How the coronavirus pandemic will affect the U.S. election Welcome to the Maclean's Politics Insider: America 2020, launched for readers who crave U.S. political news during primary season. If you want to receive this new newsletter, take no action, it will arrive in your inbox every weekday at noon. If you'd rather not receive it, please unsubscribe here. Gabbard ends campaign, endorses Biden: It wasn't surprising that Hawaii Congressional Representative Tulsi Gabbard chose to end her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday. The surprise lay in her decision to endorse Joe Biden. Gabbard had supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, and was known as a very unconventional Democrat whose opinions were a mix of left-wing and right-wing positions; her attitude toward Russia caused Hillary Clinton to declare that the Russians were "grooming her to be the third-party candidate." But Gabbard proved to be a reliable Democrat in the end, endorsing the presumptive nominee and announcing that while she doesn't agree with Biden on everything, "I know that he has a good heart." How the pandemic helps Biden: It may seem in bad taste to say that the COVID-19 pandemic is good for a candidate, but that's what Politico declared in an article on Joe Biden's chances. The article explains that Donald Trump's campaign had been gearing up to use its massive campaign war chest to hurt Biden's image with an early barrage of negative ads, mimicking the strategy Barack Obama used when Mitt Romney became his likely opponent in 2012. Now there's no time for that, and Biden "is free to present himself as a steady leader amid a national crisis and to regroup for the general election." Sanders thinks he can win New York?: Why did Bernie Sanders stay so long in a race few people thought he can win? Reportedly, some of his aides were encouraging him to stay in until April 28, when New York was scheduled to hold its primary (though that may change), thinking that "he would have a good shot in the Empire State." Michael Tomasky in the New York Times argues that this thinking is probably wrong, pointing out that in the past, "the establishment candidate won, and it wasn't particularly close" when an establishment Democrat and an insurgent squared off in New York. How COVID may change elections: As it starts to sink in that COVID-19 is a long-term pandemic, it becomes clear that it might affect the whole election season—even the general election date of November 3, 2020 might be too early to hold high-turnout elections across the U.S. ProPublica talked to an election-law expert, Rick Hasen, about how a pandemic might affect elections and, in particular, how older voters might in effect be disenfranchised in states that don't offer a vote-by-mail option. Since there's no time to actually move to a vote-by-mail system before November, he recommends expanding existing systems for absentee balloting: I’m not saying we should have only vote-by-mail. I think that would be extremely difficult to do. It took the states that have moved in that direction years to get their systems in place. What I’m suggesting is that voters have the option of voting by absentee ballot. I think that is something that is doable so long as there’s enough planning and resources and we start thinking about it now. U.S. Senators sold stock before COVID hit: ProPublica also revealed that U.S. Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, sold off a great deal of stock on February 13, just before COVID-19 caused the U.S. stock market to tumble. Burr is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which receives briefings on upcoming threats, including public health threats, and two weeks later, he was caught on tape telling a private gathering that the virus was going to be much more dangerous than the general public realized at the time. Another Senator, Georgia Republican Kelly Loeffler, also sold millions in stock after being part of a private January briefing on the dangers of the virus. — Jaime Weinman | 