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Something weird is definitely going on. Looking at the charts on Election Betting odds, Biden's chances went from 36% to 22% on June 28th, the night of the debate. It then stayed relatively constant for several days, before collapsing to <9% on July 3rd, which is very strange. The first drop was obviously the debate performance, but then Biden stayed steady despite a barrage of articles demanding he exit the race, and little public comment from Biden other than that he would "talk with his family" about what to do. Then we have this second drop when, if anything, Biden is receiving some positive news. He's saying he's going to stick around, the barrage of negative articles has mostly stopped, and other Dem leaders are more publicly supporting him.
I've checked with a few of the people I know, and none of them are really saying much has changed, so either this is very private stuff, or it's just an issue with the markets being thinly traded and subject to the whims of the whales.
The big plunge happened during the middle of the night US-time on not much volume. I think thin liquidity + assumptions of whoever's moving the market having private info has created the current state of affairs.
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In my mind it's The Dog That Didn't Bark situation. The backlash hasn't come. Biden hasn't done anything to flex back. People aren't defending Biden very aggressively. A week has come and gone with no organized resistance. That's probably more important than the debate itself.
Compare that time Hillary collapsed at an event and got thrown into her limo like a side of beef. Really bad, but immediately her surrogates (essentially the entire establishment media) were out there fighting it hard and within a few days she was doing appearances where she was shaking it off.
The lack of response might be more indicative than the initial crash.
If Biden's debate was a Category 5 Hurricane of a PR storm, Hillary fainting was at best a weak tropical storm. Yeah the optics weren't good but an aging politician fainting in hot, humid weather (presumably over-dressed and maybe a decent coating of makeup) isn't some great disaster as long as it's not a sign of some other problem. Much more of an embarrassment to shove under the rug than a critical failing.
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