The election was always a toss up as Trump had more pathways to victory and was within the margin of error in three rust belt states of which he only needed to take one. It was a tossup favoring Kamala.
My unified theory of boomer democrat politicians is they all wanted to be republicans in the 80's but were losers, and the GOP was the hot ticket, so they failed over to the DNC as their safety party, like a safety school, so Dick Cheney becoming a democrat is like, the greatest thing that could ever happen to them in a world where Reagan is dead.