Fuuuuuuu-uuuuuuuuck this is so stupid. “Now that you have read the 500th poll of the battleground states, the thousands of simulations, the scientific and pseudo-scientific calculations, the hourly assertions of how close this contest is, you might want to take a breath and contemplate the possibility that the factor that will determine the outcome may not have happened yet. At least, that’s what our recent political history says,” writes Politico contributor Jeff Greenfield before going into that history from 1980 through 2016 for a dozen or so more paragraphs.
To be completely fair to him he probably didn’t pick the headline. Some editor thought this was the clickbaitiest way possible to sell readers on a fairly well-written and sober-minded if not particularly original insight into the events that are seen as having caused late swings in close presidential races. That fucking headline though. How hard was it to write “History Suggests ‘October Surprises’ Are More Likely Than Not,” or something anodyne (and more pertinent to the text) like that?
Actually that kind of sucked. Still would’ve been better than what Politico’s editorial team puked up.