00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now as a historian
00:08and professor at American University, Alan Lichtman. Professor Lichtman, thank you so
00:12much for joining me. My pleasure. President Biden has continuously vowed to stay in the
00:19race after a devastating debate performance nearly two weeks ago. Brought you on because
00:24you have successfully predicted many of our latest presidents at based on your 13 keys
00:30to the White House. So based on that criteria, what do you think President Biden should do?
00:37You know, one thing that all of those critics, the operatives, the politicians, the journalists,
00:43the pundits, the pollsters who are urging President Biden to step down, the one thing
00:48they have in common is zero successful track record in predicting elections. My keys to the
00:55White House, in contrast, have been successful for 40 years since I first predicted Ronald Reagan's
01:03real election in April 1982 in the midst of what was then the worst recession since the Great
01:10Depression and Reagan's approval ratings were 43. Unlike the pundits and the political operatives,
01:18the keys actually gauge how elections really work, which are votes up or down on the strength
01:24and performance of the White House party. And the way it works is if six or more of the keys
01:30go against the White House party, they are predicted losers. And the keys show the Democrats'
01:37best chance is with Biden continuing to run rather than with the critics who have no credibility in
01:43election prediction. What I'm going to do to step down and have a big party brawl about who his
01:49successor should be. If Biden ticks off my incumbency key and the party contest key, he won
01:5787% of the primary vote. That means of the remaining 11 keys, six would have to fall to
02:04predict the Democrats' defeat. We follow the critics, we lose the incumbency key for the
02:10Democrats. They lose the party contest key. That means only four more keys would have to fall to
02:16predict their defeat. But look outside the keys, look at history. In over 120 years since 1900,
02:24the White House party has never, I repeat, never won under the conditions the critics are trying
02:30to create. An open seat with no incumbent running and an internal party contest. In effect, they are
02:39trying to recreate the conditions of 2016 that elected Donald Trump in the first place.
02:45So what you're saying politically for Democrats, their best play is to let this new cycle run its
02:52course, have President Biden stay in the race. That's right. But I have a plan B.
02:59But yeah, these foolhardy critics prevail, and they force Biden to step down,
03:08which, you know, I certainly don't advocate, but let's say it happens. The worst thing that could
03:13happen would be if he stays on as president, lose the incumbency key, and there's a party fight.
03:19But the plan B would be he resigns the presidency, saying it's for the good of the country,
03:26which creates a contrast with Donald Trump, who's only in this for himself. That makes Harris the
03:33president. She then wins the incumbency key, just like Lyndon Johnson did in 1964, when he became
03:42president after the assassination of Kennedy, or Gerald Ford in 1976, after he became president,
03:50when Richard Nixon resigns, a direct analog. And then as the incumbent president, she could become
03:56the consensus nominee. So he'd also kick off the contest key. So that is the only reasonable plan
04:05B for the Democrats. Are you listening, Gerald Nadler, you know, one of the most influential
04:12Democrats in my old debate partner from Stuyvesant High School in New York City?
04:17Well, I hope he's listening to you just for viewership purposes. But with all due respect,
04:24Lyndon Johnson did have more time as an incumbent. Let's say the plan B works. Kamala Harris is
04:31president for just a few months. Is that enough for that incumbency key to really stick?
04:41When you read my book, you'll see the definition is you're the sitting president. There's no time
04:47limit. You know, Gerald Ford wasn't the sitting president all that long, obviously much longer
04:52than Harris or Lyndon Johnson, you know, both were less than half a term. So that would not
05:00affect the key one way or the other. And you also can follow the definitions of the keys and
05:11ask questions on my live show every Thursday at 9 p.m. at Alan Lichtman YouTube. That's 9 p.m.
05:18Eastern every Thursday at Alan Lichtman YouTube. Let's talk about these keys and dive a little
05:24further because they cover everything from the economy to scandal incumbency. We hit incumbency.
05:30Let's start with the economy, because one of the keys is short term economic success as well as
05:35long term economy. And I want to talk about voter perception versus reality, because by the numbers,
05:42the economy is doing well. Voter sentiment, though, voters don't feel that they feel that
05:47they were better off four years ago, the majority of them. So how much does what matters more,
05:53reality or perception? I created those keys so I wouldn't have to depend on a federal
06:02polls. They were objective measures. Whether there's a recession in the election year,
06:07the National Bureau of Economic Research gauges that. I don't. I'm not an economist. And the
06:12long term economy simply compares the actual statistics on real growth to that of previous.
06:20You cannot base predictions on people's sentiments as expressed in the polls,
06:28because the polls are snapshots. They're not predictors. People's perceptions change over time.
06:36And, you know, they may lie to pollsters. They may not have focused on the questions.
06:41No one has ever successfully developed a prediction model solely based on
06:48ephemeral voter sentiment polls. It doesn't work. Let's now move on to scandal. President Biden,
06:57as we know, had a pretty disastrous debate performance. He even said as much in an
07:02interview with George Stephanopoulos a little bit over a week ago, less than two weeks ago.
07:08And both parties have questions regarding his mental fitness, his acuity. And there has been
07:14a growing sense from both Democrats and Republicans that there has been a concerted effort from top
07:20White House aides to conceal President Biden's mental fitness. Do you think this qualifies as
07:26any type of scandal? No, scandal has to involve fundamental corruption, like we saw in Watergate
07:34or Donald Trump's attempts to subvert and overturn the 2020 election. No precedent has ever been
07:43transparent about their health, starting with George Washington and running through every other
07:49American president, you know, including Ronald Reagan, JFK, FDR, Grover Cleveland, you name it.
07:58So, no, that is not a scandal. And the other thing, of course, is, you know, we talk about
08:05the disastrous debate. Let me say a few things about that. One, it's not the most disastrous
08:11debate in Democratic parties. We forget, because of the terrible media coverage, that a third of
08:18respondents thought Biden won. Contrast that with Obama's first debate against Mitt Romney. Only 20
08:25percent of respondents thought that Obama won. And we've got the same kind of headlines,
08:32panic within the Democratic Party, campaign in free fall. And the swing in the polls was much
08:39greater than the swing we saw after Biden's debate. Romney went from seven points down among
08:46likely voters to four points up. And just like the pundits pronouncing Biden dead, the pundits
08:53pronounced Obama dead. You know, Romney was going to win. The polls showed, you know, he's way ahead.
08:58And guess what? Obama won an Electoral College landslide with 332 votes to 206 for Romney.
09:10That's why you've got to be so careful. Plus, how much of the polls are reflecting, you know,
09:16the horrific coverage of the mainstream media? You know, there's an old saying that I always subscribe
09:23to. It's not just the evil people who wreak havoc on this world. It's the good people who don't do
09:28enough to stop them. Certainly, it's perfectly legitimate to focus on Biden. But it's an almost
09:35exclusive focus on Biden. Why wasn't there at least an equal focus on the disastrous
09:41Donald Trump debate where he tried to lie his way to the presidency? Huge lies.
09:47Do you think, do you think that is, Professor, do you think,
09:52Let me finish. The media is utterly complicit with Donald Trump. And if Donald Trump wins,
10:00the media is going to be really, really sorry, because among other things that this
10:05authoritarian will do will be to eliminate press freedom. Professor, with all due respect,
10:11I mean, the media has coverage. President Trump's over 30 lies. I mean, that was obviously
10:18overshadowed by President Biden's performance. Do you think that it would have gotten more
10:23coverage if President Biden would have been able to properly rebut him while he was on stage?
10:30Absolutely. As I said, there are good reasons to cover Biden. But, you know, I get these news
10:39feeds and it's at least five to one or more on Biden versus Trump. And here you are falling
10:50into the Donald Trump trap, which makes you in the media complicit. Oh, we know about Donald
10:56Trump's lies. You know, we've covered that. And so you become inert to it. You become complacent
11:03about it. You know, democracy is precious. And like all precious things, it can be destroyed.
11:09The golden age of democracy after World War One saw more than two dozen democracies. By the 1940s,
11:16that had been cut more than a half. Then you had a new golden age at the end of the 20th century.
11:22And now that is being destroyed. So this notion, oh, we all know about Donald Trump's lies. We
11:28don't need to emphasize it. You're falling right into the trap. Professor, with all due respect,
11:35I mean, I have covered President or President Trump, his trials, the lies very thoroughly.
11:43But as a job of the media, it's not my job to get President Biden elected. It's rather my job to call
11:50the balls and the strikes. And as I see them, do you agree?
11:56Completely. But you don't call the strikes for Donald Trump in the debate.
12:00All the focus has been on Biden. As I said, you've fallen into oh, we've already covered his
12:05lies. We know about that. I'm talking about covering the debate and focusing on how Donald
12:12Trump lied one lie for every one minute to 20 to 30 seconds of speaking time, how Donald Trump
12:21said he would not accept the results of a fair election, how Donald Trump said he would use his
12:28presidency as personal revenge. Look, the vast majority of the American people didn't see the
12:34debate. So they're taking their take on the debate from the media, which overwhelmingly
12:41focuses on Biden with almost no focus on Trump's performance in the debate because the media has
12:50fallen into the Trump trap. Oh, we know about Trump. You know, these things are baked in.
12:55We don't have to worry about them. What did you think of President Biden's performance,
13:02though? Because you did compare it to Obama's performance in 2012. And I have seen that
13:08comparison, except President Obama, he could have had a dusty, a bad performance.
13:14Do you think that President Biden did better?
13:22The polls say yes. It's not just for me to judge. Thirty three percent thought Biden won the debate.
13:28And you'd never know that from following the media coverage. You would think everyone thought,
13:33you know, Biden lost the debate. Only 20 percent thought Obama won the debate. And the swing of
13:39the polls was much bigger. My point is not to compare who is better or worse. You know, it's
13:45different times, different. But to make the point that these snap judgments based on one debate,
13:51you know, can be so horribly misleading. What is the real Biden? Biden who stumbled in the debate
13:58or the Biden who was excellent in the State of the Union, you know, not just on the teleprompter,
14:04but in dealing with the hecklers and ad libbing in roughing and, you know, being off the cuff.
14:10You know, it was very, very strong performance or the strong Biden in the rallies. Now, think about
14:15this. What would happen if Biden and this could be very possible, achieves a ceasefire and a hostage
14:24release in the Middle East? That would, again, shake things up fundamentally. And all of these
14:31snap judgments from these people have no track record in predicting elections are going to be
14:36standing on their head. We are, as many people say, in an unprecedented time right now. Many
14:44people have said that debate was unprecedented. You disagree. But do you do you think the keys
14:50stand up to this time now, knowing that we have all of these factors in there?
14:59Excellent question. And I'll answer it in a few ways. One, every four years, people say to me,
15:05you have to change your keys. We have an African-American right. Never had that. We
15:10have a woman running. Never had that. We have social media. We have the unique situations of
15:162024. And my answer is twofold. One, you can't change a model on the fly. That's a recipe for
15:23error. Two, the keys are very robust. Retrospectively, they go all the way back to 1860.
15:30You know, when women didn't vote, blacks were enslaved or an agricultural economy. There were
15:35no polls, no automobiles, no jet planes, fundamentally different demography, society,
15:42economy, politics. Finally, you know, I'm not so arrogant as to claim that, you know, nothing
15:50outside the keys can be so unprecedented to shake things up outside the context of the keys.
15:57Absolutely. I'm not psychic Gene Dixon with a crystal ball. I'm not Speaker Mike Johnson who
16:03claims the almighty speaks to him. My system is based on history. And we do have some very
16:09extraordinary situations. We have one candidate on the one hand about whom there are legitimate
16:15questions about his capabilities. And we have a convicted felon who is directly threatened to
16:23destroy American democracy. You know, he said, I'll be a dictator only on day one. Well, every dictator
16:29in the history of the world who's been a dictator on day one has been a dictator forever. So we do
16:35have some very extraordinary situations outside the context of the keys. I don't change my keys.
16:42I can't do that. But I do recognize that I'm not so arrogant as to claim nothing else could affect
16:49an election. What keys do you think are still up in the air? As President Biden has said again
16:57in a letter to Congress, he's not leaving the race. He said it again on Morning Joe today.
17:02So as of now, it does look like it's going to be President Biden versus former President Trump.
17:08What keys are up in the air today?
17:11Yeah, great question. Remember, the keys are always measured against the White House party.
17:18The opposition doesn't win or lose keys. And if six or more go against the White House party,
17:24they're predicted losers. Right now, Biden is definitively down two keys. He won the mandate
17:31based on losses in the U.S. House in 2022. And key 12, incumbent charisma. He's no FDR
17:39or Teddy Roosevelt. And one of the four shaky keys that your audience should follow,
17:45third party. And my basic rule of thumb, it's the only point in which I have to use the polls
17:51because I don't know what the final result is going to be, obviously. But I don't just take
17:57the polls at face value. We have the Lickman wasted vote syndrome. I love you, RFK Jr.
18:03Can't win so I'll vote for you. So I have the rule of halves. He's got a poll of 5% or more,
18:10which means in the pre-election polls, he's got to stabilize at 10% or more. Social unrest will
18:16be a new explosion comparable to what we saw in the 60s or during the Black Lives Matter movement.
18:22And finally, foreign slash military failure and success, which are going to turn on what
18:29happens in the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine, as I said, at least in the short term,
18:36the thing to look for that could change the keys and change the narrative and shift the polls again
18:43would be if Biden manages to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage release.
18:51Professor Alan Lichtman, thank you so much for the conversation. As the race continues to develop,
18:56I hope you come back on and we can talk about the keys and as they shake out,
19:01as the race goes on. Thank you so much. Thank you.
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