Joe Biden Against Canceling Democrat Convention Despite Coronavirus Pandemic

Appearing Tuesday on CNN’s The Lead, 2020 White House candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden argued that July’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee should still take place despite the coronavirus epidemic.

A partial transcript is as follows: 

JAKE TAPPER: Given the coronavirus pandemic, do you think the Democratic National Committee should call off the planned in-person Democratic convention this summer?

JOE BIDEN: No, I don’t think so. I think we ought to be able to conduct our Democratic processes as well as deal with this issue. But look, that decision we made as the state of the nation at the moment. But I don’t think it should be called off, and I don’t think we should call off any of the elections. I think we just have to move forward. We may have to use the different means and methods.

There’s an awful lot of direct mail voting now going on, which may be one of the answers. But, I think it depends on the circumstances that exist. In the middle of the Civil War, we had an election and a virus and in the teens we had the election, in the middle of World War II we had an election. We can’t let the Democratic process be interrupted by the process of dealing with this virus. We can do both.