So the first thing I'll say is that betting markets reflect the situation the bettors wish to wager on, not reality. You don't need to spend too long watching crypto options to see that those fuckers trade the second, third, fourth derivative of reality. Will Ethereum be worth $1000000000 in two weeks? No. But if you buy a billion options on it being worth that for 5.0000005 cents and sell them for 5.0000006 cents, you made a thousand dollars regardless of the worth of Ethereum.

The next thing I'll say is that prediction markets reflect the common wisdom of the situation and the common wisdom is often wrong. Particularly when it comes to elections - Nate Silver went from prophet to pariah for fucking up the 2016 election and dug a deeper hole when his response wasn't "oops" but "I'm not wrong, you don't understand statistics." Not really his fault - the quality of the data he was using took an absolute dump between 2012 and 2016 as Facebook was completely co-opted but his inability to go "huh maybe my data is shit" and instead going "huh maybe my audience is shit" wasn't great.

The third thing I will say is that the majority of effort expended by Karl Rove and the RNC in 2004 was gay marriage bans - the whole point being that they knew post "Mission Accomplished" there weren't going to be a lot of Republicans going "yay bush." Now - the Republican think tanks have since argued this was ineffective. They have not argued that they didn't do it.

Ultimately it's going to come down to "who wants to come out to vote." Those on the left are clearly energized against Trump. Those on the right are much less clearly energized against Biden. And those in the middle have been experiencing stability, an improving quality of living and more savings than they've had in a generation. Here's the thought experiment: what massive missteps would have to be made in order for the disinterested center to turn out against Biden? A recession is a possibility, albeit an increasingly distant one. A broad war in the Middle East? Not without troops-on-ground getting their asses kicked; a recession is more likely. The Chinese invasion of Taiwan? Americans don't give a fuck if Americans aren't dying.

Here are the facts on the ground:

- Democrats want to fund the war in Ukraine

- Republican want to fund the war in Ukraine

- Trump wants to run on the lawlessness of the southern border

- So the MAGA insurgents in the House of Representatives are holding up Ukraine funding for a ridiculous list of demands related to border security

- So the Democrats and Republicans went "here's your ridiculous southern border package"

- So Trump called up the MAGA insurgents and said "don't give Biden a win on this one"

- So the MAGA insurgents went "well now our demands are even more unreasonable"

- So the Senate went "jesus fucking christ"

- And the Biden administration has been making much of the fact that, without Trump in the picture, even our deeply dysfunctional government is functioning after a fashion

The current dust-up is the State of Texas arguing that they have the right to control their border, the Border Patrol does not. This has gone to the Supreme Court and now Texas (and a bunch of other states) are arguing they have the right to "repel invasions" and a bunch of Canadian truckers deciding they need to do performative bullshit.

A number of individuals on the too-online Left have argued that a few drone strikes might remind the southern states who won the Civil War while a number of individuals on the too-online Right have argued that now is the time to reclaim the confederacy because certainly it'll be different this time but fans of stability and actually getting shit done have been pointing out that humoring the howler monkeys will only encourage them and that if you've got a bunch of feckless morons doing the dumbest shit ever in order to find a wedge issue to win on, pandering to their dumbness is not the correct move.

Actually that last bit is a lie. There's nobody in the middle. It's fucking lonely here. "Florida picked a fight with Disney," you say, "so I don't really see this going their way long term" but everyone is too busy imagining the return of Johnny Reb.