Stats only work until they don’t. Statisticians are great with simple logic, not so great when some of the same people that voted Trump voted Mamdani and AOC. The political calculus is shifting in this country and now is the best chance we have of a sudden takeover. You are right that political shifts usually need to be senate and congress first (and states and counties and cities) but I think the normal political rules don’t hold as strong right now. If she can win a primary, she can win the presidency. Harris couldn’t overcome racism and sexism because she had little to offer.

I worked in Dem politics for the first Obama election. He was so popular that he regularly had racists committing to voting for him. When we got regional or national polling we would regularly hear from polling companies that people would answer polls with (paraphrasing) “I’m voting for the n-word, I might be racist, but I’m not stupid”. Also we had a white lady volunteer in one of the local county campaign offices that regularly used racial epithets like the n-word and she was sent home cause no one knew what to do about it.

Don’t expect predictable logic from voters.