Historian and Professor Allan Lichtman joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss his legendary "Keys to the White House," why he says President Biden should not leave the 2024 race, and what the pundits and media are getting wrong.
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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.