I actually agree with your last sentence. it’s a no-win situation for the democrats and there’s a seemingly growing contingent that thinks the best loss they can take is one where a new candidate or set of candidates are introduced to the electorate.

polls are wrong all the time, you’re right. what does it look like if against all odds, biden wins? the man has shown himself to be incapable of cognitive function. should voters fall back on trusting his cabinet and handlers “our competent administrators, their unelected sycophants” style?

hes facing significant opposition from the other branches of government and even at the end of his life when faced with a supreme court ruling that gives him the legal go ahead to enact his administrations policies he won’t do it.

that’s not looking like a great second term. if he lives through it then they’re the do-nothing democrats who can’t accomplish their agenda and abandon their constituents, if he dies then they’ve got kamala who would be very funny but is incredibly disliked.

the democrats are between a rock and a hard place right now because they ran on trump being a dictatorial fascist who will crown himself god-king and now that hes going to win they’re at fault for cynically using the threat of fascism to get votes instead of building the kind of base to oppose fascism that one and a quarter centuries of history would dictate or being the boy who cried wolf if it turns out there’s a peaceful transition of power in 2028.

basically there’s no way forward with their current messaging and platform because when trump wins and institutes american fascism (it’s already here, but i’m typing from the perspective of democratic strategists) they’re naive buffons who pissed away their time and resources trying to get people to vote for an inadequate candidate on a shuffling the deck chairs platform and when trump doesn’t send the brownshirts into the streets and has a largely uneventful second term theyre the people who pissed away their time and resources on a candidate and platform which aren’t up to the challenges we face because of orange man bad.

they’re done for and the best possible outcome is an uneventful trump presidency with a smooth handover complete with “restored faith in our electoral process”. in that case it’s best to go ahead and start getting their benchwarmers out on the field to find out whos up to the task in 2026 and 2028.