My spicy hot take for the day is that the left should not assume that Joe Biden is going to lose to Trump.

One, we're just at the very, *VERY* beginning of a massive public health and economic crisis. These are the kinds of things ruling parties tend to get punished for.

Two, Trump's margin of support throughout his presidency has been remarkably thin, albeit fiercely loyal/durable.

This, of course, does not mean that Joe Biden is guaranteed to win, either. He could very well easily lose! Even if the fundamentals of the election favor him, there are all sorts of circumstances in which I could foresee him losing...

...everything from his senility issues flaring up in a big way, to rampant voter suppression/fraud, to... who knows? He could drop dead of COVID-19 on the campaign trail!

I'm simply suggesting that, from a strategic standpoint, predicting left and right that Joe Biden can never win only to see him win in November will be about as effective as the "bend the knee" rhetoric after 2016.

I know that we all saw the centrists who completely blew 2016 recover with essentially no consequences.

But here's the rub: you can make wrong electoral predictions based on bad theories of politics and escape consequences *if you control mechanisms of power.*