Still Debunking

      Why I still try, I don't know.  The fantasy brigade is still hammering away at their dead horse of a jiggered election, so why not?

      One of the more impressive-looking claims cites "Benford's Law," a bit of numerological pareidolia that crops up in many -- but not all -- collections of related numbers that cover a wide range and approximate log-law distribution.  It's a pattern, nothing more; it's not like gravitation or pi.  But if your data meet the criteria, it's a way of checking to see if the books may have been cooked.  On the other hand, you may have had a bad day at dice.

      Applying this to U. S. elections at the county level, though, breaks the necessary assumptions for Benford's Law to apply.  It's not a useful analytical tool.

      So, nope, still looks to me like your guy lost fair and square and the other guy won by not being him, a result that tracks Presidential approval ratings pretty closely.

      Wanna win the Presidency?  Have money.  Have a party organization behind you -- and be sufficiently less of an asshole in public perception than the person you're running against.  It worked in 2016.  It worked in 2020.  It'll work in 2024, too -- and don't doubt for a minute that Joe Biden and the Democrat hopefuls in line behind him know it.

      This is not an approach that gets you buoyed into the White House on the shoulders of a cheering crowd of your fans.  Don't look for any Ronald Reagan or Franklin D. Roosevelt type victories.  Anyone dreaming of Dick Nixon in 1972 or LBJ in 1964 landslides had better think again -- but it'll win.

      Whining and wanting to make it didn't happen didn't get the Dems anywhere in 2017.  It won't help the GOP in 2021, either.  I'd like to radiate Olympian detachment as a member of neither party, but the fact is that I rely on both parties being in the game and not moping on the sidelines or chasing figments of their imaginations.  Things get more screwed up, more quickly, when there's no debate in Congress.  The Senate is balanced to fingertip sensitivity right now -- if Senators of both parties are willing to pay attention to what's in front of them.

      Hey, I get it, you just loved Mr. Trump.  You really, really loved him.*  And at the polls in 2020, a narrow majority of your fellow Americans did not.  Get over it.
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* I thought the 2020 Presidential election was a choice between cold, lumpy mashed potatoes in a bowl and cold, lumpy mashed potatoes in a dirty ashtray.  But I'm notoriously sour on the people we hire to shake hands with kings.