Pelosi Is Famous For Being The First Woman Speaker-- If She Re-Elects Trump By Failing To Impeach Him, She'll Be More Famous For That... And Loathed

Allan Lichtman correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1984. He even predicted Trump would win in 2016. This year he said Trump would win again-- unless Pelosi jumps out of a window on the 48th floor of the Transamerica Pyramid... or in some other way let's go off her insane and unpatriotic and defeatist notion of not impeaching Trump. Lichtman, who's been correct about elections far more often than Pelosi, says unless Trump is impeached, he'll win again-- and that will be on Pelosi's headstone.

"Trump wins again in 2020," he told Chris Cillizza the day before Mueller's televised statement, "unless six of 13 key factors turn against him. I have no final verdict yet because much could change during the next year. Currently, the President is down only three keys: Republican losses in the midterm elections, the lack of a foreign policy success, and the president's limited appeal to voters... Democrats are fundamentally wrong about the politics of impeachment and their prospects for victory in 2020. An impeachment and subsequent trial would cost the president a crucial fourth key-- the scandal key-- just as it cost Democrats that key in 2000. The indictment and trial would also expose him to dropping another key by encouraging a serious challenge to his re-nomination. Other potential negative keys include the emergence of a charismatic Democratic challenger, a significant third-party challenge, a foreign policy disaster, or an election-year recession. Without impeachment, however, Democratic prospects are grim."

Watch that Morning Joe clip on MSNBC from yesterday. Pelosi and Hoyer are screwing this up badly. They want to protect the seats of a bunch of (mostly conservative) freshmen in red districts and instead they're going to bring the whole house down with their geriatric loser ideas. Lichtman told the Morning Joe audience the Democrats have a chance to win but "only if they show boldness and not timidity and move towards an impeachment inquiry. The Democratic leadership"-- that would primarily be Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Hakeem Jeffries, Cheri Bustos-- is wrong... morally and constitutionally, by avoiding impeachment. If you have a constitutional crisis, the constitutional remedy is impeachment. They are also wrong politically. The Democrats seem to be going down the same rathole as 2016 when they believe the polls and think they're going to cruise to victory... The Democrats need to get on the right page politically as well as morally and constitutionally."

The Morning Joe Democratic Party hack-in-residence, Steve Ratner, made a fool of himself by echoing Pelosi's and Hoyer's talking points. Lichtner took off his head and handed it to him.

Qasim Rashid is a Virginia attorney in the midst of a hot campaign for the House of Delegates. He seems to take the idea of anyone being treated as though they are above the law as a personal affront. Last night he told me that "The Congress must fulfill its obligations to protect our nation and the separation of powers. A democratic republic that exempts accountability for anyone, including the President, ceases to live up to its responsibilities and delves into dictatorship."

Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) issued a statement after Mueller's address yesterday: "When the redacted Mueller Report was released, Republicans were quick to try to bury the scandal. Trump and his allies have repeatedly cried the president's innocence and worked hard to laugh off and discredit the investigation into his conduct."

Today, Special Counsel Robert Mueller spoke to the world. His words were very revealing. The key quote:

If we had had confidence that [Donald Trump] clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.

This is far from over. It's time for Congress to do its job. It's time to pick up where the Mueller investigation left off. It's time to begin an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump. I'm fully behind Rep. Rashida Tlaib's call to action, and will do what I can to support her work as we move forward. I just checked, and I'm still only one of 10 members to sign onto Rep. Tlaib's impeachment inquiry resolution. Hopefully, after today's press conference, that will change."

Since Earl brought is up these are the 9 cosponsors to Rashida's H.Res.257:

Al Green (D-TX)
Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)
Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
AOC (D-NY)
Jared Huffman (D-CA)
Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX)
Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
Diana DeGette (D-CO)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)

I know Rashida reached out to Justin Amash. I wonder what he's waiting for. Meanwhile, Tomas Ramos is a community activist in the Bronx, not an attorney. He's running for the open seat next to AOC's that Jose Serrano is leaving. This morning he told that "Mueller made it clear that the president obstructed justice. At this point, anyone that stands by the president when he is obstructing our democracy needs to be put on notice. We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis. We need congress to enact the articles of impeachment now!

Marqus Cole, the progressive Democrat running for the open 7th district seat in the suburbs north of Atlanta, told us today that as a former prosecutor he "swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Right now, we have the Special Counsel telling us directly that if they had the evidence to clear the President of criminal activity they would have. They did not. The Special Counsel is telling us that there is another constitutional mechanism in place to handle this matter. There is. It is time that we let the President know that no person is above the law. It is time that Congress do its duty and open up an impeachment inquiry."

Pelosi says there aren't enough members of the Democratic caucus to pass an impeachment resolution-- too many crass cowardly Josh Gottheimers and Abigail Spanbergers. Pelosi's instinct to always put narrow partisan (self)interests over country and constitution has served her well, but it helps explain a lot of what's wrong with America. Many progressives say she has to be removed-- and fast; she's the other side of the Trump coin. Dazed, confused and inexorably dug-in inside her fetid bunker with Hoyer, Lujan Clyburn Bustos and a other revolting loyalists, she doesn't-- they don't-- get it and she never will. But... these Republican former federal prosecutors do:

The Scientific Basis for Allan Lichtman's "13 Keys to the White House"

Allan Lichtman's 13 Keys as applied to presidential elections since 1860. Note the races where the minimum 8 keys favor the incumbent — 1888, 1948, 1996, 2000. In two of these races, the Electoral College went the other way, as it also did in 2016. We may be headed for another such race (source; click to enlarge).

by Thomas Neuburger

I've recently written two pieces that look ahead to the 2020 presidential election. The first, "A Way-Too-Early Handicapping of the 2020 Presidential Race," examined the composition of the electorate — independent, Democratic, Republican; change-wanting, Trump-wanting, or return-to-"normal"–wanting — and determined that if the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders or someone like him, they would win a strong popular vote victory, something on the order of 54-45%. If, however, they nominate someone not like Sanders, they're risking a much closer race.

The second piece, "A Way-Too-Early Look at Allan Lichtman's 13 Keys to the White House in 2020," looked at historian Allan Lichtman's famous "13 Keys to the White House" with an eye to predicting the 2020 outcome by that method.

There again, the result showed that if the Democrats nominate Bernie Sanders or someone equally inspiring (note, that's not the same as "someone like him"), they would have 9 of the 13 keys, enough to ensure both a popular vote victory and an Electoral College win based on the historical record of the system. If, however, they nominate someone less inspiring, they're again taking their chances.

What that means is this: If not much changes between now and election day to change the keys (for example, if the administration achieves no new foreign policy success) and the Democrats nominate someone uninspiring (denying them the critical 9th key), they would have the bare minimum — 8 of 13 keys — needed to win the popular vote, but the Electoral College would be up for grabs.

In 2016, for example, Lichtman's system predicted that Clinton, with 8 keys, would win the popular vote, which she did, but the Electoral College voted the other way, as it has done in several previous contests with eight-key-only winners, such as Grover Cleveland in 1888 and Al Gore in 2000 (see graphic at top).

The Scientific Basis for Lichtman's Keys

I've since been asked about the scientific basis of Lichtman's method. Is this more than just lucky guessing? The answer is no. What follows is the simplest explanation of why the system works.

It started with a dinner party at Cal Tech in the early 1980s, at which historian Allan Lichtman was seated next to a Russian geophysicist, Vladimir Keilis-Borok, a man who had just devised a system for successfully predicting earthquakes using pattern recognition. Soon the two began comparing notes. Could they find a pattern that marks every election in which the incumbent party retains or loses the White House? Could such a pattern be used for prediction?

Out of those discussions came their initial paper, "Pattern recognition applied to presidential elections in the United States, 1860-1980: Role of integral social, economic, and political traits," which attempted to apply Keilis-Borok's method to U.S. elections.

After a fair amount of testing, they found a pattern that correctly "predicted" (matched the results of) the popular vote in every presidential election from 1864 through 1980. Since then the method has been modified slightly — 13 keys, and slightly different ones, instead of the original 12. Lichtman has since used it to successfully predict the popular vote winner of every election from 1984 to the present. (Lichtman discusses the science behind his keys at greater length here.)

The method works like this. Instead of trying to identify causes — in seismic terms, the geophysical forces that move the earth; in electoral terms, the polling results and issues discussed — the method identifies patterns that indicate general conditions of stability or instability. Politically this means determining if the party in power is in a stable or unstable position relative to the mood of the electorate.

Thus the method involves responding to a series of true-or-false statements like, "The incumbent candidate is the sitting president" (key 3) and "The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal" (key 9). A yes for both questions shows strength for the incumbent party, and indicate stability. A No indicates some weakness.

Lichtman explained this to the Washington Post in 2008:

"We reconceptualized presidential politics in geophysical terms," said Lichtman, who teaches at American University. "We didn't look at it as Reagan versus Carter or Republicans versus Democrats or liberals versus conservatives. Rather, we looked at elections as stability versus upheavals."

Stability, according to their definition, is when the party that is incumbent in the White House -- in this case, the Republican Party -- wins the next presidential election. Upheavals are when the opposition party wins elections.

The researchers found that four markers or "keys" correctly predicted every presidential election over 120 years. These keys were whether the incumbent party's candidate won the presidential nomination on the first ballot with at least two-thirds of the delegate count, the absence of a third-party candidate who won 5 percent or more of the overall vote, the absence of a recession, and the presence of a major policy victory in the previous term. ...

Given that they wanted to play it safe, Keilis-Borok and Lichtman selected nine other keys that increased the confidence with which they could have predicted all the elections between 1860 and 1980.

Note: The original paper tested 12 yes-or-no questions. The method has evolved into 13 statements that could be assessed as true or false. Most discussions of this research refer to the final 13 keys in true-or-false statement form. The definitive version appears in Lichtman's 1991 book, The Keys to the White House.

Why These 13 Keys?

Where did Lichtman and Keilis-Borok get these particular keys? In an article in Analytics Magazine, writer Douglas Samuelson explains (emphasis mine):

Lichtman is quick to point out that his method is based on a solid statistical model that incorporates a test of competing theories of politics, and the prediction results validate some of the theories and contradict others. His method is based on a statistical pattern recognition algorithm for predicting earthquakes, implemented by Russian seismologist Vladimir Keilis-Borok. The highest plurality of the popular vote, not the electoral vote that actually decides the presidency, is the criterion ...

Out of nearly 200 questions, which were all binary (“yes” or “no”) variables, the algorithm picked those that displayed the greatest difference between the proportion of the time the variable was “yes” for years when the incumbent party won and the corresponding proportion for years when the challenging party won, using all U. S. elections from 1860 through 1976 as the training set.

"Displayed the greatest difference between the proportion of the time the variable was “yes” for years when the incumbent party won and the corresponding proportion for years when the challenging party won" means this: Determine which questions show the greatest tendency to be right when the incumbent won and also right when the challenger won.

This is a bit simplified, but imagine that the answer to a given question (a key) was right in 12 elections when the incumbent won and also right in 7 elections when the challenger won. You could assign a differential score of 19 (12+7) to that key. The keys with the highest differential scores would then be selected as, together, identifying the pattern they were looking to find.

Thus the 13 keys in their final form. So far, right every time.
  

A Way-Too-Early Look at Allan Lichtman's 13 Keys to the White House in 2020

by Thomas Neuburger

As a companion to this piece, "A Way-Too-Early Handicapping of the 2020 Presidential Race," I'd like to offer a look at Allan Lichtman's famous 13 keys to the White House and see where the contest stands at this early date.

A quick summary: Lichtman's keys are a series of true-or-false propositions, mainly about the party in power. If five or fewer of the thirteen statements is false — meaning eight or more is true — the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote. If six or more statements are false — meaning seven or fewer are true — the challenger is predicted to win.

Note: In cases where the incumbent party has exactly five negative keys, the Electoral College vote could go either way, depending on the candidate and other circumstances. 

Candidates with exactly 5 negative keys who run stellar or at least highly competent campaigns, even when faced with the very real possibility of losing the electoral college (Truman in 1948, Bill Clinton in 1996) can seal an electoral college victory on top of their popular vote win. Candidates with exactly five negative keys who don't campaign, run a poor campaign, or take their win in certain states for granted (Grover Cleveland in 1888, Al Gore in 2000, and Hillary Clinton in 2016) typically lose the electoral college, even if they do win the popular vote.

The exception, of course, is the corrupt election of 1876. (For more on the science behind the system, click here and scroll down.)

Thirteen Keys to the 2020 Presidential Election

Here are Lichtman's thirteen keys and their way-too-early application to the election of 2020. Remember, if the statement is true, the key favors the Republican. If the statement is false, the key favors the Democrat. The Republican needs to keep the numbers of false statements to five or fewer.

1. 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.

False. In 2016 the Democrats retook the House of Representatives.

2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.

True, at least so far. Lichtman defines "no serious contest" as one in which the incumbent party's nominee holds two-thirds of the convention delegates at the start of the convention. Even if a President Pence is the Republican nominee, I'd expect no serious convention challenge.

3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.

True. This key will also be true if Trump is impeached or resigns and Pence becomes president.

4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.

Unknown and could go either way. This key is defined as true if a single third-party candidate gets at least 5% of the vote. (See here for an explanation of Lichtman's modification of this key with respect to the 2016 election.)

5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

True so far.

6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.

True (see chart here).

7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

True. Consider the Trump administration's China and trade policies.

8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

False. I would discount the great unrest in the press as signalling great general unrest, but still, the desire for change in the electorate could be as great this cycle as it was in 2016. If so, both parties'  candidates will have to be, or pretend to be, for "change." In Trump's case the pitch will be "I have more changing-making left to do."

9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

False. The genuine scandals are numerous and serious.

10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.

True so far, at least in the eyes of the public. Domestic concerns dominate the polling on "most important issues."

11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.

False so far. Could a viable treaty with North Korea turn this key to True? That's uncertain, just as it's uncertain that Trump's war cabinet would allow such a treaty to be signed.

12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.

True. While Lichtman's models and standards for presidential charisma are the two Roosevelts, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, Trump is as wildly popular among his supporters as he is unpopular among his opponents. Let's mark this True.

(In the so-far unlikely event that Mike Pence or anyone other than Trump is the nominee, this key becomes False.)

13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

False if Sanders is the nominee by the same criteria as key 12. (Elizabeth Warren has not recaptured the star power she once had, at least not so far.)

True if Sanders is not the nominee. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Kennedy and Reagan are high bars. (It's highly unlikely that Beto O'Rourke will be the nominee, but if so, this key could turn to False.)

Totals

Our summary so far looks like this:

Key 1. False
Key 2. True so far
Key 3. True
Key 4. Unknown
Key 5. True so far
Key 6. True
Key 7. True
Key 8. False
Key 9. False
Key 10. True so far
Key 11. False so far
Key 12. True
Key 13. True if Sanders is not the nominee

Which yields these totals:

Republicans: 8 true if Sanders is not the nominee; 7 if Sanders is not the nominee.
Democrats: 4 false if Sanders is not the nominee; 5 if he is.

while the third-party key remains very much in doubt. Eight keys is the minimum the incumbent party needs to win the popular vote.

Conclusions

This race stands on a knife edge, at least this early in the contest. If the Democrats nominate someone other than Sanders (or perhaps Warren), the Republicans hold 8 keys, enough to win the popular vote, with the Electoral College in doubt, at least according to Lichtman's system. 

The wildcard keys are these:

Key 2 favors Trump so far. Will there be a primary challenge to Trump? Mark this unlikely.

Key 4 is unknown. Will there be a significant third-party candidate?

Key 5 favors Trump so far. Will there be a recession this year or next? Mark that possible but unlikely; remember, Trump's people control the economy.

Keys 10 and 11 are split between the parties. Will the administration suffer a major foreign or military failure? It hasn't so far. Will it achieve a foreign or military success? It hasn't so far.

And finally, Key 13 favors the Republican if the Democrats nominate any lackluster candidate who runs on an "I'm not Trump, and I'm sorta like Sanders" platform. Mark that likely.

If Lichtman's system is right, the Republicans already have enough to win the popular vote. No recession, a military success (a major peace treaty for example), and a non-charismatic Democratic candidate could turn this squeaker into an Electoral College win for the Republicans as well. Mark me worried.