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Just before Trump was elected, Scott wrote a great piece called Tuesday shouldn't change the narrative. In it he talks about how the race between Trump and Hillary was very close, close enough that random fluctuations in opinion or random events like the weather could be the deciding factor in the race. He argues that people shouldn't change their worldview based on whatever the outcome is. I believe I see so many people falling into this trap though. It didn't take long after Trump won for people on all sides to start talking as if it was always inevitable, like "Trump won because he inspired people more and riled up his base, Clinton was an uninspiring candidate playing too safe" or "Trump's victory was inevitable because of the deep history of racism in the country", etc. I feel like (though I'm not sure I can think of examples off the top of my head) even Scott might fall into this trap a little bit.
People even took the victory as an indictment of MSM, since most sources said that Trump had something like a 1% chance of winning. I believe this is illogical, though, because even if he did have a 1% chance of winning, it could have been that 1% chance that caused him to win. It's not like whoever has the highest percent chance at the time of the election is declared the winner.
I'm just curious to hear people's thoughts on this, both about this pattern of thought of erroneously retroactively changing worldviews or thinking events were inevitable, as well as about the 2016 election. I think that Scott's article has a good lesson, and it'd do most people good to try to remember it more, before taking the events which have transpired as an indication that only those events could have ever transpired.
The media way underestimated trump's odds. It was never as low as 10%>. Even in 2020 we can see how the election became very close at one point during the night, until Biden's mysterious surge. The strength of the GOP, and especially Trump, has always been the swing states, compared to the left whose strength is in # number of votes and turnout.
This is not, and was not, mysterious. It was heavily predicted before the election (Reuters, CNN, NBC, Fox), the explanation (Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, mail-in ballots are counted later) was straightforward, and the only reason this is even a thing is that it was one in a series of Trump's attempts to avoid facing up to his loss.
Indeed, it's perfectly natural that after various poll watchers in key areas were removed, Biden had a surge of unfalsifiable support coincidentally in tandem with a startling drop in ballot rejection rates. This was indeed heavily predicted.
Generally speaking, it would be a strange coincidence if the Biden campaign's malfeasance matched up so impressively well with the media's red-mirage predictions, and had the opposite effect you'd expect on the eventual results, which were much better for Trump than pre-election polling would indicate.
More specifically, this doesn't appear to have happened; the Trump campaign fundraised on that idea, but didn't appear willing to make the same bold claims in actual court.
I have less than zero interest in the legal ineptitude of Trump's legal team; Trump selects for loyalty, not competence, which is understandable but has predictable consequences. The various factors I've mentioned have long been confirmed, regardless of Team Trump's (in)ability to navigate hostile systems.
Okay, but why do you think that "poll watchers were removed", since the only claims to that effect came from incompetent Trump followers who then recanted?
They're not the only source. This has been debated for two years now, and the information is available; I'm genuinely not going to bother rearguing it with you here.
Fair enough but if that's so I'm going to choose not to be convinced by you.
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Humor us, this is the right place to do it after all.
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