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Easy answer to this: the overwhelming expectation (from you, from me, from everyone, even the hardcore Trump partisans looking at the polls w/gritted teeth) was not just that Biden would win, but that it would be a massive Dem wave election. #1 happened, #2...nearly opposite. https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1329137779687776265
In other words: expectations-setting (which is oftentimes out of the control of parties tbf, particularly in this case where the media and the polls were just going nutzoid wrong in key races and states) matters. Public expectations matter! Particularly for an omphaloskeptic MSM.
If there's one thing that political media loves to do, it's write easy 'thinkpieces' replete with quotes from "the professionals on the ground" about post-election navel-gazing.
2020 offers more ample fodder for that than any race since...well, since 2016 I suppose.
2020 offers more ample fodder for that than any race since...well, since 2016 I suppose.
A further point, and one I should probably expand upon later: the Dem/progressive 'teleos' had been dealt a blow in 2016 but after 2018 and particularly by 2020 (w/a media amplifying it b/c ideologically aligned) it was barreling down the tracks full-steam to the End of History.
What happens when your freight train runs into not one, but TWO consecutive brick walls? The 2nd in some ways more disconcerting than the first? Well...you get a lot of "wtf happened, I thought we were on track to end the electoral college, pack the court, add 2 states?" pieces.
Remember: the real 'juice' in the left-commentariat was about all the radical changes and permanent revisions they were fantasizing about forcing through to forever prevent the right from regaining political power. Their masturbatory dream. And then...this ugly reality happened.
Sometimes you think you're "shifting the Overton Window." And then sometimes the window abruptly slams shut on you and saws off your fingers, leaving you still with hands, per se, but they're mutilated stumps. That's how the progs are taking 2020, and emotionally it makes sense.
You can tell me that this wasn't what was *really* happening with voter choice in November 2020, that it was about much more mundane issues like "The Economy, Stupid", or Trump's erraticism in office, and I might even agree. But this is how the Vanguard of the Commentariat feels.
