To flesh this out...
On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, did something happen? Two things did. One of them has an explanation.
We know that two things happened because we have a nearly-perfect seismograph of events: the election prediction market, now large and sophisticated. In any liquid and sophisticated market, expected events do not move the market. Major market moves therefore correspond to new and unexpected information.
We saw two major reversals of the prediction markets, which went from roughly 15-85 to 85-15 and back again: one on Tuesday evening, and one on Wednesday morning. On Tuesday evening, the market learned that Trump was outperforming the major polls. What did it learn on Wednesday morning?
Whatever that event, it was not expected. At least, anyone who expected it could have made a lot of money. No one makes money by knowing what counties report late. And the data available to professional traders is just as good as that available to both the media, and the campaigns. The Trump campaign thought it was winning. Did the Biden campaign think it was losing? Or…
Yet it is still not impossible for me to imagine that this second event was somehow something subtle, fresh, beautiful and clean, like a raft of suburban Republican wine moms realizing, at the last possible moment, that Black lives matter, and rushing to cast their last-minute postal votes. Science, too, can prove this theory—auditing a random sample of ballots, for the telltale pinot-grigio stains…
I do think I think like a scientist. I know something happened. I just want to know what happened, and why. From my knowledge and experience of American history— if I can still say this on the Internet—there has never been a historical period when our elections were clearly free from fuckery. I therefore find fuckery to be a reasonable Bayesian prior. But, like the citizens in Starship Troopers, I would like to know more.
If this thesis is true, it’s actually kind of cool that 20 years into the 21st century, the ghosts of LBJ and Ballot Box 13 are with us still. By fighting and winning the fuckery war, by cranking up the old heirs of Tammany one more time, the Democratic Party shows that it is a still a thing, it can still bring it, it can still play, it deserves to rule.
Soccer players call this being “physical.” If you remain an electioncuck, I offer you this argument for free: it is the best case I can make for your sorry quisling soul. The case that might makes right is in fact extremely sound—why not just come out and make it?