WTF, Professor Lichtman? A Critical Review of the 13 Keys to the White House
Topic: Perspective
The honeymoon is over, there was no DNC bounce (in fact, the opposite bounce occurred), and the Democrat nominee is campaigning in New Hampshire, the most distant of my seven decisive states, as well as next-tier leaners like Virginia and Minnesota.
What disinformation and negativity must be launched next? Right on time, out rolls Professor Allan Lichtman’s 13 Keys to the White House. Lichtman boasts that his model has predicted every election since 1984, and although he tweaks it when necessary, one can make a case for it with a few allowances here and there. Lichtman even picked Trump in 2016, which was a more predictable outcome than most people think based on traditional indicators and the fact that the incumbent party has only won three consecutive terms once since the end of World War II (that would be the Republicans under Reagan and Bush 41 in the 1980s).
Predictably, Lichtman is clearly under the influence of regime pressure to set the expectations for a Harris win, because he cut loose on this model predicting her coronation:
Out of 13 keys, he gives Harris trues on 8, falses on 3, and didn’t choose a side on two points. According to his model, the incumbent party (Democrats/Harris) wins if they get 8 trues (in blue, and what a coincidence), and the challenger party (Republicans/Trump) wins if the incumbent has six falses (reds). That means Lichtman spun all of his subjective calculus and came up with the bare bones minimum rating to “predict” Harris as the victor. It is also noteworthy that Lichtman has been doing some serious hedging about “if Trump wins,” so something tells me he’s not feeling so confident about this one.
How about a second opinion, Professor?
Key 1 – Midterm Gains
Lichtman Edge: Trump
Captain K Opinion: Agree
It wasn’t a red wave, and even though the GOP took the House back, I would consider the midterms a major disappointment; however, as a technical point, the party not in the White House made gains, as has been the case in nearly every midterm since World War II.
Key 2 – No Primary Contest
Lichtman Edge: Harris
Captain K Opinion: Disagree – Neutral
It’s hard to have a primary contest when the party forces the nominee out once voting has concluded.
Really, Allan? This should be a neutral, and in an open primary, it is unlikely Harris would have won given her inability to stay on until the Iowa caucus in the 2020 primary.
Key 3 – Incumbent Seeking Re-election
Lichtman Edge: Trump
Captain K Opinion: Agree
Incumbents are difficult to beat, and throwing out the farcical 2020 race, George H.W. Bush was the last one to lose. Harris is not the incumbent President (yet), so this is correct.
Key 4 – No Third Party
Lichtman Edge: Harris
Captain K Opinion: Disagree - Neutral
Robert Kennedy is off the ballot now in most of the key Electoral College states, but in some of them, Harris will have to deal with Cornel West and others, like in Georgia. This one could favor Trump, but should be a neutral.
Key 5 – Strong Short-Term Economy
Lichtman Edge: Harris
Captain K Opinion: Disagree – Trump
Don’t take my word for it – listen to Kamala Harris herself as she whines on about food prices, mortgages, and other Bidenomics induced economic dysfunction as if she has had nothing to do with the administration for the past 43 months. She’s talking about solutions to all sorts of everyday issues clearly because there is a market for it among the electorate, which prefers Trump handily on the issue even according to polling rigged against him.
Key 6 – Strong Long-Term Economy
Lichtman Edge: Harris
Captain K Opinion: Disagree – Trump
Inflation is perhaps the most destructive indicator for a positive long-term economy, and once again, the polling on economics isn’t close, and economics is and always has been the biggest tell of who should be winning presidential elections. Here is the communist’s own price controls solution being trotted out to deal with the effects of inflation. This isn’t a debate in any way. It’s common sense.
Key 7 – Major Policy Change
Lichtman Edge: Harris
Captain K Opinion: WTF?
As I’ve mentioned above, Lichtman is rather subjective in his keys. After all, they are his own keys and I suppose he can fling them however he wants. Harris hasn’t really put anything out there in terms of policy, but I suppose price controls is a policy, and so is using the DOJ to go after people for exercising protected speech rights.
Trump also has policies, like deporting illegal aliens, pulling out of foreign military entanglements, and removing tax from tips for servers and others in the same boat. It appears Lichtman doesn’t gage sentiment for positions in this.
Key 8 – No Social Unrest
Lichtman Edge: Harris
Captain K Opinion: WTF?
Maybe it was just my imagination, but pro-Palestinian protestors practically robbed Harris of her strongest Vice-Presidential nominee from arguably the most important decisive state (Pennsylvania), and the same folks who strong-armed the party on that issue have been controlling the debate by forcing the issues on college campuses and at the DNC. This one may be technically true, but I wouldn’t call our present moment a time of national unity and togetherness.
Key 9 – No Scandal
Lichtman Edge: Harris
Captain K Opinion: WTF?
Harris chose a Stolen Valor V.P. nominee, seized the Democrat nomination without garnering a single vote, and covered up the obvious fact that the current President couldn’t point to Washington, D.C., on a map if Hunter’s exoneration depended on it.
Again – subjective – but come on.
Key 10 – No Foreign/Military Failure
Lichtman Edge: Neutral
Captain K Opinion: Disagree - Trump
This one reeks of utter bullshit. I guess we forgot about the Afghanistan withdrawal catastrophe, as well as the many lives lost and countless millions of dollars of equipment left behind for use by terror groups? This almost renders the entire study worthless and useful only for a bonfire.
Not only was this a massive debacle – it was one of the most colossal military f*ck-ups in modern history and will pay dividends for decades.
Key 11 – Major Foreign/Military Success
Lichtman Edge: Neutral
Captain K Opinion: Agree
Lichtman is correct – this administration has no military successes. It does, as noted above, have every reason to hang its head in shame over what happened in Afghanistan, and it appears a technicality of it having not been on her watch that she doesn’t get tagged for it.
Key 12 – Charismatic Incumbent
Lichtman Edge: Trump
Captain K Opinion: Agree
Harris has so much charisma (sarcasm intended), her only crowds come from A.I. generated imagery and free celebrity concerts. That all came to an end once Trump began calling it out.
Key 13 – Uncharismatic Challenger
Lichtman Edge: Harris
Captain K Opinion: Disagree – Trump
We really can’t get much more subjective than this, but it appears Lichtman is giving an advantage to Harris for not facing a charismatic challenger, meaning Trump. We are literally talking about someone who recently survived an assassination attempt and is still to this day the only President to have never held prior office or served as a general officer before taking over the nation’s top leadership role.
Summary
All in all, I feel more that Lichtman’s keys are an exercise in subjectivity and a waste of time and energy more than I feel right about recalculating a score – because once again, some of these points fall under my own subjectivity.
Out of the 13 Keys, my calculations came out like this:
Trump 7
Harris 0
WTF 3
Neutral 3
Per Lichtman’s rules, the challenger party (Republicans/Trump) wins if it has 6 keys in its favor. Even in this highly subjective exercise, I find Trump with at least 7 of the keys, and can honestly assign none to Harris (most of those that could have arguably gone to Harris fall under the WTF category, and she is still well short of the 8 needed to win in Lichtman’s model even if I give her all 3).
Don’t concern yourself over this model that barely gets her to the top spot with 8 subjective Lichtman keys according to his own belief that the economy is great, inflation is not as bad as Harris says it is, and that the Afghanistan disaster was executed in such a way that would make Napoleon Bonaparte proud.
Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.
Captain my immediate reaction to his prediction was that it's utter bullshit and an obvious attempt to boost Kamala. With the NY sentencing delayed until after the election the dems are running out of "chess" pieces on their board.
Another in the long line of fraudulently designed, and sinisterly executed polls. It’s only a “move the goalposts “ gimmick unless you show your work under each key like you did. These keys are manufactured to be vague, just like Kamala’s word salads