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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast. My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of

the Spectator and the editor of its US edition. We thought that 2020 was going to be all about the presidential election,

but now it will forever be the year of the pandemic.

So instead, Americano is going to look at how COVID-19 is transforming the United States and its politics.

There's a lot to talk about, perhaps even more so than before.

So please keep tuning in.

I'm joined today by Kevin Gutzman, who is Professor of History at Western Connecticut State

University. And we're going to be asking, could the 2020 presidential election be postponed?

Now, Kevin, there's been a fair bit of chatter about this. Usually, the press says

the answer is no. The election probably won't be postponed. But nonetheless, you see certain

commentators suggesting, and even Joe Biden himself suggesting that Donald Trump is going to, by hook or

by crook, find a way to postpone this election because he's so

frightened about losing it. What do you say when Joe Biden says something like that?

Well, there are a couple of hard deadlines or dates that are set either in statute or in the

Constitution. The U.S. Constitution says that the new president will be

inaugurated on January 20th of 2021. And we've had for over a century now a common date for

the popular elections across the country by which state electors are allocated.

...