I didn’t need a magic 8-Ball to predict that I would be writing this post on November 6. Back in July, I noted the absurdity and hubris of this epitome of a progressive-biased historian—but then aren’t they all?—pretending that he sees all amd knows all. Allan Lichtman’s claim to authority is that he has this formula, see, and it allows him to predict with astounding accuracy (9 out of 10 times! Oops, now it’s 9 out of 11 times…) who will win Presidential elections. I wrote in conclusion,
[Lichtman] went on Fox News Sunday to bloviate that if Democratic delegates rebel against President Joe Biden and choose another Democratic nominee, it will spell chaos for the party. Lichtman, who is a progressive Democrat and once ran for the Senate as one, was relatively restrained on Fox News, but on MSNBC, he went full Trump Deranged, saying that if the Democrats don’t run Biden, it will mean Trump will win (his system says so!) and that will be the end of democracy!
Those are Lichtman’s warped priorities: he thinks it’s essential that his party wins even if it means electing an obviously deteriorating old man who won’t be able to do the job of President along with everything else that implies. A shadow government run by unelected apparatchiks, for example. He’s a Presidential historian: he knows about Woodrow Wilson, and still he thinks its in the best interest of the nation to vote for that. Lichtman is warning the MSNBC types—you know, morons—that all that matters is keeping The Party in control. Having a virtual basket case in the White House? That’s not a disaster to this guy, not like he says an open Democratic convention would be.
The professor’s shtick radiates poor civic values, sickening priorities, irresponsible advice and worst of all for a history professor, a rotten historical perspective. I have no interest in his prognostications and neither should anyone else. Lichtman should go away now, coming out of his hole in four years like Puxatawny Phil to fascinate the same kind of gullible suckers with his election predictions as are entranced by systems to win state lotteries.
Wonder of wonders, despite his prognostication of doom if Biden left the ticket, once Kamala Harris was installed as Joe’s replacement, Lichtman’s infallible “system” found that she was going to win the 2024 election. That was passing strange, since his system didn’t include categories for babbling empty-suits who alternate between taking two diametrically opposing positions simultaneously and running on “My opponent is Hitler” platforms.
One might justifiably think that, as as a historian, Lichtman would give the only precedent for a defeated single term President coming back four tears later and running for President again significant weight. Grover Cleveland won, after all. Nope. The professor was certain that his formula was correct. Not only was the professor wrong, he was spectacularly wrong. “Right now after a very long night I am taking some time off to assess why I was wrong and what the future holds for America,” Lichtman told USA TODAY this morning.
It’s obvious why he was wrong: bias made him stupid. Gee, who could have guessed that an incompetent candidate chosen without winning a single delegate or running in a single Presidential primary, with the lowest popularity numbers of any Vice-President and a strategy that depended on not letting voters know who she was or what she believed, wouldn’t defeat a previous President of the United States with a devoted, even fanatic, following?
Well, there’s me, and, oh, many thousands of other people with a passing knowledge of history and a modicum of common sense.
Here’s a tip Professor Lichtman: add “Terrible candidates running incompetent campaigns tend to lose” to the factors you consider next time. Trust me: it works.
What a jerk he is. And I am shocked the two times he made a mistake, he picked the Dem over the Republican. Ooopsie! And then there’s the media’s favorite moniker for him: “Nostradamus.” Give me a break. I hope he retires immediately from American University.
And what about the rest of the polling industrial complex? Their product is worse than useless. They should be barred from charging for their services by the FTC as fraudsters.
I think the “Nostradamus” moniker strangely appropriate, since the idea that the famous French astrologer actually correctly predicted anything seems more popular myth than fact.