Prof. Alan Lichtman has a Plan B to save the Democrats from a chaotic convention if Biden decides not to run. Instead of announcing it, he should resign. By Hal Brown, MSW

 

A professor who has accurately called every US presidential election since 1982 has weighed in on this election.. In this article, , Should Biden step aside? Election predictor Allan Lichtman talks ‘Plan B’ he addresses concerns about incumbent and looks at the potential of Kamala Harris. He was on MSNBC this morning discussing this.

he convention to select a "Jed" Bartlett as candidate, I wrote that I thought Gavin Newsom would make a better candidate than Kamala Harris. If Biden did resign for this scenario to play out the Democrats would have to assure that their convention did not turn into chaos. Lichtman writes:

“If he resigns, not just steps aside from the candidacy, she retains the incumbency key and if he instructs all the delegates to support Kamala Harris, which he can, she would also retain the party contest key, and that is by far, the best Plan B,” he said, before pivoting to what he felt was less-than-ideal situation.

I disagree. I think they should go back what would now be smokeless backrooms to hash out who would be the strongest candidate to beat Trump.That person should be nominated on the first ballot.

The following is from his profile on Wikipedia:

Allan Jay Lichtman (⫽ˈlɪktmən⫽; born April 4, 1947) is an American historian. He has taught at American University in Washington, D.C., since 1973.

Lichtman created the Keys to the White House model with Soviet seismologist Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981. The model uses 13 true/false criteria to predict whether the presidential candidate of the incumbent party will win or lose the next election.^[1] Using this model, Lichtman has accurately predicted the winner of every U.S. presidential election since 1984, with the exception of 2000,^[2] although he did forecast successfully that Al Gore would win the popular vote that year, and 2016, where he predicted Donald Trump would win, despite Trump's popular vote loss.^[3][4][5] He ran for the U.S. Senate seat from Maryland in 2006, finishing in sixth place in the Democratic primary. In 2017, Lichtman published The Case for Impeachment, laying out multiple arguments for the impeachment of Donald Trump.^[6][7][8]

At present he does not recommend that Biden drop out of the race. He thinks this would be a disaster leading to a chaotic convention and an ultimate Democratic loss. If pressure forces Biden not to run Lichtmant has a plan B. He writes in the cited article:

“He should resign the presidency for the good of the country, that would be greatly applauded by the American people.

“Kamala Harris, much younger, no issue about her mental sharpness would become president, that would check off the incumbency key, and Biden would release all his delegates to support Harris at the convention to avoid an internal party fight, and that would also check off the contest key.

“That is a much preferable Plan B, if in fact the spineless Democrats force Biden out of this race.”

When he predicted a Trump win in 2016 he recieved this note congratulating him:

The article continues:

As for the 2024 US presidential election, Prof Lichtman said he’s not ready to lock in a prediction yet, although his prediction system currently favours Mr Biden.

“I have not made final prediction,” he said several weeks ago during a live-stream on his YouTube page. “I hope to make it about the same time as I made it in 2020, which was August,” he explained.

Prof Lichtman has also been critical of recent polls, insisting that this far before elections, they hold little, if any predictive value.

“That's the same kind of mistake that led the pollsters and pundits to be so dramatically wrong in 2016, to be wrong in 1988 and to be wrong in 2012,” he said.

These are the 13 keys to win a presidential election (from another Wikipedia page). If five or fewer of the following statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the election. If six or more are false, the incumbent party is predicted to lose.

1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Major policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

In my previous blog, Biden needs to withdraw, not designate a replacement, and allow the convention to select a "Jed" Bartlett as candidate, I wrote that I thought Gavin Newsom would make a better candidate than Kamala Harris. If Biden did resign for this scenario to play out the Democrats would have to assure that their convention did not turn into chaos. Lichtman writes:

“If he resigns, not just steps aside from the candidacy, she retains the incumbency key and if he instructs all the delegates to support Kamala Harris, which he can, she would also retain the party contest key, and that is by far, the best Plan B,” he said, before pivoting to what he felt was less-than-ideal situation.

I disagree. I think they should go back what would now be smokeless backrooms to hash out who would be the strongest candidate to beat Trump.That person should be nominated on the first ballot.

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

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Biden needs to withdraw, not designate a replacement, and allow the convention to select a "Jed" Bartlett as candidate, by Hal Brown, MSW

Above: There's more than a passing respembance between how these men and women look and how their hair styles are identical.

Read why Biden's interview with George Stephanopolous didn't change my mind about his needing to withdraw.

The Democrats need a made for TV candidate to win. Gavin Newsom fits the bill as a "Jeb" Bartlet clone.

While there's no doubt that Kamala Harris is well qualified to be president she's not an Elizabath McCord, the fictional presdient from "Madame Secretary" who went from being a high profile Secretary of State to being elected the first woman president. Biden, to his discredit especially considering his age, kept her in the background for his entire presidency. He should have known from the gitgo that a health issue could arise so he wouldn't be able to run again. Had he done this, Harris could have become like Elizabeth McCord and be well positioned to be the elected to be next president.

Now we have a politically wounded 81 year old president who if he was 10 years younger could easily run on his accomplishments even without comparing himself to an opponent who is a fat ranting profane 78 year old with signs of dementia who aspires to be a dictator.

Today's Joe Biden is no Josiah Edward "Jed" Bartlet , from "The West Wing" which ran for seven years. In terms of looking liking a TV or movie president, despite all his accomplishments, Biden never would have be cast to play a vigorous president saving the country or the world on a weekly basis on television today. Four years have taken a toll on him:

People age. As years pass they will look older. It is inevitable. No amount of plastic surgery or Botox will change this. There's no Egyptian cat statue with supposed magical powers like in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" which will age in the attic while you stay young.

Donald Trump never would have been elected had he not convinced voters that the fictional real estate genius he played on "The Apprentice" was real. At least the TV and movie star Ronald Reagan used his celebrity to become the Governor of California, a position he held for eight years.

There are enough Americans who will vote for someone who fits their pop culture inspired image of what a president should look like both in appearance and in how they speak to swing a close election like the one about to decide the fate of the nation. In 2020 you could say that Joe Biden looked more like Keifer Sutherland from the great president who saved the country in the series "Designated Survivor."

Above, Biden in 2020.

Unfortunately four years has taken a toll on President Biden. He was always good at being the president. He was never good at playing the president. He never will be. In order to defeat Trump we need someone who is really, really good at playing the president. Such a person is waiting in the wings in the same state where Ronald Reagan, the first show biz president, came from. His name, of course, is Gavin Newsom.

Biden should drop out without endorsing Kamala Harris. He should leave it to the convention to decide who the candidate most likely to defeat Trump is. If they are wise they will chose Newsom. He not only has star quality but has a great name. Gavin is a masculine name derived from Gawain, a medieval form of an Arthurian legend character. His last name, Newsom, suggests that he is new. Gretchen Whitmer would make an excellent vice presidential choice.

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

Read on the WordPress Stressline.org

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Why didn't Biden watch a replay of the debate? By Hal Brown, MSW

For me the most important and illuminating thing President Biden said in the interview with George Stephanopolous was when he was asked whether he watched the debate at some time afterwards and he said that he hadn't.

This came at the very beginning of the interview. It was the third question. Here's the context:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And — and I know you’ve said that before as well, but you came — and you did have a tough month. But you came home from Europe about 11 or 12 days before the debate, spent six days in Camp David. Why wasn’t that enough rest time, enough recovery time?

BIDEN: Because I was sick. I was feeling terrible. Matter of fact, the docs with me, I asked if they did a Covid test because they’re trying to figure out what was wrong. They did a test to see whether or not I had some infection, you know, a virus. I didn’t. I just had a really bad cold.

        STEPHANOPOULOS: And — did you ever watch the debate afterwards?

        BIDEN: I don’t think I did, no.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, what I’m try — what I want to get at is, what were you experiencing as you were going through the debate? Did you know how badly it was going?

BIDEN: Yeah, look. The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault, mine. Nobody’s fault but mine. I, uh — I prepared what I usually would do, sitting down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realized — about partway through that, you know, all — I get quoted, The New York Times had me down at 10 points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is. The fact of the matter is, what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t — I mean, the way the debate ran, not — my fault, no one else’s fault, no one else’s fault.

Before Biden answered this question he paused for a split second as if he was searching his memory, but this couldn't be what he was doing. It is crucial to break down his five word response into two parts. First he said "I don't think I did" before he said "no."

How could he not immediately know whether or not he watched a rerun of the debate? How is it he had to say "I don't think I did?" It makes more sense to believe that in this moment he was wondering if this was a gotcha question. In fact, it really was or should have been, but Stephanopolous never followed up on it. Anyone with any self-critical inclination would want to watch a recording of something that was leading to the furor about their cognitive ability that this debate was for Biden. 

Put yourself in his place. If you gave a widely panned perfomance that could hurt your career, one that even those who usually praised you were highly critical of, and had the chance to see a replay of the perfomance, wouldn't you want to see what everyone was talking about? Add to this that your performance was leading friends and foes alike to question whether or not you had lost your usual mental acuity, or worse, had dementia, wouldn't you want to see why they were saying this?

Stephanopolous should have confronted him on this by asking something like "why, Mr. President, wouldn't you want to see the debate to gain insight and self-understanding about yourself?"

Depending on the answer a follow-up could have included asking whether he watched recordings of the shows on friendly networks like MSNBC and more balanced networks where his usual allies were showing clips of the debate and expressing shock at his bad performance and speculations as to what had caused it. 

I think that any self-aware and self critical president would have aides recording all the post debate television coverage. If I was Biden I'd want to see what Rachel Maddow was saying about the debate.

Ckick above to view.

Above: This was discussed after the interview on CNN from 59 seconds 1:45 mins., . and it came up again at 6:20 mins. here. One commentator said... "he said oddly that he hadn't watched the debate and that did not strike me as all that clear..." This struck another commentator as odd.

Someone on Facebook alerted me to this post-debate coverage. It was much more analytical than the coverage on MSNBC which had Ali Velchi without the A team I'd expect.

Stephanopolous pursued the question about what the debate perfomance meant throughout the interview even going as far as to ask whether he'd have a cognitive test and neurological examination:

STEPHANOPOULOS: I — I know your doctor said he consulted with a neurologist. I — I guess I’m asking — a slightly different question. Have you had the specific cognitive tests, and have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?

BIDEN: No. No one said I had to. No one said. They said I’m good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Would you be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognit — cognitive tests and release the results to the American people?

BIDEN: Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not — and that’s not hi— sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.

The answer I highlighted is crucial and if not a lie, it is not true. Many people said Biden wasn't good in this regard. Stephanopolous should have jumped on this response. He should have followed up with asking Biden to name who the "they" who said he was good actually were. After all, there was a chorus of people we assume Biden respects suggesting he have a neurological examination and was not good in this way.

Throughout the interview Biden parried every question about his cognitive ability with examples of all his accomplshments. This was a total deflection from the issue as to whether he might have either a significantly aging brain, or worse, early dementia.

Here's another example of his not answering a question about cognition by trying to be flippant:

Stephanopoulos asked. “Do you dispute that there have been more lapses, especially in the last several months?”

“Can I run the 110? No. But I’m still in good shape,” Biden replied. 

Stephanopolous should have schooled himself thoroughly in the diagnostic critera for early dementia vs the mental slowing down many people experience when they are Biden's age. Whenever Biden touted his cognitive ability by describing his accomplishments as president and the work he was still doing, Stephanopolous should have zeroed in on asking about things like forgetfulness, losing his train of thought, misplacing items, confusing names, and blanking out for brief periods. Instead he allowed Biden to make mini-campaign speeches about how effective a president he was and assuring that he would continue to be able to do this for four more years.

A tough question would have been about the statistics which show that a minority of people, 22%, his age have or will get dementia between the ages of 85 and 89 (reference). Stephanopolous could have asked whether he thought it was fair to the country to take the chance that he would be one of these people.

The fact that the debate was held during the day and not at night is significant. People with dementia often present their symptoms at night. This is called sundowning. The debate was held at 9:00 PM. The interview should have been conducted at the same time. Even if Biden doesn't have dementia why not have an interview at a time of day when he isn't at his best? A president can be called upon at any time day or night to deal with a crisis.

Not to to get into the weeds about this, but people of any age may have problems adjusting to long distance travel across times zones. This is probably more difficult with elders. It makes sense that a younger president is better suited to deal with world leaders at international meetings.

The question as to whether or not Biden has dementia was not answered for me in the interview. While I didn't see indications of cognitive impairment or dementia what I did see was someone who was like many people with or without early dementia who are afraid or unable to look candidly at themselves to see if they might have this dreadful disease. 

Someone can be self-aware and able to look unflinchingly at themselves and their weakness and foibles in many ways but they may have blind spots. Thinking about your own death can be such a blind spot. 

As one enters their senior years some people may resist looking at their mortality. At the age of 80 someone like me, with no life threatening conditions who is in good health, still knows they at the end of their life. I try to live my life to its fullest, but I know I am one medical appointment, one blood test, away from being told I have some terminal disease. 

Not everyone wants to think about this. Looking into the abyss isn't for the faint of heart.

This is a transcript of the entire interview.

Addendum:

Silver calls for Biden to resign after ‘incoherent’ comments in ABC interview, in The Hill

Excerpt:

“This is a pretty incoherent answer including a non-sequitur [complaining] about a New York Times poll, which he incorrectly claims had him down 10 points before the debate,” Silver wrote on X, sharing a clip of the interview. He added that The New York Times survey only had Biden down 3 or 4 points.

He also wrote "During the interview, Biden refused to take a cognitive test. Silver said that this decision was “disqualifying on its own.” The article concludes: “At this point it’s only like their 4th most important problem but the fact that the White House has drunk the Kool-Aid on the poll denialism stuff all cycle long isn’t helping matters.”

This is a transcript of the entire interview

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It's not what the GOP platform says about abortion that could lose Trump the election, it's what he says when asked to state his position in the final debate. By Hal Brown, MSW

 

I don't think Evangelicals will vote for whoever the Democratic Party candidate is. The danger for Trump is that they simply decide not to vote.

The title of the RawStory article is 'Coming split within Trump’s coalition': Leaders warn key issue threatens MAGA unity" and anyone following politics can guess what the issue is even without reading further. 

Here's an exerpt from the article summarizing the Washington Post story "Tempers flare as Trump reviews revised abortion plank for Republican platform" (subsciption):

The rift Trump's advisers want to hide from view stems from Evangelical's mounting calls to add antiabortion language to the U. S. Constitution in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention, which begins on July 15, the Post reports. 

"The escalating behind-the-scenes disagreement over the abortion language has become so tense and acrimonious in recent weeks that some social conservative leaders have issued public warnings of a coming split within Trump’s coalition," the Post reports.

The only way a party platform is significant is when the fight to include one thing or another spills over into the national news. In 2020 the GOP didn't even have a platform. They merely voted to adopt the same platform they had in 2016 (read why here).

This election is going to be so close the winner can be determined by just one special interest group or a single issue. The ages of the candidates are the one topic being covered extensively since the debate. There is a growing chorus of voices saying that Biden is too old to run. This comes not only from Democrats who have gone on the record but from independents who are being interviewed by reporters. One of them just reported that he went to a town where no independents he interviewed thought Biden should stay in the race because of his age. What they saw was his cognitive decline.

Abortion is an issue that won't disappear because Trump wishes it so. If Trump actually believed in God and the power of prayer he'd be praying for the issue to go away:

There's no way that the Evangelicals will accept Trump answering direct questions about where he stands on abortion as he has so far, that is, that he wants to leave it to the states. They are very familiar with this map :

When they see this map or others like it they see babies being killed in a large portion of the country. When they look at maps like this one they zero in on the parts of the country where the legality of abortion has been left up to the states. You can bet that they follow articles like this which describe the specific laws in each state.

These evangelicals want a straight-forward promise from Donald Trump that he will assure that there is a nation-wide ban on all abortion at any stage of fetal development. They don't want any quibling on whether life starts at four or six weeks. They want abortion banned at conception. 

The Evangelicals no doubt want Trump to come out against the Supreme Court ruling allowing the use of mifepristone. 

Whether it's Biden or another Democrat in the second debate (assuming there is one) if the moderators don't pin Trump down on his stance on abortion, the Democratic Party candidate should. If he persists in saying this should be left to the states it could cost him the election.

Update:

This was covered in Salon today:

Recommended reading:

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Unfiltered fat old man caught ranting on video. At least he doesn't have the nuclear "football" with him..... for the time being. By Hal Brown, MSW

 

The Daily Beast (in a no subscription required article here) published a video of Trump with his blank-face son Barron sitting next to him in a golf cart. In the screen grab above he happens to have his hand in his pants. He's putting a wad of bills he tipped somebody from off camera.

Here's a YouTube of the video.

A shorter clip of it was just played on MSNBC.

This is from The Daily Beast:

“He just quit, you know—he’s quitting the race,” Trump says, sitting in a golf cart. “I got him out of the—and that means we have Kamala.”

Later in the clip, he fawns over Chinese President Xi Jinping, calling him “a fierce man, very tough guy” whom Biden may be unable to handle.

It was not immediately clear where or when exactly the footage was covertly filmed.

In the video, the former president asks the person holding the camera what they thought of his own debate performance. As he’s told he did “fantastic” and “amazing,” Trump blusters on flatly, “Look at that old, broken down pile of crap.

“It’s a bad guy,” he says, seemingly referring to Biden. After announcing that the president is quitting and handing the baton to Kamala Harris, Trump continues, “I think she’s gonna be better” as an opponent.

“She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic,” he adds, plucking at his gloves, then appears to say, “She’s so fucking bad.”

Trump then switches back to Biden, asking, “Can you imagine that guy dealing with Putin? And the president of China—who’s a fierce person. He’s a fierce man, very tough guy. And they see him.”

Before driving off, the former president reiterates, “But they just announced he’s probably quitting. Just keep knocking him out, huh?”

Trump has two basic modes of expressing what's going through his mind when he's not reading a teleprompter, unfiltered and more unfiltered. You see the former in his rallies and whenever he knows there's a camera, and we just had a chance to see the later when, presumably, he didn't know there was a camera. 

Consider that there's something missing from the video that would be there if he was president. It's the "football" carried by a miliary aide which would enable him to launch a nuclear attack. If rerelected Trump will have the unfettered ability to wage nuclear war,” said Joseph Cirincione at The Ploughshares Fund, an anti-nuclear organization. “He can launch one weapon or a thousand weapons, and no one can stop him, outside of mutiny by the armed forces.”

Above: Trump with a military aide carrying the nuclear football

This was published on CNN before Trump began his term as president:

Beginning on January 20, President-elect Donald Trump will be accompanied at all times by a military aide carrying the nuclear “football,” enabling him to order a nuclear strike at a moment’s notice.

Just like his predecessors, whether he is at the White House, in a motorcade, aboard Air Force One or on a trip overseas, he will never be more than an arm’s reach away from the aide and his satchel.

“You have to be ready anytime, for any moment,” said Pete Metzger, who often carried the nuclear launch suitcase during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. “The time is so short between alert and execution.”

The article went on to say:

“How can you trust him with the nuclear codes?” Obama said at a rally in Durham, North Carolina, earlier this month. “You can’t do it.”

And Bruce Blair, a former nuclear missile launch officer who supported Hillary Clinton, says his concerns about Trump persist. 

“He has proved himself over and over again to be quick-tempered, defensive, prone to lash out,” he wrote in Politico. If a nuclear crisis arises, “Trump’s erratic and volatile personality makes for low confidence in his ability to reach the right decision.”

A president’s order could only be stopped by mutiny, according to Kingston Reif at the Arms Control Association, and only if more than one person were to disobey the president’s orders.

“The president has supreme authority to decide whether to use America’s nuclear weapons, period,” he said. “Full stop.”

With all the legitimate consternation about how the Supreme Court ruling gives a president the powers of a king let's not forget that a president already has the ability to launch nuclear missiles.

Now let's consider the scenario that those sounding alarm bells are making about the president being able to order SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent in light of this paragraph:

A president’s order could only be stopped by mutiny, according to Kingston Reif at the Arms Control Association, and only if more than one person were to disobey the president’s orders.

What would happen if Trump issued such an order as Commander-in-Chief? It would clearly be both unconstituional and against the Military Code of Justice.

Consider the following from FindLaw:

The question arose recently when U.S. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer resigned from his post after saying that he felt an obligation to disobey an order from his commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump.

The issue involved a Navy SEAL, Eddie Gallagher, whose demotion for posing for a photo with a combatant's corpse was reversed by Trump on Nov. 15.

That action prompted Spencer to send Trump a resignation letter on Nov. 24 in which he stated, "I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States."

So, can a person in the military simply refuse to follow an order if they don't like it?

The answer is yes — if they consider the order itself to be illegal or unconstitutional.

It's generally called a "duty to disobey," and is empowered by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The UCMJ is more concerned about the need to obey orders, but specifies the conditions when military personnel may feel justified in not following them:

• If the order is "contrary to the constitution" or "the laws of the United States."
• If the order is "patently illegal, ... such as one that directs the commission of a crime."

Back to the SEAL Team 6 question: it is not only possible the order to commit an illegal act would be disobeyed but that once the fact that Trump issued this order made it's way up to the top of the command structure the generals and admirals could decide they had a renegade and dangerous president and commander-in-chief and decide to mount a coup and install a temporary military officer to run the country who would order Trump's arrest and a new election.

What about Biden and the briefcase?

It is only fair to consider how President Biden would handle the power to launch a nuclear attack. For one thing, we know Biden isn't an impulsive malignant narcissist. He may, however, be congitively diminished during certain parts of the day or night. If there was a crisis where a nuclear response was an option when he wasn't at his best he'd be either among top civilian and military aides either in the White House Situation Room, on Air Force One, or have them nearby. 

He could be trusted not to act precipitously. He'd listen to the advice and recommendations of the experts. He wouldn't have surrounded himself with advisors selected because of their loyalty to him rather than for their competence.

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

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