaign message, saying “Joe Biden entered this presidential race relatively well-known and well-liked, thought to have the best shot at defeating Donald Trump in a general election. Still, he faced plenty of skeptics along the way. He spoke of empathy and bipartisanship at a moment when many Democrats were demoralized, and many Republicans were angry.”[27]However, while Biden was able to secure himself as the President-Elect, there were many times where his message seemed out of touch; Scott Detrow argues that “while that message might seem to resonate with a broad cross-section of voters now amid racial reckonings, a global pandemic and an economic recession, there were many moments during the primaries where it seemed out of step. For most of 2019, the Democratic primary seemed like a race to the left. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren set the pace, calling for policies like universal, government-run health care. Even Biden's now running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, criticized Biden for rejecting the idea of a single-payer system.”[28]

Without the pandemic, Biden’s campaign would have been seen as out of touch in a time where Democrats were focused on defeating Donald Trump and things like “unity and character” pushed aside for electability and ability to pose a challenge to the incumbent President. Khalid argues that “[W]ith the uncertainty of COVID-19, Biden's message of a return to normalcy had a new resonance,” and as the death toll steadily continued to rise with no practical attempt to curb the curve from the White House, Biden’s campaign message spoke then directly to people’s fears.[29]With the death of George Floyd, denunciations of white supremacy, cries and protests for social justice, the mishandling and deceit from the White House concerning the pandemic response, and the hyper polarization of the American electorate, Biden’s unlikely message became a consistent, appealing message based on the wants and desires of the American people to embrace or reject change. The language of Biden’s campaign message put power back into the hands of a American people who were struggling under the weight of the pandemic weary from political partisanship, giving them a feeling of regaining power and doing action to help fix a broken, sick, and divided nation.

COVID -19 & DONALD TRUMP

While Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic was a major boon for the Biden campaign, Trump’s innate ability to drive the news cycle and remain the topic of national conversation remained fully functional and even more potent in the last months of campaign season. As scandal after scandal broke, from his behavior in the first Presidential debate to the breaking of the Woodward Tapes and more, Trump has shown that he knows how to act on television to get the most news coverage, positive or negative. As discussed in class, Trump is a showman and that has been shown through his leadership in the past four years. His impeachment trial became another plot to discredit and overthrow him, negative media attention became “fake news,” and his campaign rallies became voter registration machines, adding voters to the Republican ballot in droves. Despite his attempts to downplay the virus, ridicule state governors who took a harder stance on COVID precautions, and his continuance in holding campaign rallies, which led to more than 30,000 coronavirus cases by Election Day,[30] Trump was able to appeal to working-class, low-income voters across racial and ethnic lines, preventing the Democratic Party from flipping the Senate and producing a “blue wave” on November 3rd. Despite not winning a second term, the legacy of Donald Trump will continue to have an influence on the way we cover our political process, view our representatives, and interact with the highest offices in our government. The legacy and consequences of a Trump Administration have yet to be seen fully, but there is little doubt that in the upcoming years, we’ll see their impact; already faith in the Presidential Office and the leader, our democratic process, and our political leaders have been shaken and lost through the President’s actions and words, leading many to watch the future critically.

THE MAIL-IN BALLOT

As analyzed in my previous paper, COVID-19 also saw not just the fall of Donald Trump, but the rise of mail-in voting in states where the concept was previously unheard of. While slowly creeping to popularity, the pandemic propelled the mail-in ballot to the forefront of national attention, bringing up the question of how this historic number of mail-in votes will affect our elections in the future. Mail-in ballots accounted for just over half of this year’s primary votes in 37 states, including Washington D.C., with several states reporting seeing an unprecedented leap in absentee and vote-by-mail applications and ballot returns.[31] This fundamental shift in the way Americans voted marks a significant change in the American political process while simultaneously revealing decencies and inequalities in our voting system that have many questioning the institution.

Inequalities in Our Constituencies

The United States has stood out among Western nations for its high levels of economic and racial inequalities,[32] effecting how different constituencies participate in American elections at all levels of government. It has been theorized that rising inequalities would motivate those disadvantaged to exercise their political rights in higher numbers in order to seek economic redistribution, however, the United States has been cited as an outlier to this theory, with very low voter turnout occurring despite high efforts of political mobilization.[33] Soss and Lawrence found in their research on the subject that “Even in the 2008 election, despite an extensive mobilization effort by the campaign of Barack Obama and a financial crisis that appeared to threaten Depression-era economic conditions, turnout among the voting-eligible population was only moderately higher than in the 2004 election, and more than 60 percent of voters continued to come from families above the annual median household income of $50,000.”[34]

The pandemic had a significant effect on mail-in voting patterns as more American citizens were offered an alternative to absentee ballots and in-person voting, with the average share of votes rising to historic numbers this election. COVID-19 placed almost every American in the same boat with the implementation of public health guidelines and the emphasis on social distancing; however, millions of Americans lost their jobs during the pandemic and without unemployment benefits.[35] As Election Day creeped closer, disparities in income and healthcare were shown in the ability to vote as “almost every study ever done on inequality and voting shows that economic deprivation and bad health reduce voter participation—and thus political power.”[36] With no easy solutions available, mail-in voting became a viable alternative to in-person voting, simultaneously allowing Americans to social distance and prevent the spread of the virus while giving disadvantaged Americans easier access to voting.

Political scientist Elmer E. Schattschneider argues that economic inequality is a form of voter suppression because economic inequality allowed the affluent and wealthy to set the terms of the debate and the outcomes that serve their interests; if the political system seemed to work mainly for their benefit, then poor and working-class people had less incentive to participate, and there was less incentive to make access to voting centers and polls easier and more numerous, resulting in lower turnout rates in all levels of elections.[37] By implementing and framing mail-in voting around the pandemic, the Biden campaign was successfully able to promote a larger turnout of votes alongside traditional political mobilization methods, creating the “Red Mirage” effect we saw on Election Day and the slow turn of the tide as more mail-in votes favored the Democratic ticket than the Republicans.

The 2020 Election and the pandemic have shown there is a wide gap between how Democrats and Republicans vote, with Democrats returning nearly three times as many mail-in ballots in battleground states like Pennslyvania.[38] In PA alone, more than “81 percent of state voters who were sent those ballots have returned them”, with “more than 1.6 million of those ballots were from registered Democrats, 586,000 were from Republicans, and 278,000 were from independents or third-party voters.”[39] However, with the rise in mail-in and absentee voting from minority voters, CBS finds that “absentee ballots submitted by Latinos and African Americans in the state are three times more likely to be turned away than those from White voters.”[40] Long lines and the pandemic hanging over the election makes getting out to the polls and voting correctly difficult for non-white constituents—especially those living in suburban areas outside of metropolitan areas. This comes despite the fact that motivation for voters to get out and cast their ballots are higher. The result: the pandemic has deeply embittered the American electorate, resulted in the highest voter turnout rate in U.S. history, and once again brought to light

DECISION 2020

In the end, Biden’s campaign strategy of framing his campaign narrative around COVID-19 responsibility paid off—he was elected as the 47th President of the United States, fulfilling his goal of unseating Donald Trump. After four years of Donald Trump, Americans not a part of Trump’s loyal supporters began to crave a typical, predictable politician in office, one that did not come with outrageous tweets, an unnormal number of scandals, and with experience to lead the nation through the pandemic. Biden’s campaign was remarkably disciplined in its messaging and communications outreach strategies, allowing Biden to close out the end of his campaign with the same message he began with. Following Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic response and his attempt to downplay COVID-19’s severity to the American people, the Biden campaign was able to make considerable ground in convincing voters that this seventy-eight-year-old career politician was the better choice for the Presidency.

Successes

COVID-19 severely changed the way the American people voted, and Biden was able to successfully capitalize on that through his emphasis on mail-in voting. Unlink the midterms in 1918, there were alternatives to in-person voting; the Biden campaign quickly homed in on these alternatives and marketed them out to voters’ months before Election Day in a continuous barrage of grassroots campaigning techniques, campaign ads, campaign rallies, and the use of celebrity and public figure platforms. One of the biggest success of the Biden campaign was its ability to educate the American electorate on the voting process—particularly galvanizing first-time voters and Gen Z’s who were new to the political process. The Biden campaign also payed particular attention to digital platforms beyond just social media marketing, with chief mobilization officer Patrick Stevenson commenting that while there was never a doubt that much of the 2020 campaign was going to be focused on digital, without in-person rallies and grassroots efforts, the pandemic has made these platforms even more of a priority.[41] The Biden campaign was then able to successfully use these platforms and techniques in accordance to public safety guidelines to market Biden as the safter, more viable choice to guide the nation through the pandemic and the economic crisis in the final days leading up to Decision 2020.

Failures

However, this campaign strategy also backfired in ways Biden and the Democratic Party weren’t anticipating on November 3rd and the days following. In marketing Joe Biden as aligned with scientists and health officials who advocate for stricter COVID-19 guidelines and shutdowns, Biden was unable to sway a good chunk of independents, undecided voters, and moderates who refuse to or unable to view the pandemic in the long-term. Using Pennsylvania as an example, many cities who are blue collar, lower middle- class majority with strong familial ties and an abundance of small business who have been around since before World War II find harsher public safety guidelines like prolonged shut- downs as deferential to their business and form of income. According to the Census Bureau, over 81 percent of Pennsylvanians identify as white; the median yearly household income of PA was also only $54,445 in 2014.[42] The majority of those living in Pittsburgh city proper and the surrounding suburbs, excluding neighborhoods like Fox Chapel and North Allegheny live paycheck to paycheck. This makes long restaurant and bar shutdowns, limited capacities, and other restrictive guidelines placed on small businesses not feasible for owners and workers to follow even if they wished to comply. This once again shows how this election not only came down between the characters of each candidate but the platforms they represented as well: a stricter adoption of public safety guidelines versus an open economy to help small business stay afloat.

The Biden campaign was unprepared for such a divide in voter influence as the “Blue Wave” did not occur and Biden just barely rebuilt the blue wall by swinging Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania blue. The Biden Administration must not also consider these factors in the transition between administrations and in the next four years of its Presidency as it attempts to repair the divided American electorate while dragging the country out of its economic crisis and bringing the COVID curve down with a vaccine. All of these factors that the Biden campaign framed itself on will be heavily scrutinized by both Democrats and Republicans and could have a significant impact on the upcoming midterm elections and even the 2024 Presidential Election, where many anticipate Vice President Harris to run for office herself.

CONCLUSION

COVID-19 has shed a light on the turbulent troubles that face our nation and political processes, a light that without which, the Biden campaign would have been hard pressed to win the Presidency. It was COVID-19 that provided the final push for Americans to submit their ballots by that shoved underlying trends of racial and economic inequality, political polarization, and the question of public health and safety into the forefront of American politics, American society, and American attitudes. The pandemic shaped the way the Biden campaign framed and implemented its communications agendas and marketing strategies, allowing Biden’s message of fighting to regain the “The Soul of America” to be realized in quantifiable evidence as riots and police brutality continued, COVID cases and deaths continued to rise, and the economy continued to fall. COVID-19 was the major determining factor of this election, and without the outbreak of the pandemic, it is fully plausible that the United States would be facing another four years of a Trump Administration over a newly elected Biden Administration. Coronavirus loomed over every part of this year’s election, leaving a permanent mark on our political processes and how Americans view their right to vote; one can only guess how the ongoing pandemic will continue to affect our democracy in the months ahead as Americans wait anxiously for a vaccine and a return to normalcy.

[1] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “History of 1918 Flu Pandemic,” March 21, 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm. [2] Waxman, Olivia B. “How Does a Pandemic Shape an Election? A Lesson From 1918.” Time. Time, October 16, 2020. https://time.com/5899888/election-1918-flu/. [3] Waxman, 2020 [4] Waxman, 2020 [5] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Our History - Our Story.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, December 4, 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/index.html. [6] Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “History.” CMS, January 1, 2020. https://www.cms.gov/About-CMS/Agency-Information/History. [7] Clark, Dartunorro. “America Pulled off an Election during the Spanish Flu, but Not without Paying a Price.” NBCNews.com. NBCUniversal News Group, June 1, 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/america-pulled-election-during-spanish-flu-not-without-paying-price-n1218286. [8] Clark, 2020. [9] Ball, Molly. “How COVID-19 Changed Everything About the 2020 Election.” Time. Time, August 6, 2020. https://time.com/5876599/election-2020-coronavirus/. [10] BBC Staff. “Trump Deliberately Played down Virus, Woodward Book Says.” BBC News. BBC, September 10, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54094559. [11]Paz, Christian. “All the President's Lies About the Coronavirus.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, November 2, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/. [12] Barnes, Robert. “Record-Breaking Wave of Coronavirus Cases Continues to Sweep the Nation.” The Washington Post. WP Company, November 9, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/record-breaking-wave-of-coronavirus-cases-continues-to-sweep-the-nation/2020/11/08/4d2821e4-21ee-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html. [13] Barnes, 2020. [14] Glueck, Katie. “Joe Biden: Who He Is and What He Stands For.” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 10, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/elections/joe-biden.html. [15] BBC Staff. “Joe Biden Profile: Third White House Run Lucky for 'Middle Class Joe'.” BBC News. BBC, November 7, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51682000. [16] BBC Staff, 2020. [17] Rakich, Nathaniel. “Democrats Think Biden Is Electable, But He's Not Everyone's First Choice.” FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, April 25, 2019. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-think-biden-is-electable-but-hes-not-everyones-first-choice/. [18] Rakich, 2019. [19] BBC Staff, 2020. 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