You stayed to through the draw with like a (4, 5, 7, 8) and then caught a 6 on the draw.

Drawing an 'outside straight' (which is a much more common play) is if you stayed through the draw with (4,5,6,7) and caught a 3 or an 8. Obviously you have 2X better odds to catch an outside straight. Making an inside straight on the draw is considered extremely lucky.

That's the terminology when playing a game like 5 card draw. That's a game where you are dealt 5 cards, everyone checks, bets, calls, raises, or folds ... then everyone drops 0-4 cards, and gets that number of cards in return from the deck, creating a new hand. That process of trading in the cards is called 'the draw'. Then everyone checks/bets/calls/raises/folds again, then remaining hands are 'shown' to see who wins the pot.

E.g., what does the "inside straight" in poker have to do with the election?

Pretty much anytime you're 'trying to win' against others, you are, in a sense, engaged in a form of gambling, right?

Another interesting thing about that analogy is that if you draw an inside straight, esp. if you had to call a significant bet (in the pre-draw betting round) in order to actually SUCCEED in getting that 1 card you needed ... you will pretty much piss off the rest of the table. So there's an inherent 'annoying everyone else around you' component to 'drawing an inside straight'. It's such shitty odds that you really should fold (unless it costs you almost nothing to see your draw).

If your on the very short stack and see little hope or chance of winning, may as well throw the hail mary. Otherwise the Blinds will eventually throw you out.

All else being equal, the odds of drawing an inside straight is about 1 in 11 chances. It’s not quite a long shot, but it’s generally not a good bet.

If that's the way our political systems are working they are broken.