I get it, I'm not a fan of Biden. I think he's worthless, but a lot of Trump supporters STILL seem to think that Trump won the election and Biden stole it. They believe this on the basis of mail in voting and random claims of stuffed ballot boxes. The election was intensely scrutinized, and despite tons of claims, none of them really panned out. Biden won, legitimately. Deal with it.
Look, I understand statistics, and I covered that election. I had it basically at a 8:1 (88.5% vs 11.5%) chance that Biden would win. Biden was up 6.5% in the popular vote, and around 5% in the electoral college. If the statistics were correct, Trump's chance was very low. And Trump grossly overperformed as is. He overperformed about 4 points in the electoral college, flipping North Carolina, Maine CD2, and Florida, as well as winning every state I called him to win. And he won some of those states by a large margin. And even the states Biden won, like Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Nevada, Biden won them by a MUCH smaller margin than I anticipated. I expected a blowout. Instead Biden barely won.
But...he did win. These results should not be surprising. if anything was the surprise, it was that Trump repeated his 2016 success and overperformed by as much as he did. There were a few days there where it looked like Trump might win a second term. Of course, the mail in votes being counted late contributed to this early "red shift". Trumpers showed up in person, unafraid of catching coronavirus, while Biden supporters mailed their stuff in, because they actually, ya know, listen to science and stuff.
Speaking of that, that's really what this myth that Biden stole the election comes down to. A refusal to accept reality, and to continue getting high off of Trump's own farts. Telling each other reassuring lies that they really won, but that the election was stolen.
It wasn't. The votes were legit, and the people had spoken. You might not like the results, but you can't deny reality.
And before anyone thinks I'm a dem partisan (I'm not, read the blog), I called out Clinton in 2016 when she lost too. She was salty, she deflected blame, blamed Russia, tried to cast a shadow of doubt over Trump's candidacy. But you know what? She lost. And it wasn't just because of Russia. It was mainly because she pissed people off in the rust belt. I covered that election too. While Hillary had a strong showing for much of election season, she did have a couple times where her lead was called into question, and she also suffered from the unfortunate fact that as the last minute voters made up their mind, they liked Trump. Now, you could technically blame Russia and say if they didn't post FB ads or whatever, she would win, but let's face it, the margins were so narrow almost anything could be blamed, and honestly, I think her pissing off rust belt voters was more a Hillary problem than a Russia problem. Had she actually been a decent candidate, that 0.1% of Russian influence wouldn't have mattered much. And the fact that 2020 repeated the same overperformance of Trump is really indicative of...people liking Trump.
Anyway, to break down the stats, Hillary had roughly a 56% chance of winning in my book on election day. That's literally down to a coin flip almost. And all of the results were within the margin of error. Trump just grossly overperformed in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And even in states I had in the Trump column like Ohio and Iowa, Trump overperformed. Hell, Trump almost won MINNESOTA in 2016. Ya know, the state not even Reagan won in his 1984 landslide.
Hillary screwed up too. And the election results were legit there, and I was calling that while all the pink hat wearers were chanting "not my president" and making morons out of themselves on inauguration day. To be fair, Trump one upped them on that one, committing a failed insurrection on the capitol on Jan 6th last year, the anniversary of which is why I'm writing this, but still.
The point is, our elections are legitimate. You can complain about a bunch of different factors with them. The two party system, the closed primary system, the effects of money on politics, blah blah blah. Even interference by foreign countries at times. But, let's face it. When the votes are cast, the results are what they are. And you have to accept that. Criticize the system and push for reforms if you think something was off about the process of getting to the results (I have my own complaints as you all know), but the results were legit. Deal with it. Live with it. It's part of what living in a democracy is all about.
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