an assassination attempt, the Republican convention, a complete 180 in the Democratic presidential c Add to that yesterday's historic global prisoner swap and today's economic we'll call it rough day in the markets. And that's just been the last 20 Can any of that really tell us what may happen in November? Well, let's bring in Albuquerque presidential historian, distinguished professor at American University.
Alan, you're known for for your to predicting who's going to win the white House. You've correctly predicted nearly every two presidential winner since 1984. not going to tick through all the keys here, but what stands out to you in terms of what's happened in the last three weeks, particularly as Kamala Harris has become the Democratic What is so amazing is how little has changed on the The keys are the North Star.
They're not affected by any of t Campaign events. The keys tap into the structure of how presidential elections wo As votes up or down on the. Come out with Biden stepping down, they lose the incumbency key.
But the Democrats finally got sm and united around Kamala Harris. And that means they preserve the contest key. So they've only lost one key, which still puts the Democrats in a good position for reelectio A lot would have to go wrong for them to lose, which I've been saying for month And none of these campaign event change that whatsoever.
You know, what's interesting is if you spoke to Democrats, they the president was in a bad posit Clearly, the president kind of c that on some level as well, when he decided, to drop out, you were saying the day before he dropped out, like the based on your keys and how you're looking at the ra what you're saying about individual events, not shifting things that he had a very good chance to win. Absolutely. Because he secured both the incumbency key and the contest.
Look, I'm not a physician. I'm not going to comment on his or physical health, which could operate outside the But leaving that aside, he secures those two keys. That means six of the remaining 11 would have had to fall to predict his defeat.
Extremely unlikely. Harris secures one of those two but now five of the remaining 11 would have to fall to predict he Very unlikely. She's also helped the Democrats on the third party key, making it less likely that people will look to, RFK Jr And with Biden out of the campaign spotlight, that would make it less likely there's going to be any kind of social unrest through protests.
You know, two of the keys are economy rela short term and long term. We know the economy is number one issue for voters. the Biden campaign had a messagi They thought it was a messaging in talking about the economy, both the macro, numbers themselves, but also their accomplishments.
Do you think the vice president and her team can do better on th The Democrats have been abysmal at messaging for a very long time, really going back to the Obama administration. You know, he was very successful, but the Democrats lost everythin during the Obama years. I do think Harris has an opportu to reset the conversation about the economy, and there's a lot that she could talk about in a positive way.
But you got to boil it down to a compelling message. Republicans have been great in that Democrats have been terribly deficient. before I let you go, I got to ask because I've been following with interest.
you and Nate Silver, the statistician known for his own electorate. election forecasting don't seem to get along, at least on social media. What's the what's the deal with Really simple.
The keys can fall into place. Early in 2010, I predicted that Obama would get reelected and that, you know, the very difficult to prove to predict election out of the b 30 page attack on me saying you can't predict this ea being a professor, I responded t 30 page response, which boiled down to the idea I you can't because I tapped into the structure of elections. You look at ephemeral polls, which are useless at this point.
I think ultimately Nate came around to agree with me. I wrote him a very nice email saying, let's write a joint article about how two different, predictors came around to the same viewpoint. Never heard a thing from him.
He's a clerk. He just compiles polls, and then he comes up with these phony probabilities, which are not based on real probabilities. Hillary Clinton has a 78% chance for so to win.
Then she loses and he says, see, I told you she had a 20%, 22% chance to los He can never be right, and he can never be wrong because he lives and dies with the ephemeral polls. It is a it is a very real beast. That's number four.
and Nate obviously has this fore this modeling, newest version of it that came out as well a couple of days ago. Professor Alan, like, I always appreciate your time, m Thanks so much. Anytime, Phil.
All right, Allison. You heard Alan Lichtman. We didn't get, like, the official final prediction, but very clearly is leaning with his keys.
in the Harris direction, it seem What did you think of that? Well, I mean, if we took a snaps right now, the momentum is definitely with the Harris campaign, I think, rather than leaning into predict I just want to kind of celebrate what today means. It's the first time a woman and a woman of color, a black woman, is going to be at the top of the ticket.
One of my icons, Shirley Chishol who I really went into politics learning about her. she was only on the ballot in 14 but this time it's different. And so I think that may be in some of the predictions that this feels different than it has before.
It feels different than 2016. But today is special. and I hope all Americans can appreciate the progress that this country has had on a day like today.
Shi you know Harrison, a running mat They're scheduled to go on tour starting on Tuesday. I think you mentioned she knows the importance of a governing partner who she's going to be with. She's the vice president.
do you think we get the pick right before then? We're all trying to read tea lea How do you think this works? I think we're either going to ge Monday night or sometime on Tues I don't know that she's going to and at the rally, announce the candidate there, but the the main key, like time crunch that we have right now is the DNC delegates can continue voting until Monday evening at 6 eastern.
And so she's going to wait until that process finishes before she decides to to announce her VP pick. I think it could be shortly shortly thereafter. And I'm hoping that sources will when exactly it's going to happe as I think every reporter is, but I think will probably most l see it Tuesday ahead of the rally in Philadelph which I'll be at.
And Brian, what do you think this is coming as a politico, not as a Partizan Yeah. Listen I think it's going to it' going to have their moment. it's certainly there's going to be a lot of eye The introduction is going to be But you know, I think at the end of the day we're still, you know, just under 100 days ou You have plenty of time to sort of define this race.
I think Kamala Harris is trying to sort of get her redefining moment. And Republicans are going to spend a lot of mone you know, defining her as they k I mean, she's, you know, from our standpoint, we feel that, her record with Biden isn't that much greater. And and you, you know, Lichtman talked about the keys.
At the end of the day, Lichtman still thought, you know, Joe Biden was going to because of all these keys. And Joe Biden is no longer the n So you have to sort of put credi where it shouldn't be too. my appreciation to all of you gu Have a great weekend.
sources. If you were listening to sheera, she was making a very clear pitc Tell her who it is or me. One of the two weeks I'm going to be in Philly on Tue Feel free to come up to me at th Yeah.
Time that want to me. So just do it, guys. All right.
Have a great weekend everybody. Thanks so much for joining us.
