Allan Lichtman — an American University professor and political seer created a “keys to the White House” model of predicting presidential races — dissed all the pundits, pollsters and analysts who are calling for Biden’s departure. He has called every election right since 1982. The pundits, conversely, have zero track of predicting elections, and have been putting out polls that have consistently been shown to be wrong.
“And yet they come on and they claim they know how this debate is going to affect the outcome of elections. They have no idea,” Lichtman stated.
Pollsters got it wrong in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
Polling practices these days are often just unsupported assumptions tested against too few people with badly worded alternatives.
Some, like the GOP-funded Trafalgar Group, wrongly pronounced swings to the GOP among millennials and Hispanics when the opposite happened. You wonder whether they were truth-seeking or propaganda-making?
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin says polling is broken:
First, the polling field is broken. Or, if you listen to pollsters’ complaints, it is consistently misapplied and misinterpreted. Polls didn’t come within shouting distance of the right result in either 2016 or 2020. And they misled voters about the fictitious red wave in 2022. Whatever the reasons — call blocking, excessive hang-ups, incorrect modeling of likely voters — even polls taken much closer to elections have consistently turned out to be far off base. The fixation on low-cost, horse-race coverage might satisfy the political media’s desire to project insider expertise or to appear neutral (hey, it’s the voters who say these things!), but there is no excuse to recycle highly suspect information from sources known to be flawed.
The polls show lackluster approval for Biden, but the mid-term ballot boxes reflected a different story about Joe Biden’s record thus far.
Lichtman’s model uses 13 keys or trends for his forecasts, include party mandate, third-party challenge, social unrest, incumbency and charisma.
If Biden does not run in 2024, victory would be almost impossible for the Democrats to achieve. “You lose the incumbency key right off the top, and you’re much more likely to have an internal party battle for who will be the nominee to take over from Joe Biden.”
BTW, history says a president's approval rating has little value in predicting how they will fare in the Election. When the last nine presidents announced their bids, only three had ratings in the Gallup Poll on the upside of 50%, and two of those ended up losing…Jimmy Carter, at 51%, and George H.W. Bush, at 65% in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Ronald Reagan, at 52%, did win a second term.
Joe's low approval ratings come from the same polls that told us there would be a big red wave in the past mid-term.
BTW again, even though only about half of Democrats polled said they wanted Biden to run again, 81% said they’d at least probably support him in next year’s general election.
A solid reason that Biden should run again is that he DESERVES IT! The economy has created 13 million jobs, inflation has been more than cut in half, huge investments are being made in infrastructure and green energy, wage growth has begun to outpace inflation, the first drug price controls are going into effect and the biggest corporations will finally be forced to pay something in federal taxes.
Yes, people earning minimum wage are upset and think the economy is tanking. I would too, in their place. Giving Joe recognition for the high job-participation rate for working-age Americans – higher than at anytime in the past 20 years – would be a good start. Minimum wage earners will benefit from $500-billion in private investment commitments, 300,000 new jobs in 2022 and a doubling of manufacturing construction.
Economic growth has been better than any time in the past 40 years.
A Fox News (Fox News?!) poll showed that every voter demographic is more likely to vote for the Democrats after Republicans overturned Roe v. Wade. More than half of voters in states with abortion bans are more motivated to vote, compared to 32% in states that protect abortion access. It IS all about Roe.
Result: there are TWICE AS MANY registered Democratic voters as Republican voters!
The reality is that the percentage of voters registered with the Republican Party has decreased to 23.93% from 35% — a dozen points — since the beginning of 2022. Democrats won the popular vote in the latest four elections by the following margins: 9.5 million, 5.0 million, 2.9 million, 7.1 million. Trump’s losing margin increased by over 4 million in 2020. America’s biggest threat is not Donald Trump, it is its own Electoral College system.
With less than one-quarter of the voters going for Republicans, and only 30% of that vote going to Trump, Trump is pulling in 7% of the overall vote. Using the 2020 election as the yard-stick, there was a total vote of 155-million; 25% of that would be 39-million; 30% of that would be 11.6 million.
That has drifted south a bit from Trump’s previous total of 74 million. Which was still short of victory by 7 million. This time, he could be short of victory by 143 million votes. Even the Electoral College can't mess that up. But of course, Trump will say it's unfair. (In prison, they don't hand out orange make-up...looking forward to seeing the pasty result...and I'll bet Melania won't be dropping by...)
And yes, he’s 80 years old, but 80 today is equivalent to 60 a few decades ago. My own father is a spry 103, so 80 does not impress me. As they say “80 is the new 79.” And as people get older they generally get happier…especially if they get a chance to beat Republicans.
And I’m sorry to re-cap this point from an earlier article, but Abortion — and a woman’s right to choice — is the central issue of 2024.
Main-stream media seems to have trouble with this concept.
And it is not in Mr. Lichtman’s list, because it is one of those rare things: a CAUSE, not an issue.
It has more in common with the push-back against Prohibition than it does with taking political temperatures.
The fact is that mainstream media does not pay sufficient attention to women and does not comprehend the rage they feel.
Here’s what women – and 80% of everyone – are saying: Abortion rights is the most motivating cause in a century.
Every time abortion has been on a ballot in a state referendum abortion rights have passed! In fact, abortion bans in Nebraska and South Carolina fell short of advancing, confounding conservatives who have dominated both legislatures.
The anti-abortion segment of the Catholic lobby and their Republican partners are having to resort to imposing legislation in states to forbid abortion — without allowing a vote! Because all heck could break loose — like in Nebraska and South Carolina — if you let democracy work!
Independent college-educated women, even those who lean to the right, are breaking in a way that they never have on the abortion issue. Before the Roe reversal, independent right-leaning women were almost a lock for Republicans but now it’s not so clear. The centrist and center-right women in the suburbs are voting in a different way than they ever have in the past. This was a killer issue for Republicans in the 2022 midterm.
This is exactly how the abolition of alcohol went down in flames…the legislation was overturned when a vote was held.
And trying to eliminate the ability of voters to express their passion about this, is just tightening down a pressure value that will explode with even more force in the next election.
So taking a deep breath and going back to the topic:
The following “13 keys to the White House” measurement is an index of true or false responses to a set of questions, based on a simple pattern recognition algorithm.
"True" answers favour the re-election of the incumbent, while "False" answers favour the challenger.
When six or more of the statements are False, the incumbent party is predicted to lose.
I rate only four “False” statements out of the six permissible…
Lichtman's 13 keys to the White House:
Party mandate: After the midterm elections the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections. F
Contest: The candidate is nominated on the first ballot and wins at least two-thirds of the delegate votes. T (Biden is running unopposed)
Incumbency: The sitting president is the party candidate. T
Third party: A third-party candidate wins at least 5 percent of the popular vote. F
Short-term economy: The National Bureau of Economic Research has either not declared a recession, or has declared it over prior to the election. T
Long-term economy: Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds the mean growth during the previous two terms. T
Policy change: The administration achieves a major policy change during the term comparable to the New Deal or the first-term Reagan Revolution. T
Social unrest: There is no social unrest during the term that is comparable to the upheavals of the post-civil war Reconstruction or of the 1960s, and is sustained or raises deep concerns about the unraveling of society. F
Scandal: There is no broad recognition of a scandal that directly touches upon the president . T
Foreign or military failure: There is no major failure during the term comparable to Pearl Harbor or the Iran hostage crisis that appears to significantly undermine America's national interests or threaten its standing in the world. T
Foreign or military success: There is a major success during the term comparable to the winning of World War II or the Camp David Accords that significantly advances America's national interests or its standing in the world. T
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is a national hero comparable to Ulysses Grant or Dwight Eisenhower or is an inspirational candidate comparable to Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. F
Challenger charisma: The challenger party candidate is not a national hero comparable to Ulysses Grant or Dwight Eisenhower and is not an inspirational candidate comparable to Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. T
Much may change between now and 2024, but Lichtman’s crystal ball is hard to dismiss: “He’s got a lot going for him already…it’s going to be tough for [Biden] to lose six other keys, particularly if the economy is not in recession in the election year.”
So, the man with the crystal ball says it’s Biden - or the Democrats can kiss the Presidency good-bye.
As an article in The Atlantic spells out: “Trump’s most fervent supporters in Congress, such as Representatives Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, don’t even exist in a category of responsibility and blame: Their behavior is the political equivalent of not guilty by reason of insanity.”
They are trapped into their enthusiastic support for abortion bans.
They have no economic policy. Trump continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party. His policies would cause a recession in 2025.
Their root support group, the Evangelists, have lost 3 million members since 2006…in a time when the population was growing fast.
Their only supporters are a diminishing and increasingly radicalized base of cruel MAGA red-state voters, caught in the Fox denial loop.
The only thing this diminishing choir of hate-mongers can do is to try to prevent democracy from changing America.
They can trap the state legislatures into abortion bans that cannot be lifted.
Try to prevent kids from reading books that Republicans disapprove of…
Jam up the processes in Washington to try to prevent progressive legislation.
All of this is ultimately futile, of course.
But Nothing is coming over the horizon to help the Republicans.
Each year, American society gets more liberal, more diverse and more Democrat-leaning.
Immigration is slowly changing the colours of the states from Red to Blue.
Economic forces are crushing the old ways of living.
So what is their plan?
They do not have one.
If Trump is supported by the anti-abortion/pro-gun sector, he will lose by more than 100-million votes.
Republicans are getting so desperate that they are taking steps to avoid democracy.
As a minority seeking to exercise control of government, it is actually necessary that the Trumpist G.O.P. suppress democratic procedures that normally produce majority control.
There are two distinct mechanisms involved in overturning democracy:
First, is controlling all elected and appointed elements of the government. If the same political party controls the House, Senate, judiciary and presidency, and disregards the principles of democracy and independence of officials, then sadly none of the institutions of democracy will prevent arbitrary and autocratic government.
The second element is unique to this country: The United States has so many safeguards for minority rights that it is conceivable that a minority party could obtain complete control of all levers of government.
A party that represents a minority of the people can, in the U.S., control the House, Senate, and presidency.
Or it might just shut the government down…like it has repeatedly tried to do recently.
The MAGA types don't care who gets hurt, even themselves or their loved ones... as long as the weak (read: Democrats, liberals, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color, etc.) suffer more. Congressional Republicans won’t feel what it is like to be without a pay check.
They are using the threat of a federal shut-down in order to lower a deficit that does not need to be lowered.
Contrary to some media headlines, Biden’s family is behind him and pushing for him to continue. They also deny that they blame his staff for the debate loss.
Some media will invent anything for a headline.
During the debate, “Every time Donald Trump opened his mouth, those dials dropped. They just absolutely plummeted,” Biden campaign pollster Molly Murphy. “[Voters] felt like the president came across as someone who cares about middle- and working-class Americans, and when compared to Trump he came across as more presidential, more likable, more truthful.”
In the first few days since the debate, the Biden campaign raised $33-million.
Lichtman stated that the debate will leave “zero” impact on the presidential race. “Debates are not predictive of outcomes,” said the professor, who pointed to debate performances by Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and former President Barack Obama.
He added that the questions over Biden’s physical capabilities are not coming from doctors. “So this is all foolhardy nonsense. The same pundits and pollsters who led us down the primrose path in 2016 are giving the Democrats horrible advice. Republicans are sticking with a blatant liar who lied for every one minute and 20 seconds of that debate. Donald Trump put out a lie. And by the way, lies stick. Debate performances can be overcome. And now the first sign of, you know, adversity, the spineless Democrats want to throw under the bus their own incumbent president.”
Thus sayeth the Seer.
So stop giving click-bait rewards to the turkeys who are propping up the ‘drop Biden’ invention, stop panicking and start boosting Biden!
He’s the only chance we have of beating the Imperial Reign of Donald The Trump.
I am hearing a lot of "whistling past the graveyard" here. I watched the debate and recoiled in horror. Everything Trump and the MAGA had said about Biden was verified and undeniable. The vision of a frail, confused Biden is seared into our collective psyches and accented by terror.
We are not just voting against Trump but voting for a vigorous, capable leader of our nation and the free world. We the People deserve a better choice than between two old men arguing about golf handicaps. This will likely be a hellacious next four years teeming with all sorts of existential crises.
Biden is a honorable, decent man and has been an exceptional public servant, but he demonstrated he is acutely suffering the challenges of aging while campaigning for a job that chews up even young Presidents. If Biden is up to the task, why are we not getting medical reports on what happened to Biden during the debate? He was having an obvious medical emergency yet nobody from the medical field is providing a professional evaluation. This is very suspicious because we know political enemies and pundits will fill the vacuum with all sorts of mythology and propaganda. No, there is no recovering from this debacle, it will only get worse with each retelling. For the good of the nation, Joe must go...
"In the poll, fully 77% said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89% of Republicans say that, so do 69% of Democrats." https://apnews.com/article/biden-age-poll-trump-2024-620e0a5cfa0039a6448f607c17c7f23e
Spot on! Thank you!