“Interestingly, I find all of the points on this thread to be plausible, even ones that flatly contradict each other.”
Yup, I can’t see anything beyond the bounds of reasonable plausibility. It’s going to be hard to keep this in mind when something actually happens and outcomes are eliminated with extreme predjudice. It will be interesting to see who admits they were really, really, really wrong.
The closest I can recall to this is the Palin running/not running debate.
Freegards
That was a vicious time around here.
That said...I think it is different. To me, and lots of other people, it was completely obvious that she wasn’t really running. Lots of us couldn’t figure out why anyone believed that she was. But in retrospect, I think it was just b/c really good people - great Americans - wanted someone to bring the fight to the left and the GOPe. Which is totally understandable. But that desire led the to wish, rather than see the obvious.
In THIS instance, I don’t see anything which is obvious at all......