It isn't clear to me that Biden is simply not going to win. Historically, July polls are not particularly meaningful. Heck polls still count on people who answer their phones from strange numbers, which narrows it to boomers and my generation. (Except I tend not to answer familiar phone numbers, either.)

Also it was Trump who challenged Biden to that debate, and then started walking it back for fear he might get clobbered. (Trump's rhetoric was also picked apart to include over 600 lies and false statements within his part of that 90 minutes, none of which was challenged by the format, in what is commonly known as a Gish gallop.)

Biden does have the Keys to the White House ( on Wikipedia ) Beau of the Fifth Column breaks it down on Youtube. So there are plenty of indicators that Biden is not going to lose the election. Not if it's secure and fair, anyway.

Of course, the Keys didn't account for the SCOTUS intervention of 2000, and may not account for cheating, coup attempts or civil war. Hopefully the US' allegedly robust (and partially compromised) surveillance state, national-security state and anti-terror state are on top of these threats.

[–] sacredfire@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago

Trump has historically underperformed in poles and because of the electoral college advantage that Republicans have, Biden probably needs to be at least up four or five points on him, which is what he was last election and it came down to 20,000 votes across several battle ground states.

yes, Trump lied during the debate. Trump is the worst candidate in the history of the United States and him being elected president would be a catastrophe for democracy. Which is exactly why many people in the Democratic Party including - if reports are to be believed - apparently Barack Obama, are trying to have Biden pushed out right now. That Biden is now taking a cavalier attitude that “he’s going to give it his best shot, and if he loses, well he tried his hardest and that’s what counts”…when his own campaign has been framing this threat from Trump as being detrimental to democracy, is the height of hubris.

There are numerous reports that they’ve been shielding him and his mental capacity for a long time now trying to drag him across the finish line. The cat is out of the bag, and it’s a pretty big gamble to assume more things are not going to happen between now and the election. Is that a bigger gamble than switching candidates? I don’t know but I think it is.