How and Why Biden Could Win

We card-carrying members of the Columnist Party must keep the pretense of suspense up to keep you, fickle readers, clicking and reading. That said, spoiler alert.

Unless something changes, 2024 goes to Biden. (Don't shoot the messenger!)

Two scholars, 40-plus years ago, identified the real factors that determine presidential election outcomes: the late Russian geophysicist and seismologist Vladimir Isaacovich Keilis-Borok and the alive-and-well American University professor, historian Allan Lichtman.

They found that just 13 factors accurately predict the outcomes of every presidential election from 1984 forward (and retrospectively, back to 1860). Asterisk on 2000 when George W. Bush stole the election from Al Gore, who won the popular vote and lost the electoral college by a tiny handful of hanging chads in Miami-Dade … and a cockamamie (Republican) Supreme Court.

Kellis-Borok and Lichtman identified a dozen, then a baker’s dozen, factors that determine the outcome of presidential elections with a high, maybe perfect, degree of reliability. Per the American University website:

The 13 keys are simple to use: if eight or more of the 13 keys are true for the incumbent party, its candidate will win the election—but if fewer than eight are true, the challenger will win. …

1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

I’m no Lichtman, who predicted both the largely unforeseen victory of Trump in 2016 and of Biden in 2020. He will in due course predict 2024.

That said, I can do simple arithmetic.

1. The incumbent party, the Dems, dropped from 222 to 213 House seats between 2018 and 2020. Key number one: GOP.
2. There is no serious primary challenger to President Biden. Key two: Democrats.
3. America has a Democratic incumbent. Key three: Democrats.
4. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. seems a significant third-party challenger. Key four: GOP.
5. No recession is in sight. Key five: Democrats.
6. Real per capita economic growth exceeds (as demonstrated here) mean growth during Obama’s last and Trump’s single term. Key six: Democrats.
7. Biden indeed affected major changes in national policy. Key seven: Democrats.
8. No substantial social unrest during Biden’s term. Just ... much grumbling. Key eight: Democrats.
9. Despite Republican fumbling efforts to hang Hunter Biden’s sins around his father’s neck, Biden is untainted by major scandal. Key nine: Democrats.
10. Our hapless evacuation of Afghanistan was a military failure. That said, the Forever War was long gone from Page One and American consciousness. Score this disgrace as minor, not major. Key ten: Democrats.
11. Americans remain, mostly, in solidarity with Ukraine and Israel of which Biden has been a staunch backer. Nevertheless, both wars seem stalemated and cannot be scored as a major success. Key eleven: Republicans.
12. Joe Biden, obviously, is not a charismatic leader. Nor a national hero. Key twelve: Republicans.
13. Donald Trump radiates charisma (even if he’s a national hero only in the mind of the MAGAs and his own very good brain). Key thirteen: Republicans.

Democrats, as of now, own eight keys, predicting Biden re-election.

Unless one key flips Republican between now and November 5. Which it could.

Lichtman and Keilis-Borok make a persuasive (although not unchallenged) case that the outcome of presidential elections is determined by the tides, not the winds. Follow their guidance to astonish your friends!

And while you read the breathless horse race chatter of us commentators, recall Shakespeare about another political contest, the Scottish Play:

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Welcome to politics.