‘Smart Money’ Redux

Nine months ago I wrote Smart Money’s on Biden in 2024, a prediction that President Joe Biden would win reelection in 2024, no matter who his opponent was.

That prediction is based on Allan Lichtman’s Keys to the White House. Lichtman’s formula caught my attention in 2016 when he did not change his prediction that Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton even after the infamous “Grab ‘em by the pussy” tape.

I like the premise of his formula, that a large, mature democracy like the United States will elect leaders pragmatically based on a few metrics. Maybe I like it because it simplifies something too complex to understand. But the premise that parties win or lose based on economics, foreign relations, incumbency and scandal makes sense, and Lichtman’s track record is real. I’m with it until it fails on both the popular vote and electoral college (to date it only failed electoral college in history’s closest election).

Biden is out, as of today. It looks like Kamala is in. This would change at least one key (no incumbent) and possibly two if the Democrats have a contentious succession. If they do have a messy primary, that would change two keys. Three means Trump wins. The economic keys don’t have time to fall. The most likely would be the third-party key if RFK Jr. has real support.

For now I’ll keep my money on the incumbent Democrats retaining the White House given the keys outlined in the original article. The formula is a little weaker without the incumbent, but in current conditions it doesn’t matter who the nominee is.

I have changed my mind in one regard. I wouldn’t say “smart money.” Not long after writing that article, I began saying that I have no idea what will happen. Nobody could have predicted the details of this or any race. Someday the 13 keys will fail. Maybe this year.

I fancy myself a student of history, and I’m newly committed to the long view after reading Fareed Zakaria’s latest book, The Age of Revolutions. I’ve already recommended it to friends as going deeper after Why Nations Fail, which is on this blog’s Required Reading list.

“Why Nations Fail” explains why the countries settled by the Spanish, who had first pick of lands in the Americas, are poorer than the United States and Canada (in short, pluralism). I zeroed in on England’s Glorious Revolution as a future rabbit hole to go down someday. Zakaria’s book delivers a good primer on the Anglo-Dutch rise of political and economic pluralism.

The book also outlines all the political realignments from parliamentary England to contemporary America. I grew up thinking of conservatism and Republicans as the party of market capitalism and economic prudence. When it stopped being that, my sense of reality was offended. I was sure it would revert to the mean.

But politics have always changed in unexpected ways. In 19th century England, the right was comprised of landed gentry who wanted to prioritize agriculture. Their opponents on the left were merchants and manufacturers in industrializing cities. The right supported welfare benefits for the peasants to preserve a traditional way of life, while liberals preferred they work up from their bootstraps in a dynamic economy. The two would later join forces against labor unions.

These changes have always happened. I hadn’t internalized that the current change was permanent, that the party of Reagan is dead. But that’s okay. From the book:

[Technology, economics, identity} together almost always generate backlash that produces a new politics. Human beings can absorb only so much change so fast. The old politics, inherited from a prior era, often cannot keep pace. Politicians scramble to adjust, modifying their views and finding new coalitions. The result is reform and modernization or crackdown and revolt, and often some combustible combination of both.

Trump is a known quantity. If enough people want to give him another term, I can disagree. But why get worked up about it?

Trump is still viable because he surrounded himself with establishment figures who served as guardrails for his kookier ideas. He didn’t effect much change. Now he knows the system, and to surround himself with sycophants, so a second term could be off the rails. Or maybe the transactional businessman in him would retreat from anything too drastic.

But I don’t know … nobody does!

Worst case, it goes off the rails and the GOP find themselves where Britain’s Conservatives are today, on the opposite side of a supermajority. If it doesn’t go off the rails, it’s much ado about nothing.

History moves in decades and generations, not months and years. I’m along for the ride, trying not to allow it to affect my mental health. It will if you let it. I’ll close with this, a good creed for centrism, again from Zakaria’s book.

Extremism may feel satisfying, but gradual reform more often produces enduring change. If liberals can understand that time is on their side, and that their opponents are not always evil or stupid, they might find that they are able to gain broader acceptance and that progress will be made—steadily, albeit slowly. [Conservatives], for their part, should recall how resisting any change at all can simply bottle up frustration until it erupts in revolution. Rather than preserve every aspect of the status quo, better to follow the lead of the British conservatives who, after 1832, made their peace with the Great Reform Act’s gradual democratization, according to the credo, “Reform, that you may preserve.”

Does the book sound interesting? Here’s a PDF of all my highlights.