this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024

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320

Historian who predicted 9 of the last 10 election results says Democrats shouldn't drop Joe Biden (www.usatoday.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

91 comments fedilink hide all child comments

He got 2000 "wrong"... Or did he?

(page 2) 43 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 months ago (15 children)

First, he didn't get 2000 wrong, Gore won.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/29/uselections2000.usa

2nd though... 2024 is a lose/lose no matter what the Democrats do at this point.

A weakened Biden can't win.
A replaced Biden changes the dialog to "See! Even the Democrats know they can't do the job!" which is a losing strategy.

The only way to pull out a win would be for Biden to die in office and have his successor get the sympathy vote, a la Johnson in '64.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

There's still plenty of room for a senile fumbling corporate puppet to be retained in office, assuming mass media and the party continue to back him.

But quite a bit of mass media is owned and operated by ultra-conservative ghouls and wanna-be fascist demagogues.

The real fear is that they cash out Biden and start running an endless train of hit pieces, like they did against Hilary and Bernie. Biden's senility seems to be acceptable to majority of Dem voters, on the grounds that "Trump is worse". It's all the low info Indies who are yet to be swayed. And they're only interested in the news cycle a couple weeks outside the general election.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm calling it. 9 of 11. That's a good number for America.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thats some broken Windows on the World there.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I'd say that was a lot of broken windows.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Will this election be a tales from the crypt?

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Hey math people, if they all selected 1 of the 2 main candidates for every election, and they all selected different candidates, how many historians would it take to cover every combination for 10 years? (bonus points to see how many would take before guaranteeing someone could get 9/10)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

Note that many of those elections were easier to guess than just flipping a coin, so you don't really need to cover every potential combination to cover like 95% of the likely outcomes.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

1024 historians assuming they all pick different combinations at random. Probability of randomly guessing at least 9 of 10 goes up to 1.075% or 93 historians (on average to get one person with 9/10 predictions right) or like the other commenter mentioned 1024-11= 1013 to guarantee a 9/10 but that's a little overkill.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Where does the 93 come from? The percentage is almost correct, but it should be 11 (1.074%)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

93 for 1/0.01075

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Just let Bernie fuckin' giv'er...

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[–] [email protected] 164 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I want to hear the opinion of the octopus that predicted the world cup results first

[–] [email protected] 69 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Died. Now they are using a turtle but he always votes Nadar

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Holy shit this was funny!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Let him cook, it'll get there eventually

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

the only way another candidate can be successful is if Biden himself drops out and endorses (and indeed continues to campaign for) them.

But Biden's ego won't allow that, so the party's choices are either to forcibly remove him and split the vote or take the flaming, burning ship down into the ocean.

hope people can swim.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

the only way another candidate can be successful is if Biden himself drops out and endorses (and indeed continues to campaign for) them.

And he had 4 years to decide on and build up a successor, but chose to not do so. And neither did the democratic party.

His age and the related issues can't be a surprise to anyone, so i really don't see why there should be a sudden change in direction.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Duh

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Drop him for who?

They'll not nominate a Justice Democrat as that won't make corporate donors money. I don't see how anyone or anything could recover the resultant shitshow except the Justice Democrat platform.

Kamala seemingly the only one with some name recognition, is the same vague bullshit with some identity politics, which would be inadequate.

Who else is there?

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Newsom is probably the only other viable candidate out there

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Pritzker

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Whitmer.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If she admits it was a mistake to pressure michigan voters to not vote uncommitted I'd be down, but she is a corporate dem still.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

She is, yes, but that wasn't the question. The question was about name recognition, which Whitmer has.

I wouldn't be great with Newsom, either, since he's been moving to the right to appease the republican-adjacent wing of the party. But either would be an improvement over Biden, who in turn is still preferable to Trump.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

When pressed about whether the questions surrounding Biden’s age and mental acuity are “fundamentally different” than his metrics as president, Lichtman doubled down.

“Debate performances can be overcome,” he said. “At the first sign of adversity the spineless Democrats want to throw under the bus, their own incumbent president. My goodness.”

So, he refuses to factor anything in if it doesn't fit his system... Literally refusing to acknowledge any health concerns

His system is this:

Lichtman is best known for the "Keys" system, presented in his books The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency and The Keys to the White House. The system uses thirteen historical factors to predict whether the popular vote in the election for president of the United States will be won by the candidate of the party holding the presidency (regardless of whether the president is the candidate).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Lichtman

And it doesn't account for specific candidate...

So by his own argument that his system can't acknowledge a candidates fitness would come into play, logically I don't understand why he is speaking on who the specific candidate should be.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

And the popular vote means fuck all for the election anyway, so who cares about this system if it didn’t factor in the electoral college?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The system is currently meant to predict the electoral college winner, not the popular vote winner.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

His hypothesis is that elections are mostly not about individuals. People vote for Team Blue or Team Red. And given the embrace by evangelicals of a criminal who has never read the bible, I think he may have a point.

The only individual characteristic that matters is incumbency, which is why Democrats shouldn't throw that advantage away.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

The only individual characteristic that matters is incumbency,

The incumbent lost in 2020. There may be other factors.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The only individual characteristic that matters is incumbency.

Most other factors mostly do not depend on the individual who is running. For example, recession, military victories/losses, results of midterm elections, significant third party challenger, etc. The party can run anyone and it would not affect those points.

However, I overlooked another individual characteristic: there is an extra point if the incumbent is a victorious military leader or has significant appeal to members of the opposing party. The only person to get that point in this century was Obama, and only in 2008.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The only person to get that point in this century was Obama, and only in 2008.

The only one to win the Democratic primaries, at least.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This system is only meant to predict the general election. It ignores any primary candidates who were not nominated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Seems to me that the model has some blind spots.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It does what it means to do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Until it doesn't.

Democrats used to trust polls, too. Now they only trust them if they confirm existing biases.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The other factor is that the incumbent lost in 2020, to the 2024 incumbent.

Like wtf. People saying he can't do it. He already did it once.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (8 children)

Since then, his signature legislation has failed to pass as intended, he's broken a strike, he's supported a genocide, he's moved to the right on immigration, and he's claimed to have defeated Medicare. He's alienated his base and demonstrated that people who were fretting about his age might have been on to something after all.

He beat Trump in a nail-biting squeaker of a contest in 2020, and centrists have been pretending he's invincible ever since.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

Meaningless considering he still hasn't predicted whether or not Biden will win this election. He says he needs another month lol.

Edit: As a bonus he can't even apply his own rubric to a new potential candidate. So the real questions are: How could he possibly know they'd be worse, and why the fuck is he even saying anything?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Not meaningless, his prediction system always gives the incumbent an advantage over anyone else in his party.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

And yet, he hasn't predicted yet because there are many other "keys". Case-in-point: see how incumbency worked for Trump.

Also should be noted other reputable science-based algorithm designers like Nate Silver advises Biden to step down.

Finally, the unprecedented nature of an open convention also means this guy has nothing to go on for extrapolation.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Also should be noted other reputable science-based algorithm designers like Nate Silver advises Biden to step down.

Nate's algorithm is just a poll of polls. And his reasoning is incredibly short term and superficial.

Nate wasn't suggesting Biden drop out back in January when other candidates could run to replace him. He's only saying it now, because Biden's polling is at an all time low.

If Biden recovers (likely, as the memory of the debate fades behind other current events) the pundits will start singing a different tune quickly enough.

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