Editor's Blog
Historian Who Predicts Presidents Says Biden Can 'Absolutely' Win In 2024

President Joe Biden

Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

On the eve of Joe Biden's State of the Union address, amid a chorus of Democratic bedwetters, the historian who has accurately predicted every presidential race over the past 40 years says that the president "absolutely" can win in November.

Indeed, Allan Lichtman, the distinguished professor of history at American University whose methods of election analysis have proved successful for decades, went even further in a British Times Radio interview on Super Tuesday. While acknowledging that "it's way too early to make a final prediction," he said, "a lot would have to go wrong for Joe Biden to lose this election. I absolutely think Joe Biden can win a second term."

Biden can ‘absolutely’ win the US election | Professor Allan Lichtmanyoutu.be

Lichtman dismissed recent polls, several of which have shown Trump leading Biden. "Take the early polls and do with them what the great British philosopher David Hughes said you should do with works of superstition – consign them to the flames," said the erudite professor. "They have absolutely no predictive value. There is so much yet to come."

In 2016, he was among a tiny minority of analysts who predicted that the Republican would win, and received a signed photo from Trump after the election. He told The Sun newspaper that he doesn't expect any such appreciative gesture from Trump in November 2024. (The prospective GOP nominee may also recall that Lichtman wrote a book calling for his impeachment in 2017.)

As outlined in a Newsmax article on Lichtman, his keys to victory include"

  • Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. (Not so in 2024, but Democrats beat the "red wave" in 2022 and are near parity.)
  • Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
  • Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
  • Third party: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
  • Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
  • Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
  • Policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
  • Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
  • Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
  • Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
  • Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
  • Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
  • Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

"Based upon the keys, a lot of keys would have to turn, over the next few months, against Joe Biden to predict his defeat," as Lichtman explained to Times Radio.

"By running, Joe Biden wins the incumbency key, one of my keys, he wins the party contest key because there's no battle. That's two off the top. Six more would have to go against him to predict his defeat.

"[If] Joe Biden doesn't run, they lose incumbency, they lose the party contest because there's no heir apparent and only four keys would have to fall to predict a Democrat defeat."

Lichtman is a serious scholar and acclaimed author who has written books on many topics, including an important 2008 history of the right, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement.

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Evidence Of GOP Complicity In Kremlin Assault On America Is Now Overwhelming

Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the G-8 Summit in Helsinki, Finland in 2018

On February 23, a federal judge in California ordered marshals to seize Alexander Smirnov at his lawyers' office only days after he had been released on bail by a different judge, with the clear implication that he might be preparing to flee the country. Smirnov is the much touted prime witness in the House Republican impeachment campaign against Joe Biden, accusing the president of having taken $5 million in bribes from Ukrainian oligarchs. It's all a lie manufactured by Russian intelligence.

Smirnov's initial arrest was ordered by special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed Republican investigating Hunter Biden, who has indicted the star witness for fabricating his entire story and lying to the FBI. In subsequent court filings, the prosecutor charged that the lies transmitted by Smirnov originated with Russian spies.In other words, the number one Republican witness in the public and repeated smearing of President Biden -- on the floor of Congress and in right-wing media -- was a knowing conduit for Kremlin disinformation. The intent is nothing less than to help elect Trump again.

What makes this scandal so much worse -- and so embarrassing to Johnson, if he were capable of shame -- is that Smirnov's deception emanated from the much broader Russian penetration of American politics that began ... when?

Perhaps with that Trump Tower meeting in 2015, when Donald Trump Jr. enthusiastically welcomed the idea of a Russian dossier on Hillary Clinton from a Russian intelligence operative. And then it continued with the Kremlin's cyber assault against Clinton in 2016, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort's secret cooperation with a Russian spy named Konstantin Kilimnik. After Trump became president, he withheld weapons from Ukraine while demanding a phony probe of Biden. Trump's blackmail attempt triggered his first impeachment.

Along the way, a gang of Trump associates led by Rudy Giuliani worked with various Putin stooges in Ukraine and elsewhere to invent mendacious nonsense about the Bidens. Giuliani worked closely with Putin crony Andriy Derkach and other dubious characters, who were later indicted for attempting to interfere in the 2020 election.

For years, it has been blindingly obvious that the "investigation" of Joe Biden and Ukraine emanated not from any legitimate source but directly from this country's enemies. And yet while those accusers were repeatedly exposed and discredited, congressional Republicans insisted on pursuing the bogus case invented in Moscow.

But Johnson's undermining of American security has gone well beyond the assistance he and Republicans have provided to the Kremlin in subverting American democracy. Now refusing to fund U.S. military assistance to Ukraine in its courageous struggle against Russian invaders, they have helped Putin gain a critical victory in the battle of Avdiivka and jeopardized the Western alliance that is fundamental to European and American security. Johnson has admitted he's taking his orders from Trump, who worships Putin. The cowardice of Johnson and the Republicans has become crucial to Putin and his savage war.

Johnson has his own little Russian secrets. The speaker must still explain the laundered campaign funds from Konstantin Nikolaev, a Russian oligarch and confederate of confessed convicted Kremlin spy agent Maria Butina. She served a prison sentence here after the exposure of her successful scheme to penetrate the National Rifle Association and other right-wing groups, including some of the "Christian nationalist" outfits that Johnson promotes.

What attracts extremists like the House speaker -- and his puppet master Trump -- to the Russian dictator who looms above them is an authoritarian political orientation that smells of fascism. Putin is a threat from without, and they are a threat from within.