Whether Donald and his team are in the market of admitting it or not, the majority of Americans (and let’s face it, members of Congress, as well) know that Trump’s recent decision to launch an airstrike that killed Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani and push our nation to the brink of war had absolutely nothing to do with the safety and integrity of this country and everything to do with a political ploy by Trump himself to try to distract from his damning impeachment proceedings and hopefully lock in the 2020 election for him.
But according to a political historian who has correctly predicted the past nine presidential elections, Trump’s stunt he pulled with Iran isn’t going to have the effect he’d been hoping for.
Allan Lichtman, a political historian at American University, authored The Keys To The White House — a system he uses to help him correctly predict presidential elections which employs 13 “keys” in the form of true or false questions that help Lichtman determine if a candidate will win their election bid.
If six or more of the keys are determined to be false for a presidential candidate, Lichtman predicts that they will lose their presidential bid. If less than six are false, he marks them down as a winner.
The system used by the political historian can be a bit tricky when there’s a split on votes between the popular vote and that of the Electoral College — such as we experienced in both 2000 and 2016. But nevertheless, the 13 keys have proven successful at predicting election results since 1984.
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The keys used in Lichtman’s system are as follows:
- 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.
- Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
- Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
- Third-party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
- Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
- Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
- Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
- Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
- Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
- Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
- Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
- Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
- Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Lichtman recently spoke with Salon and explained just how badly Trump’s attempt to strengthen his chances by assassinating Soleimani was actually going to hurt him.
“One, nine and 12 [are] locked in against [Trump],” the political historian stated in an email. “Six for. Many others are fluid either way, although I am still hard-pressed to see Trump securing either Key 10 or 11.”
When asked directly about the airstrike that killed the Iranian Quds Force commander, Lichtman began by stating that it’s “much too early to gauge the political effects” of that particular stunt.
However, he did note that at the present time he sees “Trump losing Key 11 on foreign/military success and likely losing Key 10 on foreign/military failure.”
He also sees the possibility that “Trump might get a short-term boost from the killing, which almost always follows from a U.S. military operation. However, I am hard-pressed to see this leading to a long-term success and it could cement in the failure key against Trump if it results in significant harm to the U.S. and its interests.”
The negative backlash received by Trump from his move with Soleimani will leave us with five false answers out of the 13 key questions. Democrats could very easily secure the 6th key against Donald dependent upon who is ultimately nominated. The rest of the keys in question are mostly up to the behavior and decisions of Trump and his administration. And frankly, we all know how lackluster their decision-making skills and overall behaviors are.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
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