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I'm just trying to resolve a prediction from sometime I respect between
"Butch Coolidge will lose his upcoming match because his opponent is an up and coming star and too fast for an over the hill has been"
And
"Butch Coolidge is going to lose his upcoming fight because I saw him come out of Marcellus Wallace's joint and tuck a packet of cash into his jacket."
Both are predictions based on knowledge, but reflect very different observations.
But two things can be true at the same time.
I do not think that either political party is engaged in organized attempts to "steal" elections. And yet election-influencing prospiracies arise with alarming regularity, whether that be in the form of lawsuits, robocalls, social media posts, or whatever. We even have hard evidence of such prospiracies arising in the context of elected officials and government employees (Trump campaign wiretapping, Strzok) and even rising to the level of full-blown conspiracies (Watergate).
None of that precludes the possibility that Harris is also sufficiently appealing, or Trump sufficiently revolting, for her to manage a "genuine" electoral victory. I find myself basically persuaded by the big city numbers and the suburbia polls that Kamala can pull off an electoral victory. But I am not a pollster! Math is not my thing! I would not encourage anyone to make bets on anything I predict, ever; I'm far too reflexively skeptical to ever feel very sure about anything, even ridiculous things. So I also have to think about the possibility that I've been misled by the polls. It certainly wouldn't be the first time!
What all that other stuff does preclude is any ability in me to feel highly confident about the results-as-eventually-reported. This is the argument Clinton (IIRC) initially brought out when Trump in 2016 started making noise about stolen elections. My memory is that she (or maybe it was one of her supporters) correctly observed that the outcome of the vote is just part of what's important; the other part is that people have to believe it wasn't rigged. Well, this painted her into a bit of a corner when she lost, and it took her a little while to reverse course and get in on the "Trump is not a legitimate president" narrative.
But eight years later we're all living in "broken window" territory. Democrats* tried to actually steal the 2016 election, via Russian dossiers and faithless elector schemes and votes against certification and throwing riots and spurious impeachment attempts. Republicans* largely followed suit in 2020. If you think your opponent is likely to play dirty, then you're a little more likely to play dirty, and if your opponent knows you're likely to escalate, then they prepare to escalate. Whether we're talking about nuclear war, rioting and looting, or election shenanigans, the logic is the same.
* "Not all..."
De-escalation is hard.
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