I heard exactly these arguments in 2016.
I honestly thought Hillary would probably win, but people told me I was every sort of fool simply because I said the same thing - "No election is certain - it's always a horse race. Don't count your chickens."
Did you express caution in 2016? Or were you totally certain that Hillary would win? If so, perhaps you should stop for a moment and recalibrate.
It's always a horse race. Anything might happen. I tentatively favor Biden at this time. There are months to go.
Trump might win honestly. He might easily suppress enough votes to win - every Presidential election, millions of ballots never get counted. He might have armed men seize mail-in ballots and destroy them.
Any young person who is the slightest bit left wing has to feel completely cheated by the DNC at this moment. Given the endless hatred for progressives that the DNC has to ram home every time they get a chance, some of them are going to sit this out. Have you heard of "accelerationism"? Look it up.
Biden could die or become incapacitated and America's racism and sexism knock Harris out.
Trump could die or be incapacitated and Pence win the pity vote. I myself think it's a pity he's not dead or incapacitated.
America could get into a war. Americans love wars and if there were a real excuse, they would rally with Trump.
----
I'm a mathematician. A little known psychological fact about mathematics is that people are incredibly bad at evaluating risk, but if you get them to think of the statistics in terms of a bet, they suddenly become very good at it.
You're saying that the chances of Donald Trump being the next President are zero.
Imagine if someone came to you and offered to bet you $1000 cash at even odds that Trump was going to be the next President of the United States.
You'd take that bet, of course, because you believe it's free money.
But what if the odds you had to pay became greater? 10 to 1? 100 to 1? 1000 to 1 - which means that you'd have to pay out $1 million.
You recoil. But why? If it's certain, then what difference do the odds make, if you're completely and 100% certain that you don't have to pay? If you're certain, then you'd accept any odds!
It's just free cash if you are completely sure. Why would you rationally turn it down?
The point is that you know in your heart that there is some non-zero chance of failure. You wouldn't actually bet your whole fortune or even your life on it.
---
Learn from 2016.
Predicting the behavior of a system with literally hundreds of millions of moving parts, driven by tens of thousands of powerful entities with wildly disparate goals and a cool $10 billion to spend is very very hard.
To pretend complete certainty doesn't fool anyone. In your heart, you aren't even fooling yourself.
---
I would add that I admire your social stances a great deal. It's your logic at predicting the future I'm skeptical of (and your toleration of the incompetent and limp Democrats).
