Joe Biden by Beatrice Gormley (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

charges against him—for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” If they do, the charges are sent to the Senate, which then holds a trial of the accused president. If the Senate votes—by a two-thirds supermajority—to convict, the president will be removed from office. This has never actually happened.

The president has been impeached only three times in US history. In 1868, Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate. Bill Clinton was likewise impeached but acquitted in 1999. In 1974, Richard Nixon was threatened with impeachment, but he resigned before charges could be brought against him.

The trouble with the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” is that it’s not very precise. It can be interpreted in different ways, so there is a temptation to interpret it against a political opponent, or for a political ally. But Donald Trump’s was the first totally partisan impeachment. No Republicans in the House voted to impeach on either of the two charges, “abuse of power” or “obstruction of Congress.” And in the Senate trial, every Republican except one voted to acquit on both charges.

Since Congress was so clearly divided along party lines, the impeachment process worsened the divisions in the country. It seemed possible that Donald Trump, in spite of the extreme dislike many Americans felt for him, would be reelected in November. His strongest point was the thriving US economy, although income inequality had increased.

Meanwhile, the Democratic primary elections began early in February 2020. Suddenly Joe Biden was running way behind, coming in fourth in the Iowa caucuses and then fifth in the New Hampshire election. The front-runner was now Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders was a year older than Biden, but many Democrats felt he was the best candidate to fight against racial injustice and economic inequality.

Back in the spring of 2019, a new criticism of Joe Biden had been brought up as part of the Me Too movement. The intention of this movement was to make visible and to stop the sexual harassment and assault of women by powerful men. Joe Biden’s style of interacting with everyone—not just women—had always been physically affectionate. His natural instinct was to like everyone, and to demonstrate how much he liked them by touching, hugging, and giving shoulder rubs.

Many people liked him for it, while others thought it was just Joe being Joe. But a number of women spoke up about feeling that Biden had invaded their personal space. In response, Biden apologized publicly for the times he’d made women uncomfortable.

In March 2020 the issue came up again. A woman who had worked for a short time in Senator Biden’s office accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1993. But other people who worked for Joe Biden during that time found the charge frankly unbelievable. And Biden denied it absolutely. After investigating the story, the major news media concluded there was little substance to it.

In the important South Carolina primary at the end of February, Biden’s lagging campaign got a big boost. He was endorsed by the influential congressman Jim Clyburn, and he won every county in the state. And on so-called Super Tuesday, March 3, when 1,344 electoral votes were at stake, Biden again won big. He went on to win eighteen of the next twenty-six Democratic primaries.

On April 8, Biden’s last rival, Bernie Sanders, dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden for president. On June 6, it became official: Joe Biden, with more than 1,991 delegates, was the presumptive Democratic nominee.

But back in March, the United States had been engulfed by a threat that drew Americans’ attention from the presidential race. A new virus, causing a disease called COVID-19, had arisen in China and quickly spread around the globe. It was a coronavirus, like the viruses that cause the common cold, but more infectious and much more deadly. There was no vaccine—and no cure.

Pandemics

An epidemic is an outbreak of disease that rapidly infects a large number of people in one country or region. A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads quickly through many countries and continents, even worldwide. One of the worst was the Spanish flu of 1918–19, an influenza pandemic that started toward the end of World War I. That highly contagious and often deadly disease infected one-third of the world’s population. In the United States, 675,000 people died.

Some serious infectious diseases, such as polio, have been controlled by vaccines, which protect people against infection. Other viruses can be treated with prescription medications to lessen the effects of the disease. But even without a vaccine or treatment, a pandemic can be controlled by preventing the disease’s spread in a combination of ways.

Keeping infected people away from healthy people is one important action. Hygiene, such as washing hands and sanitizing surfaces; social distancing, such as avoiding crowds or any close contact; and wearing face masks, to keep infectious droplets out of the air, are all ways to reduce the spread of some viruses.

Epidemiologists—public health professionals who study outbreaks of infectious diseases—warned that the government needed to act immediately, or COVID-19 could kill millions of Americans. Back in 2014, when the dangerous Ebola virus had arrived in the US, the Obama administration had successfully controlled the outbreak. But by 2020, the US was not prepared to fight an invading virus.

At first President Trump was distracted from this danger by his impeachment and by the following trial in the Senate, which ended only at the beginning of February. On February 29, the state of Washington reported the first US death from COVID-19. Trump dismissed the danger of the pandemic. He did bar travelers from China, but by that time, the virus was already established in the US and spreading by leaps and bounds.

By the end of March, the US had 160,000 reported cases of COVID-19, more than any other country in the world. The US death toll from the virus passed 3,000. Since the virus was usually spread by droplets in the air, experts said