If

What if the election were held today?  I know it was already held more than a week ago, but what if that result were nullified and the election were held again?  Would we get the same result?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Maybe some of those who showed up the first time would give it a pass on round 2.  Maybe some who skipped it would take advantage of the do-over. What percentage of the repeaters would remember let alone stick with their original choice?  How many of the voters who reportedly learned in the voting booth that Joe Biden had dropped out of the race would have educated themselves a bit more on who this Kamala person who replaced him was?  Would the November 5 result inspire a pile-on against the incumbent party or a groundswell for the opposite result? In terms of the electoral college, the usual suspects would probably turn out the same-- it's the swing states where I suspect there might be some differences.  I could be wrong, but listening to the reasoning behind the last minute decisions of the sizeable group of stubbornly undecideds, I have come to the conclusion that any conclusion about the outcome of the election that attempts to explain the result is probably incorrect.  This goes for those that explain why Trump won-- which in my readings tend to be focused on the mood of the electorate regardless of the success or intention of Trump's campaign-- and those that explain why Harris lost -- almost universally faulting the campaign for failing to excite the will of voters.  Given the disastrous conduct of both campaigns, it's not hard to see why blame is the word that we want to apply to the loser whereas credit can hardly be given to the winner.

Until Joe Biden was booted from his own re-election campaign, the rematch between two geezers reeked of staleness and produce beyond its expiration date.  As unprecedented as the switch was, it made for an exciting change-up while the novelty lasted.  While the campaigns were equally rancid in their approaches, the same could not be said for the candidates.  Kamala Harris is actually younger, smarter, saner, healthier, more attractive, more normal than Donald Trump by any measure.  The fresh blood should have-- and in the opening days of her truncated time at the top of the ticket frequently did-- stir things up in unanticipated ways.  It seems to me it would only have paid for her to remind us of her youth and vitality -- and to assure us of the difference she represented from both Trump and Biden-- as frequently as she could.  When she did show up especially in contexts that contrasted her with her opponent, it tended to work for her.  There should have been more.  The counsel she received was apparently the opposite.

If there is one area in particular that is emblematic of the blame the Harris campaign can take for its loss, it is immigration.  Polls since the beginning demonstrated that on the issue of immigration, voters to whom it mattered trusted the xenophobic pandering of the Republicans on the issue more by a long shot.  When Democrats introduced tough anti-immigration legislation last year designed to fail solely as a demonstration of the hypocrisy of Republicans who dutifully cooperated in begging off, they had already ceded the issue.  Similarly, inviting the unpopular with both parties Liz Cheney along on campaign stops sent the conflicting message that you just needed to ask the Republican supporting Kamala Harris and standing there right next to her whether Republicans could be trusted.  Meanwhile, actual concerns of voters were purposefully ignored.

If only there could be a do-over, would Harris have learned that she needed to assert herself more strongly as a representative of a different more hoped for future than either Joe Biden or Donald Trump have demonstrated they are capable of leading us to?  Could she have flipped the coin of those who went with the evil they knew over the lesser evil they didn't?

My thought experiment aside, the rules of the game do not allow for a tie and are not best of 3 but that whoever wins on election day wins and takes all.  Given the increasingly dire circumstances we find ourselves in, I'm not a fan of the game.