Historian: Democrats Ought Rally Around Harris To Maintain Edge
Allan Lichtman’s “Keys to the White House” have predicted elections for 40 years
With President Biden having dropped out of the race for reelection, Democrats ought now to grow a “spine and a brain” to coalesce around Vice President Kamala Harris as their best chance to hold onto the presidency in the coming election.
That’s according to Allan Lichtman, the prominent history professor whose “13 Keys to the White House” system accurately predicted all presidential election outcomes correctly — except for the election in 2000 — since 1984.
Biden announced his decision to end his bid for a second term Sunday on social media, and immediately threw his weight and endorsement behind Harris to succeed him.
He dropped out as the presumptive Democratic nomination after weeks of panic and despair among some Democrats alarmed by the president’s halting and sometimes confused performance last month in a debate against Donald Trump.
There are signs that most Democrats are rallying around Harris, who would become the nation’s first woman and first Black female president.
More than 30 Democratic senators and 150 Democratic members of the House of Representatives — as well as 10 Democrats who serve as state governors — all have endorsed Harris as the new nominee.
The Harris campaign said that it has collected nearly $50 million in donations since Biden dropped out.
Choosing Harris would be the strongest approach under the “Keys to the White House” system which measures stability vs. instability on way to winning the seat in the Oval Office, Lichtman said in a YouTube livestream in the hours following Biden’s announcement.
The 13 “Keys” are a set of true/false questions.
Aside from the “Keys,” history demonstrates that those years free of an intraparty contest for nomination — Herbert Hoover in 1928 and George HW Bush in 1988 — the incumbent party was able to hold onto the White House, said Lichtman, who teaches history at American University in Washington DC.
“The Keys are clear, and the verdict of history is clear: If the Democrats want to win this election, they need to retain the ‘Contest Key,’ which would put them in a very good position to win,” he said. “A lot would have to go wrong to defeat Harris, as the consensus nominee.”
Lichtman said that he will make his final 2024 prediction using his “Keys” system after the Democratic National Convention, to be held next month in Chicago.
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