Cenk gets schooled and crushed by top US Historian!

[Raze]

17 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Approval ratings don't matter. Even Michael Moore who has been a life long political activist and foresaw Trump winning in 2016 and Biden winning in 2020, says that approval ratings have become worthless, especially in this day and age. Otherwise, the Dems would've lost badly in 2022 midterms under Biden's watch.

No, again, he predicted the 2000 election correctly and proved to US commissions on Civil Rights how corrupt right-wingers on SCOTUS rigged it for Bush. It was an incredibly close election and it was legitimately not handled fairly by the courts and many ballots were thrown out through voter suppression. Read it up on the official government website online.

Furthermore, ever since 2000, the electoral college has increasingly skewed more and more and more unfairly in the favor of GOP presidential nominee winning the electoral college without having to win popular vote. That's why Lichtman started only predicting the winner of the electoral college in 2004.

Clinton had worse approvals than Trump and lost to him, Trump had worse approvals than Biden and lost to him.

The electoral votes in Florida in 2000 were decided by a extremely small amount of votes, no accurate model can predict that, at best it should call it 50/50. His excuse was that he predicted the popular vote with Gore won by a better margin, but that disputed his 2016 prediction. Lichtman said the keys are based on popular vote as late as Oct 2016

this is how his keys match up for Biden. This has nothing to do with “data”, it’s entirely subjective 

- why does he list midterm gains as an advantage for Trump? You could argue democrats made gains because they picked up a small amount of seats

- why is no primary contest a win for Biden? There was technically a primary. It was small and largely silenced, but it did happen.

- why is no third party a win for Biden? RFK is set to do the best a third party candidate has done in a long time, it’s looking like Hreen Party and Cornell West will probably do better than progressive third parties have done in a long time as well

- why is strong economy a win for Biden? Most Americans view the current economy as negative 

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/23/views-of-the-nations-economy-may-2024/

- why is no social unrest a win for Biden? We are having plenty of protests on Israel 

- why is no scandal a win for Biden? Hunter Biden’s laptop was a scandal. The Democrats act about Biden’s health collapsing at the debate was a scandal.

- why is uncharismatic opponent a win for Biden? Trump is highly charismatic. His fist pump after surviving the attempt on his life is the biggest example of political charisma in perhaps our entire lifetimes.

The keys are also way to limited. What if a presidential candidate has all of these on lock, but comes on tv and airs a video of himself abusing children, by your logic since he only loses the scandal key he must still win. But that makes no sense, one shocking thing can overpower everything else.

 

Edited July 21 by Raze

[aurum]

I would like to know how Lichtman decides who wins each key. How is he objectively determining who is charismatic and who isn't? With the exception of 1-4, the winner of all these keys could easily be challenged.

@Hardkill maybe I'm not familiar enough with his model, but I think @Raze is right about this. The winner of each key is definitely subjective. So I struggle to see this as objective science.

Also, is he looking at international elections? What about the data from those?

In general, it's hard for me to imagine you're going to be able to boil down something as complex as a presidential election down to 13 keys.

Lichtman may have a good record, and maybe it is the best prediction model we have. But frankly predicting 10 elections does not prove the efficacy of his system or make it objective science.  We would need way more data for that.

Open to counterarguments.

[Hardkill]

18 hours ago, Raze said:

Clinton had worse approvals than Trump and lost to him, Trump had worse approvals than Biden and lost to him.

Lichtman said the keys are based on popular vote as late as Oct 2016

this is how his keys match up for Biden. This has nothing to do with “data”, it’s entirely subjective 

- why does he list midterm gains as an advantage for Trump? You could argue democrats made gains because they picked up a small amount of seats

- why is no primary contest a win for Biden? There was technically a primary. It was small and largely silenced, but it did happen.

- why is no third party a win for Biden? RFK is set to do the best a third party candidate has done in a long time, it’s looking like Hreen Party and Cornell West will probably do better than progressive third parties have done in a long time as well

- why is no social unrest a win for Biden? We are having plenty of protests on Israel 

- why is no scandal a win for Biden? Hunter Biden’s laptop was a scandal. The Democrats act about Biden’s health collapsing at the debate was a scandal.

- why is uncharismatic opponent a win for Biden? Trump is highly charismatic.

 

- Even though the Dems won the midterms overall, they still lost more US seats in the US House in 2022, than they had in either 2018 and 2020. All of the US House elections in each midterms best represent whether the majority of people are more inclined to favor Republican control of government. That's just one key.

- To get the no-contest key, the incumbent party candidate running for president or the actual incumbent candidate running for re-election has win more than 65% of the votes and delegates in the primaries. Biden won about 87% of the total popular vote and almost all of the delegates by the end of the 2024 Dem primaries.

- Yeah, the third party might actually turn against Biden and his party, if RFK jr. gets on enough ballot and polls at least 10% on average. We have to wait and see until mid to late August.

- There has always been all kind of protests in certain parts of the country since the beginning of our country. However, in order to turn the social unrest key against the party in power, there has to be such historic widespread unrest to the degree that occurred in 2020 because of the BLM riots, widespread cabin fever from COVID, and Trump's extremely divisive and inflammatory rhetoric during that year. Despite their being some notable protests on the war in Gaza during the late spring and early summer, they've never reached anywhere near the level of social unrest we had in either 1968 over the war in Vietnam and racial riots out in many streets around the country. Plus, the Israeli protests have been petering out. Though Lichtman is still waiting until sometime in August, which is the month when the Dem convention will happen, to make sure that there's no explosion of widespread social unrest before he calls that key 100% good for Biden and his party.

- The Scandal key flips against the party holding the white house if the president himself or anybody else within his administration was truly involved in a scandal. According to his book on his system, "Scandals reach the threshold needed to topple key 9 only when there is bipartisan recognition of the problems besetting an administration. The voting public heavily discounts allegations of wrongdoing that appear to be the result of partisanship by the opposition party. On several occasions, revelations of wrongdoing became lost in the partisan wrangling of election years."

Bill clinton's sex scandal towards the end of his presidency is a prime example of that. Another example, was during the 2nd Truman administration (1949 to 1953) whereas number of government officials who worked for Truman, got busted for being involved a number of scandals. Truman didn't handle these situations well and because he was their boss, Truman was held very responsible for having this happen in his administration under his watch. Both Republicans and Democrats official throughout the whole country totally agreed that Truman should be blamed for all of the corruption that went on in his administration. Hunter Biden doesn't work in Joe Biden's administration and he's also not the one running for president. Hunter has never even been a politician before. Biden's age or supposed health issues is not a crime and it's certainly not an act of corruption. I am getting tired of this ableism and ageism. By your logic, you might as well have said that when first Obama ran for president in 2008, that him being a black presidential nominee was a scandal. You might as well as say that when Hillary Clinton became the official Democratic nominee for president in 2016, that her being a woman presidential nominee was a scandal.

- To get either of two charisma/national hero keys, a presidential nominee has to demonstrate such broad exceptional appeal that transcends all parties and reaches across the political spectrum. Trump has a certain kind of charisma. However, he has only ever appealed to the Republican/conservative base. He lost the popular by a lot in 2016 and even much more so in 2020. Moreover, for whatever worth approval ratings have in terms of winning elections, Trump never had approval ratings average of 50% or higher during any point in his presidency. At least Biden started out his presidency with higher than 50% approval rating average. Only Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Reagan, and Obama in 2008 won each of the respective charisma keys for each of the presidential elections they ran in. Each of them have higher than 50% approval rating averages at various times during each of their presidencies and each of the won popular vote in each of their presidential elections. Grant and Eisenhower were the only two war presidents since 1860 who won those key based more on them being these once or twice in a century heroic war leaders as top commanders of the whole US military during the Civil War and WWII respectively. Without the incredible leadership of General Grant during the Civil War then Lincoln, the Republican party, and the Union probably would not have won that war and freed all of the slaves. Without the historic leadership of General Eisenhower during the WWII, the US and the rest of the Allies might've very well have lost the war to the Nazis and the Axis Powers.

Edited July 21 by Hardkill

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, aurum said:

I would like to know how Lichtman decides who wins each key. How is he objectively determining who is charismatic and who isn't? With the exception of 1-4, the winner of all these keys could easily be challenged.

@Hardkill maybe I'm not familiar enough with his model, but I think @Raze is right about this. The winner of each key is definitely subjective. So I struggle to see this as objective science.

Also, is he looking at international elections? What about the data from those?

In general, it's hard for me to imagine you're going to be able to boil down something as complex as a presidential election down to 13 keys.

Lichtman may have a good record, and maybe it is the best prediction model we have. But frankly predicting 10 elections does not prove the efficacy of his system or make it objective science.  We would need way more data for that.

Open to counterarguments.

I understand where you're coming from. A lot of people have felt that way before. However, my last post explains a lot about some of the keys that @Raze that raze asked. The keys don't work for elections in other countries because each country's election system is different. However, keys 10 and 11, the no major foreign/military failure and the major foreign/military success keys do involve measuring how successful and how unsuccessful the US government and the president's administration has been with handling military/foreign affairs that occur under the watch of the sitting president.

Not only has he predicted 10 elections in a row. He also used the very same keys in the very same way for EVERY presidential election from 1860 to 1980 in retrospect with a 99.99% success rate as well. *1876 was another stolen election.

You gotta read the 13 keys book or watch the Lichtman YT channel. You'll find the key to be surprisingly very objective. Also, his book give highly relevant background history for each presidential election since 1860. Plus, studying US History in-depth really helps one understand why and how the people in our country have elected our leaders ever since around 1856, which was the year that all adult white male laymen in the US were granted the right to vote.

Edited July 21 by Hardkill