Back to politics as baseball: Outside from Bernie people who think their influence is larger than it was. Biden odds seem to be kind of based on your demographics as anything else: a lot of people in blue-state urban areas seem to still think he’s going to win, a lot of people in red-state urban areas (which can be just as liberal) think he is likely to lose. Objectively, it’s a wash: Biden does complicate Trump’s map uniquely, but Biden still isn’t doing as well as you think and while progressives seem to think the average person blames Trump for the pandemic–the average apolitical voter seems to see it as natural disaster and the average conservative voter as maybe China’s fault. This does mitigate against the effect of a massive recession from an external shock. Incumbency advantage in the US is also extremely high even in periods of low approval ratings. I suppose that is why Biden polls marginally better than Trump but prediction markets give Trump a slight edge.
Notice in both scenarios the popular vote or a general mandate isn’t even in the picture. Voter turn-out is likely to be low in November due to what is being predicted as a possible second wave of the pandemic. Also given who actually follows social distancing guidelines, this probably helps the GOP in general. While people voting against Trump will be high amongst Dems, people truly voting for Biden as a positive motivator will be low. We know this because if it were not the case: there would not have been so many challenges for so long. This has historically been a deal-breaker for the establishment choice of Democrat candidates regardless of mid-term. I am not calling this one, but I am urging people to really look at the game being played.
A lot of radicals really mistook their endorsement of Sanders and grow of faith for Sanders among themselves as the growth of faith for Sanders in the general. This was a mistake and Sanders had less of the vote than he did in 2016 despite more media organs and clearer early victories than before. There were also more splits amongst moderates.
Since 2000, so most of my adult life, American politics seems to be about how tribes of the commentariat can delude themselves. Maybe it has been than way since JFK, who knows.
Symptomatic Commentary 