I’ve done so many big picture posts in recent days I’m going to let myself do a more zoomed in one. In all the antic craziness of the last two weeks we’ve seen a number of people, either cheering or dreading, saying that not only will Joe Biden lose but he’ll bring down Congress and all sorts of down ballot Democrats. I believe, just intuitively, that these claims are almost all the product of media hysteria, in some cases fanned by Trump campaign trash talk. But if you look down at the nitty gritty of public and private polling there’s something more specific happening, a set of data mixed with non-crazy but still possible assumptions.

Yesterday I heard from TPM Reader GZ in response to the Backchannel email newsletter. (I always encourage you to write to me. You can do so simply by replying to my newsletter. Comes right to my personal inbox.) “Even though you aren’t saying Joe should drop out you are participating in the fun of talking about it,” he wrote. “Giving air to negativity.”

I think a lot of people are having fun with this. Many of the most prominent journalistic voices. But I felt the need to correct the misapprehension. “If you think I’m participating in any fun you gravely mistake my thoughts and profound anguish over this … The last two weeks have been pure agony,” I wrote. As I went on to explain, I don’t get into my personal experience of any of this because it’s simply not relevant to what I’m writing. But I took both sides of this exchange as examples of the toll this extended and seemingly frozen crisis has had on so many people.

Today I have been corresponding with a number of readers about, well … what’s happening? Like, some want this and some want that. But everyone is wondering wtf is happening or, to put it more specifically, why the whole thing hasn’t been decided yet.