Lichtman's 13 Keys Predict Trump, Not Harris

He plays fast and loose with the rules to deliver Team Oligarchy what they want, but Harris can't get to 8 true keys, therefore, according to him, she loses.

It’s easy to feel demoralized by the polls lately. For many MAGA folks out there, they felt deep despair after political hack Allan Lichtman used his 13 Keys to predict that Harris, not Trump, will win in November.

But he has it wrong. Perhaps he’s reading the New York Times or watching MSNBC, but for whatever reason, he has miscalculated his own theory. There is no way 8 of his 13 keys are true. It’s not possible.

Here is the chart from Wikipedia:

Let’s go through them and find out which are true and which are false. And of course, some of these are a matter of interpretation. But even still, see if you can get to 8 true for Harris.

1. Midterm gains: Republicans hold power, even if just barely — FALSE

2. No Primary contest — TRUE

3. Incumbent seeking re-election - FALSE.

4. No Third Party — FALSE. While it’s true that RFK, Jr. has dropped out of the race and thrown his support in with Trump, he is still on the ballot in many states. His popularity alone presents a “third-party challenge” to Team Harris. But there is also Jill Stein and Cornel West.

5. Strong short-term economy — Leans true. While we’re not officially in a recession, things are not exactly going great. But let’s give them this one.

6. Strong long-term economy — FALSE. If Trump wins, maybe. No one believes the Democrats can bring the economy back. They had four years. They failed.

7. Major policy change - We can say the “Inflation Reduction Act” counts. TRUE

8. No social unrest — FALSE. The pro-Palestine and pro-Hamas protesters have been everywhere, even when Harris is speaking. But you can also count the unrest due to the open border which has created a crisis in cities like New York, the Venezuelan gangs are igniting unrest.

9. No scandal — FALSE. Lichtman might be thinking of Monica Lewinsky, but a cognitively impaired president who refuses to leave office and a Vice President who lies for him to the public counts as a scandal. A coup is a scandal. Just because the media won’t cover it that way does not erase the fact that it happened. We also have a cognitively impaired sitting president, which is itself a scandal.

10. No foreign military failure — FALSE. The Afghanistan withdrawal has upset the entire global order, likely leading to the war in Ukraine and Gaza. It was the Biden/Harris administration making all of those decisions. You can’t separate the two when it’s convenient.

11. Major foreign/military success — FALSE. Name one. From the border to the Middle East to Ukraine, it’s been one disaster after another. For both Biden and Harris.

12. Charismatic incumbent - TRUE. She is charismatic.

13. Uncharismatic challenger — FALSE. Lichtman pretends that likability equals charisma. It doesn’t. There is a reason people obsess on Trump and can’t look away. That reason is called charisma. Trump has boatloads of it.

Adding it all up at 13Keystracker.com, we come up with this:

If you go by Lichtman’s keys, Trump will not only win, but he will win in a landslide. But we probably can’t go by Lichtman’s keys, especially since this guy doesn’t exactly broaden his media diet when it comes to assessing the country's mood.

Even if you disagree with my reading of the 13 keys (you can try it for yourself at the free interactive site), Harris does not have 8 or more true keys. For one thing, she’s not the “incumbent.” She’s still the Vice President. Biden is the incumbent, even if he is not seeking re-election. Therefore, one must assess the situation as a hybrid of the two.

What record does Harris have otherwise that Licthman is using here? I count 9 keys in Trump’s favor and only 3 for Harris. Even if you can wiggle some of those loose and give her a few more, she can’t get to 8. 5 at the most. And that doesn’t cut it.

I’m not saying Harris will lose. The system can win it for her, as it has for so many others in the past, using the same strategy of hiding the candidates, pushing Trump hate, and using ballot harvesting and deep pockets to close the gap.

Trump is facing an unprecedented alignment of power, not seen in this country since the 1950s, or maybe not ever.

Trump won by accident in 2016. But everything that helped him win has now been “fixed” by the Democrats. They don’t have to wait until Election Day. They don’t have to rely on motivated voters to turn out. And they have a propaganda press to push their narratives every day.

Steve Bannon, who runs the popular MAGA gathering hub, The War Room, has been thrown in jail and effectively silenced for the four crucial months leading up to the election. The DOJ has just announced another round of Russia Russia Russia. They’re attempting to bankrupt and jail Trump all at once. Who knows what else they’ll do, but it won’t be pretty.

It's amazing how Lichtman has gotten away with this phony reading of his own 13 keys. Take it all with a grain of salt.