Professor Who Predicted a Trump Win in 2016 Now Predicts a Biden Win in 2020
Episode Stats
Words per minute
171.26833
Harmful content
Misogyny
8
sentences flagged
Hate speech
8
sentences flagged
Summary
Alan Lichtman is a historian, author, and political forecaster. He is the author of The Keys to the White House and The Case for Impeachment. He s also the founder of the 13th Index, a model that determines who will win the presidential election based on 13 indicators.
Transcript
00:00:02.760
it's not knowing history, although you got to know history.
00:00:04.960
It's not knowing politics, or you got to know politics.
00:00:07.340
It's not knowing math, although you got to know math.
00:00:09.340
It's putting aside your own political preferences.
00:00:18.100
when people thought you were crazy for choosing Trump.
00:00:23.840
Professor, congrats, good call, Donald J. Trump.
00:00:37.320
The Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II.
00:00:43.780
Judgments here have to be objective and nonpartisan.
00:00:51.780
The party mandate, which side do you choose with that?
00:01:11.420
You've got to have charisma for advertisers to say,
00:01:14.880
Mike, what's your track record of predicting elections?
00:01:30.120
And on top of that, he got his PhD from Harvard
00:01:33.460
He's read many of them, but he wrote a couple books.
00:01:38.380
And the other one recently, the title is The Case for Impeachment.
00:01:41.780
In his book, he met a Russian man, which I'll let him tell you the whole story,
00:01:46.300
that helped him come out with a model based on three indicators
00:01:52.540
And since 1984, every single time he's got it right,
00:01:57.620
and it's not one-sided, it was five Republicans, four Democrats.
00:02:01.260
Even though he's a Democrat, he'll tell you up front,
00:02:03.580
he still chose five Republicans and four Democrats.
00:02:08.700
And with that being said, my guest today, Alan Lichtman.
00:02:11.980
Alan, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.
00:02:15.940
So, Alan, how do you and this friend of yours that you met, tell us that story.
00:02:21.220
How did this happen to come up with these 13 indicators?
00:02:24.660
Yeah, I'd love to tell you I came up with them with my brilliant thinking.
00:02:28.900
But if I were to tell you that, to quote the late, not-so-great Richard Nixon,
00:02:35.780
In 1981, I was a distinguished visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
00:02:43.700
And there I met the Russian, Vladimir Kailas Borak, the world's leading authority on earthquake prediction,
00:02:52.260
the head of the Institute of Pattern Recognition and Earthquake Prediction in Moscow.
00:03:00.340
And being foresightful, of course, I said, we're not going to collaborate.
00:03:04.980
Earthquakes may be a big deal here in Washington, D.C., but I have to go back, excuse me, in Southern California,
00:03:23.060
He said in 1963, under President John F. Kennedy, he was part of the Soviet scientific delegation
00:03:32.020
that negotiated the most important treaty in the history of the world, by far, the nuclear test ban treaty
00:03:39.860
that stopped us from poisoning the atmosphere, the oceans, and the earth.
00:03:47.940
And I always wanted to use the methods of earthquake prediction to predict elections.
00:04:05.620
So we became the odd couple of political research.
00:04:10.820
And I can tell you what happened after that, if you want to know.
00:04:15.620
OK, so our key insight was to reconceptualize presidential elections in earthquake geophysical
00:04:28.420
Not as Carter versus Reagan, not as Republican versus Democrat, not as liberal versus conservative,
00:04:36.100
but as stability, the party in power keeps the White House and earthquake, the party in power
00:04:46.740
So the second big insight was we were going to base our model on the idea that American
00:04:55.540
presidential elections are essentially votes up or down on the strength and performance of
00:05:05.540
And so based on those two ideas, we looked at every American presidential election from 1860,
00:05:12.740
the horse and buggy days of politics, when Abraham Lincoln was elected, to 1980, the modern
00:05:20.980
And using the methods of pattern recognition to see what patterns are associated with stability
00:05:27.700
in earthquake, we came up with our 13 key indicators, the 13 keys to the White House, and our simple
00:05:37.700
If six or more of the keys go against the party holding the White House, they are predicted losers.
00:05:49.300
I then first used the keys, if you want to hear about that next, in 1982 to make my first
00:05:58.500
And you made that two years before the election.
00:06:01.060
I mean, it wasn't like you made the prediction three months prior to the election.
00:06:05.620
In 82, you made your prediction, nobody was expecting that.
00:06:09.160
It was in April of 1982, almost three years before the election.
00:06:13.380
You know, two and a half years before the election.
00:06:16.660
And I predicted the reelection of Ronald Reagan.
00:06:21.460
And I'm very clear that my predictions are predictions, not endorsements.
00:06:30.740
You know, I went to Brandeis University in the 1960s, hotbed of radicalism.
00:06:36.180
And I was a Bobby Kennedy Democrat then, which put me on the way on the right wing back in
00:06:43.380
I'm still a Bobby Kennedy Democrat, which I guess puts me now on the left.
00:06:49.460
So I predicted Ronald Reagan's reelection in the midst of what was then the worst recession
00:06:57.700
Everyone was talking about a one term president.
00:07:04.180
I get a call in my office in 1982 from a gentleman with a heavy southern accent.
00:07:11.860
And he says, Professor Lickman, this is Lee Atwater calling political director of the
00:07:22.020
So I said, well, maybe maybe you got the wrong guy.
00:07:30.740
Dirty trickster who actually died very young and recanted all his dirty tricks.
00:07:36.340
And he wanted to know about Kennedy versus Nixon and other elections.
00:07:40.180
But at the end of the day, he looked me in the eye and asked me the question, which was
00:07:45.380
He said, Professor Lickman, what would happen if Ronald Reagan didn't run again in 1984?
00:08:02.340
Right now, I predicted a Reagan win with only three keys against him.
00:08:11.140
You lose the internal party contest key because Bush and Robertson and Kemp will fight like
00:08:17.460
And without the gipper, you lose the incumbent charisma key.
00:08:24.340
He's about as charismatic as a shopping center on a Sunday morning in Passaic, New Jersey,
00:08:33.300
Lee Atwater looks me in the eye, sighs a big relief and says, thank you so much, Professor
00:08:43.460
That was how I first got into the prediction business.
00:08:50.580
Then you went Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden.
00:08:54.100
And I think at one point you had the only thing that was a little bit off was the Al Gore one,
00:09:00.820
You know, what was the right prediction in 2000?
00:09:09.940
It was a stolen election, as I proved in my 2001 report to the Distinguished United States
00:09:19.540
And as other scholars have proven, Bush only won that election because of the discarding and
00:09:26.260
suppression of tens of thousands of African-American votes who are 95 percent Democratic.
00:09:32.500
A Gore should have won even the Electoral College going away.
0.95
00:09:37.620
So I think I came about as close as you can get.
00:09:40.020
You know, if I predicted Bush, people would be bashing me for saying, oh, you predicted Bush,
00:09:53.220
When you went back with Vladimir and you ran this from 1860 to 1980, how bad did Reagan beat
00:10:00.260
Because I know it was 49 out of 50 states when you ran it on the 13.
00:10:03.780
Do you remember what it was when it was him against Carter?
00:10:06.500
Yes, it was, I think, eight or nine keys out against Carter.
00:10:10.180
I remember Carter was the incumbent and the polls were inconclusive.
00:10:14.260
The polls weren't telling you what was going to happen.
00:10:19.620
It wasn't quite the blowout in 1984, but it was a pretty bad blowout.
00:10:30.340
And he also overwhelmingly won the electoral college.
00:10:33.460
Yeah, 1984 was the one where, you know, he wasn't really going out there and campaigning
00:10:38.420
Everybody was kind of like, he's going to win it no matter what.
00:10:40.580
And then last minute, his people are telling him, listen, you better get out there and
00:10:48.740
By the way, out of all the indicators you guys went through, you and Vladimir, was there
00:11:00.980
Teddy Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, he was the incumbent.
00:11:06.420
He had become president when William McKinley was killed, assassinated.
00:11:10.660
And he had a perfect score, no keys out against him.
00:11:14.660
And he was running against the most obscure presidential candidate in history.
00:11:20.420
Someone no one has ever heard of, Alton B. Parker, who was a New York State judge who
00:11:32.180
It's not just, you know, you predict something and that's it.
00:11:38.340
And I figured Reagan first time against Carter would probably be a good one as well.
00:11:43.380
When you guys came up with the 13, did you originally, was it kind of like, like I visualize
00:11:48.260
you sitting in a boardroom, you and Vladimir, you're talking and you got 30 of them.
00:11:52.260
And he say, not this one, not this one, not this one.
00:11:59.780
I don't remember exactly how many, but it was, it was somewhere like 30, 25.
00:12:04.340
And the computer, you know, we're doing pattern recognition.
00:12:08.900
Most models are so-called, I don't know how much you want me to get into the weeds on this,
00:12:14.740
multiple regression models, big equations with parameters.
00:12:21.380
And the computer came up with the number of keys and the decision rule that best separated
00:12:34.820
We published it like two academics in an academic journal, the world's leading scientific journal
00:12:42.740
of all things, the journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
00:12:47.220
And you expect, oh, at least four or five people to read your journal article when you're an academic.
00:12:54.740
And the sixth person was the science reporter for the Associated Press.
00:13:00.660
I'm back at American University, young college professor.
00:13:03.940
And there is this article, Odd Couple Discovers Keys to the White House.
00:13:10.180
And it was only that article that motivated me to get out into the wider world outside of academia
00:13:22.260
I'm curious about out of the other, you know, 12 or 17 that didn't make it,
00:13:31.860
Because, you know, out of the year 13, two is only about candidates.
00:13:34.100
The other 11 is just you can pretty much measure it.
00:13:39.700
For example, we had some keys relating to candidate ideology and candidate fundraising.
00:13:45.460
Turns out ideology fundraising issues are absolutely non-predictive.
00:13:53.220
If you had used that in 2016, you would have predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide because
00:13:58.980
on conventional candidate measures, she's way ahead of Donald Trump.
00:14:03.380
Did looks or voice have anything to do with it?
00:14:06.020
The only reason I asked the question about looks or voice is because you remember the
00:14:10.020
first time when Kennedy and Nixon got on the debate?
00:14:16.740
And, you know, Kennedy went to the tanning salon the day before.
00:14:19.460
He looked really good and looked better on camera than he did on radio.
00:14:23.540
Was voice or looks, did that have anything to do with it or no?
00:14:29.940
You know, was Richard Nixon better looking than George McGovern or, you know,
00:14:36.820
Richard Nixon was not exactly your great looking, you know, great sounding candidate,
00:14:43.380
I only say that because Kennedy was a, you know, if you ask the ladies and you do a poll
00:14:47.300
on the ladies with Kennedy, it'd be a 100% handsome looking guy right there.
00:14:51.780
Well, something does come into play there and we can talk about it when we get to the keys,
00:15:02.180
Do you want to take the lead or you want me to read them off?
00:15:08.180
So I'll go through all of them here, what you have.
00:15:10.660
So these are the 13 different indicators that you have.
00:15:15.220
Before we get to that, remember, six and you're out.
00:15:20.420
So let's just go through it together and you can tell me who's out.
00:15:25.060
So party mandate, which side do you choose with that?
00:15:27.780
Remember, all I need to do is say true or false.
00:15:30.580
Because it's always based on the incumbent party.
00:15:37.620
And that one is obviously false because the Republicans took a huge beating in the midterm
00:15:43.220
elections, which is that, that's what it's measured on.
00:15:48.340
So that, that favors, just so the viewers watching is that favors the Dems.
00:16:12.660
So the first four, which I call the political keys, only one false.
00:16:19.380
He lost the house and they got a lot of work to do in the house.
00:16:25.300
Well, that's based on whether there's an election year recession.
00:16:28.180
That was looking good until we got the pandemic recession.
00:16:35.860
That was also looking good until we got this relentlessly negative growth this year that
00:16:48.740
You know, he came in intent on undoing everything Obama had done, and he's mostly done it by executive
00:16:55.940
orders, but certainly the policies now are very different.
00:17:01.620
That was also looking good until the death of George Floyd and the social unrest raging
00:17:22.580
But as you know, because I wrote the book case for impeachment at the same time, I predicted
00:17:29.540
I also predicted he would be impeached and he was.
00:17:32.180
He's only the third American president ever to be impeached by the full house.
00:17:45.620
Well, you can argue there have been failures on Bush's watch.
00:17:50.340
But again, these judgments here have to be objective and nonpartisan.
00:17:55.780
And they have to be based on how I called the keys since 1860.
00:17:59.700
And we're talking about big, splashy failures like 9-11 or losing a war.
00:18:19.220
He got nowhere in North Korea except to pump up Kim Jong-un, gave up Syria to the Russians.
0.94
00:18:29.620
Now, recently, we did have this UAE treaty with the Israelis.
00:18:36.660
But it's a bogus treaty because it just says suspend annexations.
00:18:41.060
And Netanyahu said he can unsuspend at any time.
00:18:44.500
And the whole, you know, God knows how many hours of the Republican convention.
00:18:51.380
One line on the UAE treaty, one line in Trump's speech.
00:19:11.380
And this is a very high threshold key, Patrick.
00:19:15.860
We're talking about the once in a generation inspirational candidate like on the Republican side,
00:19:22.420
Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, who brought in all those Reagan Democrats.
00:19:26.340
And to win this key, you have to be broadly appealing.
00:19:31.380
But as we know, he appeals to a narrow base, about 40 to 43 percent.
00:19:41.460
More than 60 percent of the American people don't trust him and don't like him.
00:19:52.580
And then the last one is challenger's charisma, which is Biden.
00:19:56.180
So if Biden was charismatic, that would count against Trump.
00:19:59.860
You know, he's an experienced guy, decent guy, just as Trump is no Ronald Reagan.
00:20:12.020
So based on your prediction, you predict who will be president come election day.
00:20:17.940
Based on my prediction with seven keys down and only six to count out the party holding the
00:20:26.580
And therefore, Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States.
00:20:31.380
A reversal of my prediction for Donald Trump in 2016.
00:20:36.100
But remember, he was the challenger then, so he didn't have to defend a record.
00:20:43.540
He still doesn't understand that he's going to be judged on his record, not on what he says.
00:20:49.220
To be fair with viewers watching this, somebody may say, well, he hates Trump.
00:20:55.220
You said Trump would win in 2016 when people thought you were crazy for choosing Trump.
00:21:04.180
You know, it's the Democratic stronghold of the world.
00:21:12.420
But I did get a note and it said, Professor, congrats.
00:21:32.420
So that means you have a good collection because if your predictions are right, you're about
00:21:43.620
So, and by the way, you're obviously a Democrat, PhD, Harvard, Harvard leans left.
00:21:50.260
You're 1993 Scholar Professor of the Year at American University.
00:21:57.060
So to go against in 2016 against Hillary, you probably were, you know, many of the people
00:22:04.820
that were having lunch with you on a weekly basis probably said, you know what?
00:22:07.220
I don't know if I want to have lunch with you this week when you chose Trump.
00:22:11.940
The hardest thing about being a forecaster, it's not knowing history.
00:22:20.260
It's not knowing math although you got no math.
00:22:22.660
It's putting aside your own political preferences.
00:22:27.620
If I just made forecasts according to my political preferences, I'd be useless as a forecaster.
00:22:35.300
And my training as an historian, which teaches us to look at the past in an impartial way,
00:22:40.900
was critical to my being a successful, and as you say, totally impartial forecaster.
00:22:48.580
Now, can I challenge you on a couple of your 13 if that's okay?
00:22:54.260
So on the short-term economy, how far back do you go on the short-term economy?
00:23:00.020
Because if you look at the economy starting November 9th, Trump gets elected.
00:23:13.540
We're talking about a very substantial growth in the last four years, right?
00:23:18.420
So short-term economy could be a true, couldn't it?
00:23:25.140
But again, you've got to do it according to the definitions of the keys.
00:23:30.420
And one of the great things about the keys, unlike most prediction systems, which are these
00:23:34.820
big impenetrable equations, they're a great teaching tool.
00:23:38.740
And they're a great tool for discussion, right?
00:23:45.060
The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
00:23:50.980
And we absolutely have a recession now during the election campaign.
00:23:56.660
The National Bureau of Economic Research declared a recession, said it began in February.
00:24:02.420
And we've had two consecutive negative quarters.
00:24:06.260
So whatever else you may say, and you have a right to say it, you've got to stick to the definition.
00:24:10.580
I'm just trying to help you get a 10-game win streak.
00:24:12.980
I mean, this is like a double-digit win streak because the one thing when you look at recessions,
00:24:18.500
you know, there are certain things that you control.
00:24:21.380
There are certain things that you don't control with a pandemic.
00:24:25.140
That is the one part where I don't know, even if your model may need to have like a disclaimer
00:24:29.300
saying this model doesn't pertain to yours with a pandemic because none of the years you've
00:24:37.060
So there may be a good out for you so you can be 10 for 10 because double-digit winning streak
00:24:46.820
And you know, every four years, someone comes to me and says, your model's not going to work
00:24:52.740
this year because we have an African-American running.
00:25:03.540
If you remember retrospectively, the model goes all the way back to 1860.
00:25:11.620
My ancestors from Eastern Europe weren't even here yet.
00:25:15.060
Neither were your ancestors even here yet, right?
00:25:25.140
And so it's what we call a very robust model that's lasted through enormous change.
00:25:30.420
The Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II, and of course, the aftermath of even worse
00:25:45.060
I went to Morgan Stanley Dean Wooder a day before 9-11.
00:25:48.580
So I remember when a market tanked right after 9-11.
00:25:53.060
The way people handled their finances was very weird and different.
00:25:56.100
Nobody wanted to sit down and talk to you about stocks, mutual funds, money under management.
00:26:02.100
In 08, when the market tanked, you remember 08, when the market tanked 38% in a year, 401ks became
00:26:08.980
And short sales, places like Riverside had 65% turnover with their property.
00:26:16.500
Even though there was quantitative easing and bailout, American people didn't get $600 a
00:26:24.180
So I felt it as an advisor when I was dealing with clients.
00:26:29.220
But during this pandemic, I got to tell you, Alan, when you're dealing with customers and
00:26:34.500
you're talking to them, even though 55 million people may be unemployed, it doesn't give the
00:26:42.420
It doesn't give the same feeling of recession as an 08 or even slightly in an 01.
00:26:48.420
It's very different language out there because people are financially not doing as bad as
00:27:01.620
As Herbert Hoover, a man who should know, certainly said, presidents get the credit for
00:27:11.300
You know, he didn't cause the Great Depression and yet caused the crash of his presidency and
00:27:18.740
But I would say further that while you may say the pandemic, you know, is an act of God,
00:27:24.500
it was Donald Trump's botched response to the pandemic that has put us into the economic
00:27:37.140
But as Herbert Hoover said, when you're the president, you cannot escape responsibility.
00:27:42.580
Moreover, I would say, again, just to answer your argument, because the key is the key.
00:27:49.540
This is much worse than most previous recessions, much worse than the George H.W. Bush recession of
00:27:56.660
1991, 92, much worse than the 1960 recession that Richard Nixon had to face.
00:28:04.100
You know, it may not be as bad as the Great Recession of 2008, 2009.
00:28:11.380
My good friend, you may have heard of him, the late, great Jack Germond, the journalist,
00:28:18.260
He said, there's an economist at every street corner in Washington, D.C., and not one agrees
00:28:32.180
I just, I just wonder, I wonder if there isn't, because let me tell you, when I read your 13
00:28:39.060
markers that you guys have the indicators, it's brilliant when you think about it.
00:28:43.060
And, but I think there is an element of opinion there.
00:28:46.500
There's a little bit of room for opinion because, you know, even right now, when you said,
00:28:51.060
you know, you may say the pandemic was, you know, from, you know, not something that we could have
00:28:55.700
It kind of happened, even though we shut down China, et cetera, et cetera.
00:28:58.660
Still, Herbert Hoover says, if it happens during your term, it happens during your term.
00:29:01.940
And Trump didn't take responsibility for anything.
00:29:08.020
I wonder if there's an out there for these 13 indicators.
00:29:13.620
You know, when you say, let me comment on that, because you make a great point there.
00:29:18.020
And when I first came out with the keys, I was slammed for that very thing.
00:29:23.300
The professional forecasters, the political scientists, and by the way, you know, as well
00:29:28.100
as I, political science is not hard science, but the political scientists, the forecasters
00:29:33.780
were saying, come on, Lickman, you committed the great sin, the sin of subjectivity.
00:29:44.100
I know that you cannot reduce the human world to pure numbers.
00:29:50.340
Even the big, you know better than I, even the big econometric models, the Wharton School
00:29:54.500
model, they don't work very well to predict the economy.
00:30:03.380
And then the political forecasting world realized that the most successful models are like the keys,
00:30:08.980
which combine purely numerical measures like midterm election results with measures with
00:30:14.980
some judgment, not random judgment, because you've got to go with how it's defined in the model.
00:30:19.540
And the keys became the hottest thing in forecasting.
00:30:22.980
I twice keynoted, keynoted the International Forecasting Summit.
00:30:27.780
I published in all the big forecasting journals.
00:30:30.900
You know, I was interviewed by great people like you all over the world.
00:30:35.460
So yes, you know, there is an element of judgment, but I don't think that invalidates the system.
00:30:46.660
But that's what also, if you get this one right, let me tell you,
00:30:50.260
this one's going to be very impressive for you to hit double digit.
00:30:55.620
It'll be very impressive because when I look, the only factor for me is two factors.
00:31:02.260
And even military success, you gave it false, which on the, on the military success,
00:31:10.580
One could argue Soleimani because Soleimani was, uh, uh, uh, you know, I'm from Iran myself.
00:31:16.420
So being somebody that's from Iran and I was in the U S army and, you know, follow military
00:31:19.940
based on what's going on and all the proxy wars that was going on.
00:31:23.140
Soleimani was a leader behind a lot of these proxy wars taking place.
00:31:26.820
So one could say Soleimani was a military success, similar to when Obama had, you know,
00:31:32.980
Osama bin Laden, that was a military success.
0.99
00:31:35.060
So that one could also be a little bit debated.
00:31:39.780
There are two things when you read the book and when everyone buys my book, predicting the
00:31:44.500
next president, the keys to the white house, 2020 number one, it has to be big enough to
00:31:57.300
Number two, it has to be of great substantive significance.
00:32:01.620
And, you know, there are lots of, I'm not a Middle East expert.
00:32:04.900
There are lots of Middle East experts who said that killing made things less safe, less stable
00:32:12.180
I don't know if that's true, but there's a lot of division.
00:32:15.940
Unlike other big foreign policy successes, then it has to be broadly recognized.
00:32:20.740
I promise you, 90% or more of the American people could not name General Soleimani.
00:32:30.020
Osama bin Laden was a household name before and after he was killed.
00:32:42.260
Soleimani unknown to Americans, still unknown to Americans, and it's unclear whether anything
00:32:51.700
And they hardly mentioned it in their convention.
00:32:54.020
If this was a big deal, you know, it would have been featured in the convention.
00:32:58.260
It was barely mentioned, only in Trump's speech.
00:33:03.540
So do you gauge a lot also what the incumbent is talking on their speech at their convention?
00:33:19.780
To party, because the conventions don't do anything.
00:33:30.180
Think of the money we've saved by having virtual conventions.
00:33:33.540
Plus, previously in the in-person conventions, no one could hear the preliminary speeches
00:33:41.140
because delegates are milling around the floor.
00:33:44.580
No one pays attention until you get the president, the vice president.
00:33:48.340
Now in the virtual convention, everyone comes across crystal clear.
00:33:54.100
By the way, what you're saying there, and just so you know, our viewers who own local
00:33:59.220
bars near where conventions are being done, they're offended by your comments.
00:34:05.940
You're minimizing all the after parties taking place.
00:34:12.900
By the way, Soleimani, in many military generals eyes, he was the right hand guy.
00:34:21.540
And he was feared by a lot of people because he had so many strong contacts on the other
00:34:29.700
Again, the element of judgment is the one that I like when you say there's the element
00:34:38.580
You know, this is why I invited you, because I really like your style on how you are and how
00:34:44.980
you go back and forth and you're very open about it.
00:34:47.140
So this last one is the incumbent is not charismatic.
00:34:53.460
I give the charisma key to neither Trump nor Biden.
00:35:04.900
I'm not, you know, the one time I ran for office, I did terribly.
00:35:08.900
No, but, but, but I say, I say most guys, if I were to say right now, without showing
00:35:14.020
the face, my next guest is going to talk to us about predicting the next president.
00:35:20.580
If I told them, judge the speaker based on him being a historian, 80% of people will be
00:35:27.140
logging off because a historian is going to talk like this.
00:35:29.700
Well, yes, as a doctor, I've been been in the, you don't talk like that.
00:35:39.380
Let me tell you though, the difference, unlike me, we have metrics to measure Donald Trump
00:35:47.060
and we can measure those metrics against the once in a generation inspirational candidates.
00:35:53.060
You can't call someone broadly inspirational when over 60% of the American people don't trust
00:36:01.540
And he's never come close to 50% approval and a strong approval is 25 to 30%.
00:36:07.860
I've been hit by a lot of people who say, well, he's charismatic to his base.
00:36:12.420
And I agree with that, but that's not the definition of the key.
00:36:17.380
So Alan, you are smarter than I am more educated than I am more experienced than I am.
00:36:22.260
And I'm, you know, uh, you know, I'm I, this is your world.
00:36:25.860
Whenever anyone says that to me, I start to worry.
00:36:31.780
But here's the part, what show have you watched over and over and over again?
00:36:38.100
Like if you were to say, Pat, you know, I'm a CSI guy or, you know, I've watched, uh, I
00:36:45.940
I can't put you on a certain show that you'll watch over and over again.
00:36:48.820
What is a show that you'll watch over and over and over again for years?
00:36:54.340
What was the show that you watched over and over again?
00:36:57.060
New York Yankees baseball, being a, being a native New Yorker.
00:37:01.780
Well, I, I respect that because I am trying to get my hands on a 1952 tops,
00:37:07.300
Mickey Mantle, PSA 10, and only three people own it.
00:37:11.460
One of them does, but he's asking for a lot of money.
00:37:18.100
Do you think somebody who lacks charisma could have a show on TV that last 15 seasons?
00:37:27.780
Alan, you gotta have charisma for advertisers to say, we like advertising during the show
00:37:34.580
ran by this guy who keeps telling people you're fired.
00:37:40.980
I have to tell you once, so I'm the wrong person, but we're not judging him on his TV show.
00:37:48.180
We're judging him on his performance as a candidate and president.
00:37:52.100
And when over 60% turn thumbs down, and when he has one of the narrowest bases in the history
00:37:59.060
of the presidency, he doesn't fit my definition.
00:38:02.820
He may fit some other definition, and that's fine.
00:38:06.500
But if you're going to call the keys, you've got to call them within the context of my definitions.
00:38:12.260
You can have a different opinion, and that's fine, but that's not the keys.
00:38:17.780
So I've gone through your keys, and based on your keys, the score I have is 9-4 Trump, okay?
00:38:26.500
And what's your track record of predicting elections?
00:38:36.580
If you get it right, I'll get you the best seats on Yankees.
00:38:42.500
I'll get you the sickest seats wherever you want for four people.
0.99
00:38:46.420
If I win, you come back and you say, Pat, you were right.
00:38:54.580
I've been doing this since almost before you were born, right?
00:38:59.700
And every four years, I get butterflies in my stomach.
00:39:04.100
It's a hell of a thing to put yourself on the line.
00:39:10.020
And everyone is just waiting for you to be wrong so they can pounce on you, right?
00:39:14.980
You know, I've been right nine times, but all anyone will look at would be if I'm wrong
00:39:22.420
Two things outside the realm of the keys that keep me up at night.
00:39:38.980
You can't manufacture more old white guys.
1.00
00:39:44.900
But what you can do is restrict the voting of the Democratic rising base of minorities
00:39:55.060
And his guy at the post office has messed up the post office, which is going to make it very
00:39:59.700
difficult to get mail-in ballots, an essential thing during the pandemic in on time.
00:40:09.780
They're setting up already all of these trolls on behalf of Donald Trump.
00:40:13.860
They're probably better at it this time because they've had all that experience.
00:40:17.300
And we know Trump will welcome it and exploit it just like he did in 2016.
00:40:25.860
The Mueller report is, to me, the biggest embarrassment and disappointment in modern history.
00:40:32.100
Read the bipartisan report of the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee.
00:40:38.740
It goes way beyond the disappointing Mueller report to prove collusion between the Trump campaign
00:40:47.380
That's a fair assessment because, you know, when it comes down to the meddling part, I think it's
00:40:53.780
fair to say that, you know, we have been meddling, America's been meddling with other people's
00:40:59.220
elections for God knows more than any other country has ever meddled into our elections.
00:41:04.420
We're famous for meddling in other people's elections.
00:41:06.660
I mean, even I had a guest on a month and a half ago, John Perkins.
00:41:10.420
He wrote a book called The Economic Hitman, which you probably know John Perkins if you don't.
00:41:15.540
His business model is how to meddle in other people's elections who have resources, countries
00:41:20.900
So I think this meddling stuff is going to keep going on and people are just getting very
00:41:25.460
But, you know, to go back and see who you picked, just to go back and see who you picked.
00:41:31.060
OK, and very impressive to pick Reagan in 81, 82, two years before.
00:41:43.700
It was an embarrassing moment for his opponent.
00:41:48.180
I picked Bush 88 in May of 1988, long before the Willie Horton ad, the tank by Dukakis.
00:42:05.300
When Bush was 17 points behind Michael Dukakis, I wrote, he's a shoe into it.
00:42:20.180
Was it before the debate that the lady asked, hey, President Bush, how do you feel about the
00:42:25.780
And he says, what, you don't think I'm affected by it?
00:42:31.620
Yes, but I chose that 92 in 2016 were my latest calls.
00:42:37.300
And the reason, OK, they were both six key elections.
00:42:41.620
And in 92, you may remember this crazy guy, Ross Perot, he's in, he's out, he's in, he's out.
00:42:50.820
And it was very and that was the sixth key, the third party key that sided the election.
00:42:55.460
And so it was very difficult for me to make that call until finally we knew Ross Perot really was in.
00:43:13.220
And then all four and then Obama and when you did Obama against Hillary and you did Obama,
00:43:18.500
I'm sorry, Obama against McCain and he did Obama against Romney.
00:43:28.820
I called 2008 in early 2006, again, almost three years ahead of time, because I saw how
00:43:39.940
many of the keys were going to fall in a very difficult second Bush term.
00:43:46.020
In fact, I became infamous for saying this early that the Democrats could pick a name
00:43:52.180
out of the phone book and elect that person president.
00:43:56.900
Whoever heard of Barack Obama, you know, senator.
00:44:01.380
And what was he wasn't even a senator yet then?
00:44:10.180
Uh, and then I called 2012, which is a very hard to call election in January of 2010, because
00:44:20.420
again, I could early see the keys lining up and I got a blistering attacks from none other
00:44:27.140
than you may have heard of this guy, Nate Silver, right?
00:44:33.060
He writes a 20 page attack on my prediction saying you can't predict this early.
00:44:45.380
And then much later, based on the polls, he came comes along.
00:44:49.700
So I write him an email and I said, Nate, let's do a joint article showing how two different
00:44:56.420
analysts using utterly different methods came to the same answer.
00:45:18.500
I have other issues, but, uh, you know, it's, it's totally fine.
00:45:21.380
So now he here's the, he's the other thing to be thinking about.
00:45:25.300
You know, in October, everybody's got something up their sleeves.
00:45:27.460
Well, I'm going to pull this card or we have this recorded tape of Trump with this woman,
0.94
00:45:32.580
or we have this, you know, four people that are going to come out against Biden, or we have
00:45:36.980
some new stuff that's going to come out from Epstein or Jelaine Maxwell, or we have some stuff
00:45:41.060
that's going to come out from the RNC or the DNC.
00:45:43.380
You're saying anything that comes out is irrelevant.
00:45:48.020
Keep your eye on the big picture and don't worry about this day to day stuff.
00:45:54.660
Look, these media pundits, they're all friends of mine and they're terrific.
00:45:59.060
They're smart, but they have a handicap that I don't have.
0.99
00:46:03.220
They have to cover the election every single day.
00:46:05.380
So they got to make a big deal out of all of these, you know, day to day events.
00:46:17.060
So, so exactly based on your model though, if there is no third party debates are irrelevant.
00:46:25.060
Let me tell you something, too, about this, you know, the media and the candidates.
00:46:30.340
You may know that in 1961, the great Republican President Dwight Eisenhower gave the most famous
00:46:37.380
farewell address ever, where he warned about the country being in the grip of the military
00:46:46.100
And the military industrial complex is based on what we call the iron triangle, the defense
00:46:52.580
contractors who make money, the members of Congress who want defense industries in their
00:46:58.820
districts, and the military that wants all this hardware.
00:47:02.580
Well, we now have a political industrial complex with its own iron triangle.
00:47:07.860
There are the pollsters, the consultants, the admin, who make huge amounts of money on this
00:47:13.620
notion that the election is decided by all these day to day events.
00:47:17.540
Then there's the media that makes huge money covering the election day by day.
00:47:22.740
And then there are the candidates who are afraid to go against the media and the consultants.
00:47:28.340
And I've been screaming for four years to try to break this iron triangle.
00:47:33.140
But like the one in the military industrial complex, it's very hard to break.
00:47:38.980
So, so again, to go back to it, debates irrelevant.
00:47:42.020
So no matter what can be said, so no, no one liner that comes back and nowadays a video
00:47:47.380
goes viral, gets 150 million views, irrelevant in your eyes.
00:47:50.980
Hillary Clinton won all the debates by all the polls, won them handily, made no difference
0.56
00:47:57.460
John Kerry in 2004, won the debates, made absolutely no difference.
00:48:05.940
That's, uh, and by the way, how about this other one here?
00:48:08.580
I'm just trying to pull right now to see if you're going to say anything, but I'm very,
00:48:15.060
I mean, you're like, uh, you're staying strong.
00:48:17.620
You know, you're, you're not, you're not saying anything that there's any possibilities.
00:48:22.500
So this whole thing with, uh, COVID, you know, CDC comes out two days ago saying 96,
00:48:27.380
6% of the causes of the 150,000 people that died.
00:48:34.420
What do you think about that data that comes out?
00:48:39.940
I'll get to that in one second, but let me follow up on your comment about my not crack.
00:48:45.540
You may not know this, but another thing I do is I've been an expert witness in 100,
00:48:52.260
100 civil rights cases, big cases in Texas and Florida, North Carolina, California,
00:49:01.700
I have been cross-examined for eight hours, you know, by some of the best lawyers in the
00:49:12.660
And again, the secret of the keys is nothing matters unless it turns a key.
00:49:21.300
If that opens up the economy and all of a sudden, you know, we have an economic miracle,
00:49:27.220
you know, where we have 60% growth that wipes out the negative growth of the first two quarters,
00:49:34.260
But unless it changes a key, I can't go outside my system.
00:49:38.420
Because if I go outside my system, I've counterfeited my own system.
00:49:44.900
But let me just comment as an expert in history and politics, leaving aside my system.
00:49:51.860
And I wrote about this in the case for impeachment.
00:49:54.500
The most important thing you have as president is your credibility.
00:49:59.140
Well, Trump has lost all credibility on COVID, you know, promoting quack cures like swallowing
00:50:05.700
bleach and putting ultraviolet light into your body, saying 99% of cases are harmless.
00:50:15.780
So anything coming out of this White House on COVID, the great majority of the American people
00:50:22.340
aren't going to believe it because there is no credibility.
00:50:32.500
Now, my only questions I got for you have nothing to do with this.
00:50:34.660
I'm just curious to know what you can say about this since you've been around the block.
00:50:38.740
So 1970, American people, this is a poll that came out.
00:50:45.620
This is a poll that came out that said in 1970, during the Walter Cronkite era,
00:50:53.460
That same poll that came out said 20% of people trusted the media today.
00:51:06.740
The more important thing is people's views of their government.
00:51:11.940
You know, we talk about the Kennedy era, you know, as this shining moment like Camelot under King Arthur.
00:51:19.780
And obviously that's a myth. But one thing that is true, it used to be 70, 75, 80% of the American people thought that their government most of the time worked for them.
00:51:34.340
Now we're down to 20% of the American people believing that.
00:51:39.220
So both the media and the government have collapsed in terms of public trust.
00:51:47.860
And this is a huge crisis for our democracy, because if people can't believe in reliable sources of information and people can't believe in long established institutions, then our democracy is in a lot of trouble.
00:52:02.500
And you know, because you've had experience abroad, democracies are fragile.
00:52:06.980
You know, we tend to believe, oh, American democracy can never collapse.
00:52:10.740
But you know, as well as I, in the great era, first great golden age of democracy after World War I, there were dozens of democracies.
00:52:22.420
So, and according to Freedom House, in the last 10 or 15 years, 25 democracies.
00:52:28.900
They haven't become complete autocracies, but they have greatly declined in their democratic strength.
00:52:35.940
So, is that, is that something, so if you're saying right now, that when it comes down to the democracy, you know, with 20%, we don't trust the media, nor do we trust the government.
00:52:46.980
I'm not sure it's 20%, but I think it's higher than that.
0.98
00:52:58.780
Who do the American people lean on trusting to give the right source?
00:53:02.480
Well, you know, what's happened, unfortunately, is people tend to trust the media that echoes their own views.
00:53:13.640
Those who watch Fox News are fundamentally different than those who watch MSNBC.
00:53:21.460
And while these are all long-term trends, all these trends have been greatly exacerbated by Donald Trump.
00:53:27.280
You know, Richard Nixon famously said, the media is the enemy of the people, right?
00:53:33.760
People don't realize he never said that in public.
00:53:36.960
Trump has had said that dozens of times in public and has tweeted attacks on the media over 1,500 times since he took office.
00:53:47.720
And we know the ways in which he has been divisive racially, gender, religion.
00:53:54.220
And so we've had a president who loves chaos and loves division.
00:54:01.860
It's very impressive on how much you love President Trump.
00:54:19.100
I'm not just fawning on Obama, but one thing for the most part, he could be trusted.
00:54:27.580
Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.
00:55:04.460
Brilliant but never understood the political role of the president.
00:55:23.160
Mixed, kind of, you know, coming into his own, but made mistakes too.
00:56:07.320
And you can see, you know, I was brutally honest with you.
00:56:12.240
But I tell you what, that's what I appreciate about you.
00:56:14.440
Because when I saw how you were, I said, I mean, I even saw what you said on Bill Maher.
00:56:18.340
You said something about Republicans have no principles, but they have spine.
00:56:22.760
Democrats are with principles, but without any spine, you know, with no spine.
00:56:26.880
I mean, you've made some very direct call-outs to Republicans.
00:56:32.680
But at the same time, you'll say 2016, Trump wins.
00:56:35.460
So the audience needs to know how much you're against Republicans, but you're still willing
00:56:39.920
to go based on your 13 indicators and say who's going to win and who's going to lose.
00:56:44.880
It is critically important if you're going to deal with political forecasting, as hard
00:56:49.860
as it is to put aside your own political views.
00:56:57.460
But I got to tell you, since I've been even-handed in my predictions, every four years, I make half
00:57:05.940
And since I've been doing this for 40 years, the whole country is really, really mad at me.
00:57:10.780
That's why everyone is waiting to pounce on me if I'm wrong.
00:57:16.040
I don't have to agree with you, but it's very hard not to like you.
00:57:23.780
So I guess on November 4th, unless if Goldman Sachs is right, because Goldman Sachs is saying
00:57:27.960
this thing's going to take 35 days and they're going to do the recount kind of like it was
00:57:33.340
So I don't know what, if they're not right, either I owe you on November 4th, four tickets
00:57:39.260
You tell me which game, or you're going to come back as a guest and we'll have a friendly
00:57:46.760
So now that you know the 13 indicators, I'm curious, who do you think is going to win
00:57:52.340
I want to know because his score of 7-6, there's a part of it that's judgment, but I wonder
00:57:57.720
And by the way, if you want to get his book, we're going to put a link to his book below.
00:58:02.700
They can follow him on Twitter, send him a message as well.
00:58:04.740
And if you enjoyed this interview today, I have another interview I want you to watch with
00:58:08.200
Roger Stone, who's on the complete opposite side of Lickman.
00:58:12.200
You'll get a chance to kind of decide for yourself on how these two different powerhouses, one's
00:58:17.980
a guy who predicts presidents, the other one's a good marketer that knows how to make presidents.
00:58:22.340
If you haven't seen the interview with Roger Stone, I think you'll enjoy it.
00:58:25.360
And if you've not subscribed to the channel, please do so.