Allan Lichtman: The Science of Political Prediction

0:00:13 I’m Guy Kawasaki, and this is the Remarkable People podcast.
0:00:16 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:18 Today we have a distinguished guest.
0:00:20 His name is Alan Lickman.
0:00:26 Alan is an acclaimed American historian who has taught at American University in Washington,
0:00:30 D.C. since 1973.
0:00:36 Alan is renowned for creating the keys to the White House model with Soviet seismologist
0:00:40 Vladimir “Kyles” Borok in 1981.
0:00:46 This model uses 13 true/false criteria to predict whether the presidential candidate
0:00:49 of the incumbent party will win or lose.
0:00:56 Alan has successfully predicted the outcome in approximately 90% of the presidential election
0:00:58 since 1984.
0:01:03 If you’ve been following the Biden is too old and should step aside hysteria, you may
0:01:09 have seen Alan expressing quite the opposite opinion on various talk shows.
0:01:14 This episode provides insight into who and what you should listen to as everybody loses
0:01:15 their minds.
0:01:22 Join us as we explore Alan’s groundbreaking work, his perspectives on the political landscape,
0:01:26 and his remarkable journey as a historian and political analyst.
0:01:28 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:35 This is Remarkable People, and now here is a remarkable Alan Lickman.
0:01:42 Please walk me through how working with a Russian seismologist, an earthquake predictor
0:01:47 leads to you becoming this election predictor.
0:01:54 So, the keys to the White House are the alternative to the conventional wisdom of the Pauls and
0:02:02 the pundits that lead us down the primrose path of error as we saw, for example, in 2016.
0:02:08 The keys tap into the structure of how elections really work by gauging the strength and performance
0:02:13 of the White House Party, and I’d love to tell you I came across the keys by ruining
0:02:19 my eyes of the archive as a deep contemplation, but if I were to tell you that to quote the
0:02:23 late not so great Richie Nixon, that would be wrong.
0:02:29 I came across the keys kind of serendipitously when I was a visiting distinguished scholar
0:02:36 at CalTab in Southern California, and there I met the world’s leading authority in earthquake
0:02:45 predictor, Volodja Kailas Flora, and it was his idea that we should collaborate, and being
0:02:52 brilliant and insightful, of course, I said, “Whoa, earthquakes may be a big deal here
0:02:53 in Southern California.
0:02:59 I have to go back to Washington, D.C., where I teach at American University, and no one
0:03:00 cares about earthquakes there.”
0:03:03 He said, “Oh, no, I resolved earthquakes.”
0:03:04 Right.
0:03:05 He said, “Get this.
0:03:13 In 1963, he was a member of the Soviet Scientific Delegation that came to Washington and negotiated
0:03:16 the most important treaty in the history of the world.
0:03:21 It’s the treaty why we’re still here, the nuclear test-bed treaty that stopped us from
0:03:24 poisoning our atmosphere, our oceans, and our soil.”
0:03:30 He said in Washington, “He fell in love with politics and always wanted to use his methods
0:03:32 of earthquake prediction to predict.”
0:03:39 But he said, “Look, to live in the Soviet Union, forget it, elections, it’s supreme
0:03:45 leader are off with your head, but you, he said to me, are an expert in the presidency
0:03:54 and you, it’s just so we became the odd couple of political research, and indeed, we reconceptualized
0:03:57 elections in earthquake terms.”
0:04:03 Now to answer whether this is 1981, not as Carter versus Reagan, liberal versus conservative,
0:04:11 Republican versus Democrat, but at stability, the White House pardon stays in power, earthquake,
0:04:14 the White House pardon is turned out of power.
0:04:19 And with that in mind, we looked at every American presidential election, from the horse and
0:04:26 buggy days of politics, the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, to the election of Ronald
0:04:28 Reagan in 1908.
0:04:34 And we used the methods of earthquake prediction, a pattern of recognition, to see what patterns
0:04:41 are associated with stability and earthquake, guided by my insight that elections are basically
0:04:47 votes up or down on the strength and performance of the White House pardon.
0:04:53 And we found the best separation between stability and earthquake, with 13 key questions, the
0:04:59 13 keys to the White House, which are true false statements about the strength and performance
0:05:05 of the White House party, where an answer true always favors stability.
0:05:10 And we came up with a simple decision, you don’t even have to take your shoes off, to
0:05:18 use the system, if six keys are false, you have earthquake, if fewer than six are false,
0:05:24 you have stupid.
0:05:29 Before we continue with this interview, I thought I would give you more information
0:05:32 about these 13 keys.
0:05:34 Number one, party mandate.
0:05:39 After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of
0:05:44 Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
0:05:47 Number two, no primary contest.
0:05:51 There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
0:05:55 Number three, incumbent seeking reelection.
0:05:58 The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
0:06:01 Number four, no third party.
0:06:05 There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
0:06:08 Five, strong short term economy.
0:06:11 The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
0:06:18 Six, strong long term economy, real per capita economic growth during the term equals or
0:06:22 exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
0:06:25 Number seven, major policy change.
0:06:31 The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
0:06:33 Number eight, no social unrest.
0:06:37 There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
0:06:39 Number nine, no scandal.
0:06:43 The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
0:06:47 Number 10, no foreign/military failure.
0:06:53 The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
0:06:58 Number 11, major foreign/military success.
0:07:03 The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
0:07:07 Number 12, charismatic incumbent.
0:07:11 The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
0:07:15 Number 13, uncharismatic challenger.
0:07:20 The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
0:07:26 These are the 13 factors in what Alan Lickman calls “the keys to the White House.”
0:07:35 Now let’s continue with the interview.
0:07:41 So then, in this world, what function do polls serve?
0:07:47 They serve to mislead us, a call of things about polls.
0:07:49 First of all, they’re snapshots.
0:07:51 They’re not predictors.
0:07:53 They were abused as predictors.
0:07:58 But the media’s got to cover elections every single day, and the easiest thing, not that
0:08:02 we have multiple polls a day, is to write a story about the polls.
0:08:06 You don’t even have to take your shoes off to do that.
0:08:12 But look at how often the snapshot polls give you inaccurate prediction.
0:08:18 Of course, they led us to falsely predict, not us, because I correctly predicted Donald
0:08:25 Trump in 2016, which you’d imagine had not made me very popular in 90% plus Democratic
0:08:28 Washington, D.C., where I teach at American University.
0:08:33 But the polls, of course, led all the conventional forecasters down the path of error.
0:08:41 Or look at 1988, in the late spring of 1988, George H. W. Bush trailed Mike Dukakis to
0:08:43 Democrat by 17 points.
0:08:50 Again, all the pundits wrote off Bush, but I wrote at the time that based on the keys,
0:08:55 Bush is going to win because he is running on the record of the Radiant Administration,
0:08:59 peace, prosperity, domestic tranquility.
0:09:05 The other thing about the polls is that the error is vastly greater than they would have
0:09:06 you believe.
0:09:13 You’ve heard, right, the error margins plus and minus 3% about, that’s pure statistical
0:09:14 error.
0:09:18 That’s the error you would get if you had a huge jar of green and red balls, and you
0:09:23 took sample, and you estimated the percentage of red and green balls in the jar.
0:09:26 But human beings are not red and green balls.
0:09:29 Most people don’t respond to polls.
0:09:34 They may lie, they may have not focused on the election, and they may change their mind.
0:09:40 Plus, no one’s voted yet, so the pollsters have to guess who the likely voters are.
0:09:47 This introduces significant error above and beyond plus and minus 3, and it’s not random.
0:09:49 It’s unidirectional.
0:09:56 In 2016, the polls underestimated Republican voting, and so like generals fighting the
0:10:03 last war they overcorrected, and based on the midterms of 2022, the off-year elections
0:10:11 of 2023, and the special elections of 2024, the polls are significantly underestimating
0:10:13 Democrat voting strength.
0:10:19 Best example is the most highly publicized special election for the New York Congressional
0:10:25 Seek previously held by the disgraced and booted-out-chewed sand-toes.
0:10:30 The polls taken just a couple of days before the election had it as a dead-eat Democrat
0:10:36 ahead Biden’s significant one-point, while the Democrat one might aid points outperforming
0:10:38 the polls by…
0:10:46 Well, when people tell me about polls, I ask myself, if my iPhone rang and I saw a number
0:10:54 in 877-666-543-2, and I would look at that number and say, I don’t know who the hell
0:10:59 that is, 877 or 888 or 800, that’s not a good number to answer.
0:11:05 Now, let’s say I was stupid enough to actually answer that, and then somebody comes on and
0:11:11 says I’m from Seneca College or something and I’m conducting a political poll, I would
0:11:17 hang up right there, so what kind of people are picking up a phone call from a number
0:11:22 they don’t recognize and then they hear somebody saying I’m calling for the American Polling
0:11:28 Institute and then actually spend time, I mean, how can that be statistically and scientifically
0:11:29 relevant?
0:11:35 It’s not, most people don’t respond to polls, only a very small percentage, and while they
0:11:43 tried to make it representative, it can’t be because it’s biased by response.
0:11:50 Well, how do they get anybody to respond is my question, but I mean, we don’t need to
0:11:52 go down there.
0:11:57 And now, we’re betting the future of the country on this completely flawed method.
0:11:59 What am I missing, Alan?
0:12:07 You’re missing the fact that, look, all of these critics who are trying to balance Joe
0:12:14 Biden from the Democratic nomination to a significant extent based on phony polls have
0:12:23 zero, zero track record to predicting elections, and yet they claim they know what the Democrats
0:12:26 ought to do to win the election.
0:12:29 And why are they dependent on polls?
0:12:34 Because they have no scientific system, unlike the keys to the White House, so they’re forced
0:12:36 to turn to the polls.
0:12:42 And yes, at the time, you know, that they were starting, Democrats commit harry-carry,
0:12:48 slit their own throats by trashing their incumbent president, and they’re duly elected
0:12:52 nominate, not the political operatives and the daughters and the congressmen and the
0:12:59 senators nominated in Joe Biden, it’s the Democratic voters, 87 percent of them.
0:13:04 So because they have no method for predicting elections, the only thing they have is the
0:13:05 polls.
0:13:06 And guess what?
0:13:12 Because their snapshots, they’ve shifted the most recent polls from Ipsos and Washington
0:13:21 Post, ADC, show Donald Trump and Joe Biden well after the debate in a dead heat.
0:13:26 There are some new swing state polls which show swing states moving towards Biden, a
0:13:32 recent poll showed Biden ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan, and in striking distance at
0:13:33 Arizona.
0:13:40 Plus, of course, different polls view different answers, so you could pick any poll you want
0:13:45 to prove anything that you believe.
0:13:49 Sounds a little bit like the Vietnam War or the Bible, but yeah, I digress.
0:14:00 So with your 13 keys, can’t someone make the case that because of their soul binary, it’s
0:14:04 true or false, but aren’t they also subjective?
0:14:05 Yes.
0:14:12 When I first developed the keys, the professional forecasting profession blasted me.
0:14:18 I’ve committed the ultimate sin of forecasting, the sin of subjectivity.
0:14:20 And I had a couple of answers.
0:14:27 One, the African beings are not reading green balls, and you have to make judgments.
0:14:34 It’s not subjectivity, it’s judgments, and historians make judgments all the time.
0:14:37 Two, it’s not random judgments.
0:14:43 When you read my book, Predicting the Next President 2024, which is the eighth edition
0:14:48 of the book, you’ll see every key, including the so-called subjective ones as carefully
0:14:49 defined.
0:14:58 Plus, I have answered each question from 1860 to the present, so the next answer has
0:14:59 to be consistent.
0:15:05 Well, it took about 15 to 20 years, and the professional forecasting community totally
0:15:07 changed their minds about the keys.
0:15:13 They realized these big fancy mathematical models that tried to eliminate judgments didn’t
0:15:19 work, and that the best forecasting models were like the keys, which had some judgemental
0:15:26 keys and some cut and dried keys like measurements of economic growth or wins and losses in midterm
0:15:27 elections.
0:15:32 And all of a sudden, the keys were the hottest thing in professional forecasting.
0:15:37 I twice keynoted the International Forecasting Summit.
0:15:42 I published in the Journal of Applied Forecasting, in the scholarly international journal of
0:15:44 forecast.
0:15:51 The keys were presented by the American Political Science Association as a classic model of
0:15:52 forecasting.
0:15:56 I won the Stechler Award for courage in forecasting.
0:16:02 The Dean of American Political Science, Gerald Popper, called the keys the most successful
0:16:04 prediction model of our time.
0:16:10 The only one that was right about 2016 and right going all the way back to the 19 days.
0:16:16 Despite all of this, I get a lot of unformed commentary about the alleged subjectivity
0:16:19 of the keys.
0:16:26 Well, I see these talking heads on CNN or MSNBC, I don’t watch Fox, so I’m predisposed
0:16:29 towards one kind of talking head.
0:16:35 But aren’t these people who are opining basically just hacks who were in the political system
0:16:40 somehow and they can’t get a real job now, so they’re just paid to like, spout off?
0:16:45 Yeah, I don’t want to disparage my buddies, the pundits, but I have suggested.
0:16:50 No one’s listened, of course, that for the entire election season, we should take all
0:16:58 the pundits and the pollsters and send them to a very nice vacation on a far off, civic
0:16:59 island.
0:17:04 Of course, you’re right, they have no scientific access to pundits, and you talk about that.
0:17:09 For their opinions, they’re just talking about off the top of their heads, remember?
0:17:13 They all thought Hillary Clinton would win in 2016.
0:17:18 And by the way, Joe Biden’s debate, based on if you want to talk about the only data
0:17:22 core we have as CNN poll, was not the worst Democratic before.
0:17:28 It’s 33% thought Biden won in a sample that was skewed Republican, but you’ll listen to
0:17:29 the media.
0:17:35 You would think nobody thought Biden, much worse debate was Obama versus Romney.
0:17:39 The first to debate or only 20% thought Obama won.
0:17:42 The polls swung 12 points.
0:17:48 Romney went from downade to up four, and again, all the pundits were writing off Obama.
0:17:49 Remember that?
0:17:56 He’s going to win an Obama won an electoral college lion’s slide with 332 electoral college
0:17:57 votes.
0:18:04 So you turn on the TV, and you see some heretofore unknown congressman from New Hampshire that
0:18:10 is calling for Biden to step aside and, you know, based on his knowledge of neurology
0:18:13 or statistics and like, what goes through your brain?
0:18:18 How do you even react to something like this random congressman calling for the president
0:18:21 of the United States to give it up?
0:18:28 In doubly a poll, I have summarized American politics in one set.
0:18:32 Republicans have no principles, Democrats have no spine.
0:18:38 Publicans united behind a convicted fellow of civilly convicted sexual assaulter, someone
0:18:44 who has promised to govern like an authoritarian, like his buddy or Biden, Hungary, and on the
0:18:49 other hand, the first side of adversity, the spineless Democrats are ready to trash their
0:18:56 president trying to bouse the newly elected nominee from the ticket, and they’re doing
0:18:57 it all out in public.
0:19:03 I’ve never seen, and I’ve studied elections from the founding to the president, a party
0:19:08 so willing to split its own throat right out there in public.
0:19:11 Plus, they have no basis for their opinion.
0:19:17 They have no scientific way of knowing who’s going to win and who’s going to lose, yet
0:19:22 they claim they know what Democrats should do to be electable.
0:19:28 You know, Democrats for a long time have said, we can nominate really electable candidates,
0:19:34 experienced, knowledgeable candidates with great records, like former Vice President
0:19:42 Walter Mondale in 1984, the great Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis in 1988, the awesome
0:19:45 Senator John Kerry in 2004.
0:19:51 Former former First Lady, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, and we
0:19:54 know what’s happened.
0:19:55 All lost.
0:19:59 That’s how much Democrats know about who’s electable.
0:20:03 Are you saying the Republicans know more about who’s electable?
0:20:10 No, I’m saying none of the politicians know who’s electable and who isn’t, but what I
0:20:16 am saying is, no matter what kind of threat Donald Trump poses to our freedoms and our
0:20:22 democracy, the Republicans who have no principles will just stick to him, whereas the Democrats
0:20:29 who have no spine run for the hills publicly at the first sign of adversity.
0:20:30 Pick your poison.
0:20:36 Well, what if somebody says to you that this election is unlike any other election in the
0:20:42 history of our country, it’s such a fractured country, and we have social media exaggerating
0:20:47 things and making up lies, and we have Russians influencing our elections, so we got to throw
0:20:52 your 13 keys out of the window because that was then and this is now.
0:20:59 Every four years, some critic comes to me and says, “Lichman, you got to change your keys.
0:21:01 We have an African-American running.
0:21:03 Never had that before.
0:21:06 Nation’s not ready to elect an African-American.
0:21:08 We have a woman running.
0:21:09 We’ve never had that before.
0:21:11 We have social media.
0:21:12 We’ve never had that before.
0:21:14 We have a fractured country.
0:21:16 Never had that focus we have.
0:21:19 We were vastly more fractured in the 1850s.”
0:21:22 Believe all that, two answers.
0:21:26 One, you cannot change a model on the fly.
0:21:28 That is a recipe for error.
0:21:32 Two, the keys are very robust.
0:21:34 They’re in development.
0:21:41 They go all the way back to 1860, when women couldn’t vote, right, when most African-Americans
0:21:47 were enslaved, when my ancestors from Eastern Europe, Latinos, Asians hadn’t even arrived
0:21:48 here yet.
0:21:53 We had no agricultural economy, no coal, no fundamentals, no jet planes.
0:21:55 People almost never saw their candidates.
0:22:03 These have survived through vastly greater changes than our society, our economy, our
0:22:08 politics, our communications than the critics have suggested.
0:22:11 Now, let me make one more statement.
0:22:16 I’m not so arrogant as to say that the patterns of history can never change.
0:22:19 I’m not psychic Gene Dixit with a crystal ball.
0:22:25 I’m not speaker Mike Johnson and claims the Almighty talks to him, tells him what to eat.
0:22:29 I’m an historian and it all is always possible.
0:22:35 Not so arrogant to say it isn’t that something outside the keys could be so unprecedented
0:22:42 and so cataclysmic as to shape things up, but I can’t randomly change the keys.
0:22:46 What if you were Biden’s chief marketing officer?
0:22:47 What would you do?
0:22:50 I will tell you exactly what I would.
0:22:56 First of all, I would say govern well, continue to have a successful president.
0:23:01 Oh, it’s true, Biden has a flight disability, he’s always had it, even in his prime in
0:23:02 the eighties.
0:23:07 He does confused names, he does stutter, he’s not always quick on his feet and he’s
0:23:14 old and it is the worst ageism and ableism to trash him for this.
0:23:19 Nobody but nobody who tried to trash Biden for these factors, these ableism and ageism
0:23:23 has shown it has only effect on his presidency.
0:23:27 These issues are way down when it comes to being a successful president.
0:23:37 What’s vastly more important is experience, knowledge, value, tolerance, respect for democracy
0:23:44 and institutions like ends of millions of other persons in America who have slight disabilities.
0:23:48 Biden has performed his job admirable.
0:23:52 But in terms of governing well, the most important thing he could do in the short term, it’s
0:23:58 very tough because he’s got to deal with this crazy Netanyahu in Israel, his broker
0:24:02 of ceasefire and hostage release in the Middle East.
0:24:05 Second thing I tell him is to follow the law of Franklin Roosevelt.
0:24:08 Franklin Roosevelt was also blasted for his disability.
0:24:14 Remember, he had polio, our lives were aged out, but it wasn’t called a disability in
0:24:15 those days.
0:24:20 He was called a cripple and lots of people said by God, you’re cripple, you’re sick,
0:24:23 you won’t even live through a first term.
0:24:28 And even his advisors said, you know, don’t campaign, you know, you might collapse.
0:24:34 And FDR said nuts and rather vigorous, open campaign and that’s exactly what Joe Biden
0:24:35 should do.
0:24:41 And by the way, his poor cripple couldn’t survive one term, one full land slide away.
0:25:03 You’re still a CMO, so what would your slogan for Biden be?
0:25:17 My slogan for Biden would be that success counts and we have vision for the future counts,
0:25:18 not bombast.
0:25:25 Yeah, I’m afraid most Americans don’t know what the word bombast means though.
0:25:30 Just watch Donald Trump and he’s supposed to child for bombast.
0:25:36 If I were CMO of the Democratic Party, my slogan for Biden would be vote for Trump and
0:25:40 loser of vagina, but that’s different.
0:25:42 That’s not going to be it.
0:25:49 You know, the media has been incredibly complicit but I get news for you and the vast majority
0:25:56 of the coverage of the debate is Biden faltering, legitimate, but Trump had actually a vastly
0:26:00 worse debate in terms of the future of the country.
0:26:03 He’s lying his way to the Presidents.
0:26:10 One lie in the debate for every one minute and 20 to 30 seconds, and a huge lie is about
0:26:15 January 6th, about the 2020 election, about Roe versus Wade.
0:26:19 And he made it clear in the debate that he was going to be an authoritarian.
0:26:22 Why wasn’t that at least equally covered?
0:26:28 Plus in terms of this abler, the media is nitpicking everything Biden has to say.
0:26:35 Again, I opened my news feed, Biden answered for one hour, difficult, hostile questions.
0:26:37 He didn’t falter.
0:26:39 He was knowledgeable.
0:26:41 He was competent.
0:26:45 He answered it in a way that was good for the world and the country.
0:26:46 Why wasn’t that the headline?
0:26:53 Instead the headline was Biden mistakes Zelensky for a small gaff that has nothing to do with
0:26:54 anything.
0:26:59 Biden’s doing these gaffes for 40 years and that’s the headline story.
0:27:06 Now the media is ultimately complicit with Donald Trump and let me tell you, the media
0:27:11 will rue the day if Donald Trump gets elected because what’s one of the first things he’s
0:27:14 going to do is shut Donald Trump down.
0:27:19 When I was listening last night, I was saying to myself, there is no way Donald Trump could
0:27:25 have answered these questions with as much authority and insight as what Biden did.
0:27:27 There’s not even close.
0:27:30 He would have just said, “I’ll end the war in Ukraine in a week,” right?
0:27:31 Right.
0:27:37 He couldn’t have answered one of those questions, much less all of them, with the same competence
0:27:40 and ability and knowledge as Joe Biden.
0:27:41 And that should have been the story.
0:27:47 I said the story is these minor gaffes which mean nothing and feed into this horrible discriminatory
0:27:50 ableism myth about Joe Biden.
0:27:52 By the way, what about Donald Trump’s gaffes?
0:27:57 He mistook Marla Maples, his own wife for Eugene Carroll.
0:28:02 He confused an Italian with Nancy Pelosi.
0:28:07 He taught him about protecting airports during the Revolutionary War called his wife Mercedes.
0:28:13 He ran it incoherently about, you know, would you rather be killed by a shark or a her,
0:28:15 electrocution?
0:28:23 Things as bad or worse than Joe Biden and he’s got that almost complete pass on this.
0:28:25 It’s just awful.
0:28:33 As a historian, do you see parallels between Trump and Hitler or are we just making shit
0:28:34 up here?
0:28:35 Yeah.
0:28:36 He’s hit with the comparison.
0:28:39 You know, Hitler reads the unique key.
0:28:45 The real comparison is Orban in Hungary and he’s openly who breaks Orban, who’s destroyed
0:28:49 the free press, destroyed his opposition.
0:28:52 That’s the model we need to follow for Trump.
0:28:58 And in terms of the media complicity, it is not just the evil people who wreak havoc
0:29:00 on this world.
0:29:04 It is the good people who don’t do enough to stop it.
0:29:07 But not early wise will teach us that, right?
0:29:08 Absolutely.
0:29:16 And that is the burden of history and we need to pay real attention to the danger that Donald
0:29:19 Trump poses to our freedoms and democracy.
0:29:22 And he’s absolutely open about it.
0:29:23 It’s not some secret.
0:29:26 Oh, it’s when there’s a politician saying he’s not serious.
0:29:28 He’s just joking.
0:29:30 That’s what they said about the Axis Hollywood tape.
0:29:31 He’s not serious.
0:29:33 It’s just locker room talk.
0:29:34 He doesn’t solve.
0:29:41 I guess a jury unanimously found he had done to Gene Carroll exactly the kind of sexual
0:29:45 assault he talked about in the Axis Hollywood tape.
0:29:46 Okay.
0:29:51 Let’s suppose Trump wins and he does all this stuff and now you can’t have an abortion.
0:29:52 You can’t have birth control.
0:30:00 You can’t have IVF, LGBTQ+ people are being reprogrammed, immigrants are deported or imprisoned.
0:30:04 Because everything happens, Project 2025 happens.
0:30:09 Do you see this as four years of just dystopia and then people are going to get disgusted
0:30:14 and throw them all out or this is just going to continue and get worse and worse and Ivanka
0:30:20 is the next president and off we go and the total deterioration of America or is this
0:30:24 going to be an aberration we’re going to bounce back from?
0:30:25 Democracy is precious.
0:30:28 But like all precious things that can be destroyed.
0:30:34 For human history, democracy was very rare, but then you had the golden age of democracy
0:30:37 right after World War I where you had about two dozen democracies.
0:30:40 That was cut more than in half by the 1940.
0:30:46 Then you had the second golden age of democracy in the late 20th century and the 21st century
0:30:52 has been one era of backslide, fewer than 10% of the world’s peoples live in fully functioning
0:30:53 democracies.
0:31:01 So, absolutely, if Donald Trump becomes president, covered by immunity that the Supreme Court
0:31:04 has given, it’s not just going to be four years.
0:31:10 Even if Trump dies during that period, the whole Republican Party is now Trump’s Republican
0:31:11 Party.
0:31:14 Forget about mainstream, old-fashioned republics.
0:31:17 They are all gone.
0:31:22 And remember, democracy typically dies from within.
0:31:28 The great Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Sinclair Lewis, wrote a novel decades ago called It
0:31:34 Can Happen Here and the burden was it can happen here just as it happened to so many
0:31:35 other countries.
0:31:36 Ha!
0:31:43 Do you think you’re on the Trump or Project 2025 enemies list?
0:31:47 I have no idea, but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me.
0:31:53 At one point, Trump really liked me when I was virtually alone and predicting his 2016
0:31:54 win.
0:32:00 I got a note on the Washington Post interview where I predicted his win and it said, “congratz
0:32:05 professor, good call, and in big, sharpie letters, dial J. Trump.”
0:32:08 But I haven’t heard from him.
0:32:10 Let’s suppose you are on the enemies list.
0:32:13 Would you be flattered or fearful?
0:32:14 Probably be flattered.
0:32:16 I’m too old to be fearful.
0:32:21 Okay, I want you to complete this story.
0:32:24 You and Nate Silver walk into a bar.
0:32:26 Now finish the story.
0:32:28 What happens in the bar?
0:32:36 And that Silver apologizes to me for inaccurately predicting elections, what I haven’t, and
0:32:38 said, “I’m getting off the wagon.
0:32:41 I’m not doing polls anymore.”
0:32:44 Okay, okay.
0:32:50 Getting away from all the this usual mechagos that we’re in right now, but at the end of
0:32:57 the day, Alan, what do you want to be remembered for besides being 10 for 11?
0:33:04 I’d like to be remembered for making a contribution to our democracy, both through my analyses
0:33:10 and advocacy, through my books and articles, and through my work as an expert witness at
0:33:15 110 civil rights cases across America.
0:33:21 At a highly educational, philosophical, intellectual level, can you just tell us about the ability
0:33:24 of history to predict the future?
0:33:31 Well, you can’t just naively draw up parallels between history and the future.
0:33:32 But history is all we have.
0:33:39 There are only rush light into the future, but you can’t just take it for granted.
0:33:46 You have to do analysis, develop a model, develop a decision rule, and show that the
0:33:52 model has worked both retrospectively and of course, most importantly, predictively.
0:33:59 That’s why I say to all of these pundits and donors and Democratic officials and operatives,
0:34:06 if you don’t have a successful track record in having a model that works over time, no
0:34:08 one should listen to you.
0:34:10 I promise this is my last question.
0:34:16 So as of this moment, okay, as of this day in July, you’re predicting that Joe Biden
0:34:18 would get reelected.
0:34:19 Wrong.
0:34:21 I really need to be clear about that.
0:34:22 Okay.
0:34:25 A lot of folks have misinterpreted me.
0:34:28 I have not made a final prediction.
0:34:34 I will make my final prediction after the Democratic Convention in oil.
0:34:39 What I have said based on my system and shutting out all the rest of this really, that a lot
0:34:43 would have to go wrong for Biden to lose.
0:34:44 It could happen.
0:34:46 But a lot would have to go wrong.
0:34:52 But check back with me after the Democratic Convention for my final prediction.
0:34:54 What could go wrong between now and August?
0:34:56 Oh, a lot could go wrong.
0:34:59 We could have an explosion of social unrest.
0:35:03 We could have terrible reverses in the two wars.
0:35:06 We could have RFK Junior really gain traction.
0:35:09 I’m not saying any of those things are going to happen.
0:35:13 I think they’re long shots, but those are the kinds of things.
0:35:14 Okay.
0:35:21 If you want to follow the keys in my analyses, check in at my live show every Tuesday and
0:35:23 Thursday at 9 p.m.
0:35:39 Eastern and you can find it by looking up at Alan Lickman YouTube.
0:35:44 This interview was recorded on Friday, July 12th, 2024.
0:35:52 I am recording this introduction on Saturday, July 13th, 2024, a few hours after the assassination
0:35:55 attempt on Donald Trump.
0:35:58 My God, we live in interesting times.
0:36:04 I’m having difficulty not coming to the conclusion that we must be living in a simulation.
0:36:07 You just cannot make this kind of stuff up.
0:36:10 I hope you found this interview educational.
0:36:15 I hope it gives you a different perspective on how to interpret polls and predictions
0:36:18 for the presidential election of 2024.
0:36:24 And when you watch people on TV, or YouTube, or TikTok, or wherever you get your news,
0:36:29 just keep in mind what Alan said about how people are using polls and the quality of
0:36:32 the information that polls communicate.
0:36:33 Get out there and vote.
0:36:39 I don’t think the debate made any Republicans turn into Democrats, and any Democrats turn
0:36:41 into Republicans.
0:36:45 This election is going to be decided by the undecideds.
0:36:47 I hope you decide.
0:36:51 It’s only the future of our country that’s at stake.
0:36:55 Clearly, the baby boomers are not going to solve all the problems.
0:36:57 It’s in your court.
0:36:59 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:37:01 This is Remarkable People.
0:37:04 My thanks to the Remarkable People team.
0:37:10 They turned this episode around really fast because things changed so rapidly in the presidential
0:37:11 election.
0:37:16 Kudos to Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, our sound design team.
0:37:22 Thank you to Madison Nysemer producer, Tessa Nysemer researcher, and Fallon Yates, Luis
0:37:25 Magana, and Alexis Nishimura.
0:37:31 This is the Remarkable People team, and we are on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:37:38 Until next time, mahalo and aloha, and remember to vote.
0:37:48 [MUSIC]