// Even our Jim, if he's honest, thought Trump had won. //
I didn't go to bed feeling as confident as I had an hour earlier, at least.
I don't think that Biden's actual odds had dropped as low. Betting markets tend to move quicker, I suppose, than pre-election modelling -- for example, Trump's victory in Florida ruled out a Biden landslide, but not necessarily a Biden win of any kind.
Wish you'd stop with the implications of fraud, though. There's nothing in the patterns of when votes arrived over the count that was particularly shocking. Various states count early ballots at different times, and various demographics lean dramatically in one direction, so you'd expect to see surges for Biden or Trump as the night went on.
Imagine if the voting had stopped early in Texas, Ohio, and Florida, for example, when Biden was ahead. Biden was even leading in Missouri and Kansas at one point, because of such patterns. Somehow, I don't think Trump would have been quite as keen on declaring *those* states early.
In the meantime, we are still waiting for full results from seven states, of which four or five are still interesting, and right now it's still not out of the question that late votes lead to Trump just taking Michigan, Pennsylvania, and even (if his campaign is to be believed) Arizona. That would be enough for him to win after all.