Did you remember that there was a primary election going on? Because there was. And is. Only now it is over.

Senator Bernie Sanders, after a second primary campaign, and one in which he was only six short (very very long) weeks ago, the presumptive front runner. Since then, Sander's electoral fortunes have take a sharp turn, and it was all-but mathematically assured that former Vice-President Joe Biden would be the Democratic nominee. A last minute victory in Wisconsin would be the last attempt to prove that the great white hope of the "rural working class" would turn out for Sanders.

In the meantime, other events have eclipsed the electoral politics of the primary. Covid-19, a novel form of a common virus, has become a worldwide pandemic, and currently there are close to 400,000 cases in the United States, including over 2500 in Wisconsin. Many states with primaries since the last one have postponed their primaries. Wisconsin's governor attempted to do so, but was overruled by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court, in a series of moves whose cynicism is not overshadowed by the current predicament, but rather highlights it. People had to vote in-person, with the more urban and liberal areas of the state having a shortage of polling places. People standing in line to vote is a great way to spread Covid-19. And the election results, such as they were, were not reported, and might not be for a while.

People in my home state, Oregon, have been voting by mail for over 20 years now.

Despite not knowing the results, Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign, probably relating to both his series of defeats, and to the current dire situation in the United States.

Electoral politics, especially the technical and seemingly inconsequential process of primary voting, might not seem like it is of great importance right now. But the importance of making decisions, of people selecting leaders who can deal with problems, is how we avoid being in the situation where we are right now, where the country is in crisis because incompetent leaders learned to master the News Cycle and nothing else. Hopefully what is going on now will make people take electoral politics more seriously and not less seriously.