What it means to get the election wrong

Yesterday morning, the New York Times asked, in a headline, “Can Biden still win?” The story made clear that he could, but as FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver pointed out, the question seemed backward, since President Trump appeared to be facing the thinner path to victory. That the Times framed the question around Biden, Silver wrote, felt rather like an “artifact of the mood right now”—Biden had not, as many liberals had hoped or expected, crushed Trump across the map, leading to a feeling,...