December 9, 2020

What Sports Comebacks Can Teach Us About the 2020 Election

Bob Andres/TNS/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Despite the lack of an officially projected winner on Election Day, Joe Biden’s eventual victory was not unexpected. It didn’t defy any odds. If anything, Republicans guaranteed that Biden’s lead in vote totals would increase as that week went on: GOP-controlled state legislatures in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin refused to count mail-in ballots before Election Day. And it’s no surprise that those late-counted ballots heavily favored Biden, given that Donald Trump campaigned on the false notion that efforts to expand mail voting were a huge conspiracy to steal the election through fraud, rather than a way to allow people to exercise their civic duties safely amid a pandemic.

The White House is keeping up the ruse. Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News that the odds of Biden coming back from Trump’s lead on election night were “one in a quadrillion to the fourth power.” Sounds real scientific. Today, Trump tweeted that on November 3, the “bookies”—known for their accuracy—had his odds of winning at 97 percent. How ever could Biden have won, if not through Democrats’ fraud?

Even if there weren’t a completely logical reason for the way events played out, stranger things have happened. How did the Cleveland Cavaliers overcome a 3-1 series deficit to defeat the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA finals? How did Dave Wottle overcome tendinitis in his knees to kick his way from the back of the pack to an unforeseen Olympic gold medal in the 800 meter race in 1972? And how in the world did the New England Patriots turn around a 28–3 Atlanta Falcons lead in the third quarter of Super Bowl LI in a comeback so bizarre that columnists cited it as proof we live in a simulation? (I’ve been told the Buffalo Bills’ 1993 comeback over the Houston Oilers was more impressive, but I’m a New Englander, so you know where my allegiances lie.)

Stunning, seemingly physics-defying comebacks happen in the sports world all the time. Even if Biden’s win were surprising, the time has long passed for Trump to learn to take the L.

This post was brought to you by the Mother Jones Daily newsletter, which hits inboxes every weekday and is written by Ben Dreyfuss and Abigail Weinberg. It regularly features guest contributions by our much smarter colleagues. Sign up for it here.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate