Even before the numbers started looking unexpectedly good for Donald Trump, I knew something must be wrong. The clue was a subtle but real shift in cable news banter, which pivoted early on Tuesday night from its initial tone of self-assurance to one of visible agitation. Joe Biden seemed to be leading in at least a few of the right places, but where was the landslide Democrat-aligned pundits and pollsters alike had confidently suggested was coming? With signs of the promised blowout mysteriously absent, the high priests of cable news gradually seemed to settle on an answer. Sure, Trump might be ahead in key states across the Midwest but this was precisely the outcome we’d all anticipated. Mail-in ballots were forthcoming, after all, and they were likely to break for Biden.

The narrative resonated not only because it was what viewers ill-disposed to Donald Trump wanted to hear, but because it would soon turn out to be true: on Saturday morning, Biden passed the 270 electoral college threshold to win the presidency thanks to the late counting of mail-in ballots breaking strongly in his favor. Nevertheless, the general tone on CNN midway through election night seemed desperate to retain the sense that everything was going according to plan. With the dust finally settling, there’s a good chance this narrative will stick — not only because liberal partisans (and Democratic consultants) will push it, but because it’s what so many political observers and ordinary people beset with Trump fatigue desperately want to believe.

Suffice it to say, this election should never have been close, and things did not, to put it mildly, go according to plan. Though the final tally is yet to come, Trump has added millions of votes to his 2016 total. Give or take a few thousand ballots in a handful of swing states, he’d now be on his way to a second term. This is to say nothing of the Democrats’ catastrophic performance down-ballot, which saw several GOP Senate incumbents swat down cash-soaked challengers and the majority party lose seats in the House only two years after its big 2018 victory. When all is said and done, an election week that began with euphoria about the prospect of the Democrats flipping Texas and securing a comfortable Senate majority ended in heavy breathing as we all reassured ourselves, and each other, that Biden would eventually cross the finish line.