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.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

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