Can Our Democracy Survive This?

[_EAllusion]

As far as academic political forecasters go, I like Alan Abramowitz a lot.

[_beastie]

Here's an excellent article on the post-election analysis:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... moral.html

.

That was an intense article. Not very comforting.

For, like all tyrants, he is utterly lacking in self-control. Sleeping a handful of hours a night, impulsively tweeting in the early hours, improvising madly on subjects he knows nothing about, Trump rants and raves as he surfs an entirely reactive media landscape. Once again, Plato had his temperament down: A tyrant is a man “not having control of himself [who] attempts to rule others”; a man flooded with fear and love and passion, while having little or no ability to restrain or moderate them; a “real slave to the greatest fawning,” a man who “throughout his entire life ... is full of fear, overflowing with convulsions and pains.” Sound familiar? Trump is as mercurial and as unpredictable and as emotional as the daily Twitter stream. And we are contemplating giving him access to the nuclear codes.

[_beastie]

He predicted a Clinton win which he is taking credit for given that she won the popular vote. But he also predicted a George W. Bush win and took credit for that, which contradicts his position this time around.

I think you're confusing him with someone else. He predicted a Trump win. He's predicted every election correctly since 1984 with the exception of Gore (who did win the popular vote).

He also predicts Trump will be impeached in his first term, but admits that's just his gut.

Lichtman first developed the Keys system in 1981, in collaboration with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, founder of the International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics. The methodology used in the development of the Keys is described in Keilis-Borok and Lichtman (1981) and Lichtman (2008, 2010a). As shown in Table 1, each of the thirteen keys is stated as a threshold condition that always favors the re-election of the party holding the White House. For example, Key 5 is phrased as “The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.” Each key can then be assessed as true or false prior to an upcoming election and the winner predicted according to a simple decision rule. Unlike other systems for predicting election results, the Keys do not assume a fixed relationship between election results and one more dependent variables, such as economic growth or presidential approval ratings. Rather predictions are based on an index comprised of the number of false or negative keys: When five or fewer keys are false, the incumbent party wins; when any six or more are false, the challenging party wins.

https://pollyvote.com/en/components/ind ... ite-house/

[_EAllusion]

I think you're confusing him with someone else. He predicted a Trump win. He's predicted every election correctly since 1984 with the exception of Gore (who did win the popular vote).

No, he's the one I'm thinking of. His keys predicted a Clinton win. He was predicting a Trump win when it looked like Gary Johnson was going to get north of 5%, but that did not happen.

[_Jersey Girl]

I think you're confusing him with someone else. He predicted a Trump win. He's predicted every election correctly since 1984 with the exception of Gore (who did win the popular vote).

No, he's the one I'm thinking of. His keys predicted a Clinton win. He was predicting a Trump win when it looked like Gary Johnson was going to get north of 5%, but that did not happen.

This is what I found about that, EA. I don't think it says he predicted a Clinton win. I think it's says that Clinton was the best hope for the DNC nomination to secure all keys and I don't think that's quite the same thing as predicting a Clinton win for election.

Am I wrong? If so, what am I missing?

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/2 ... on-in-2016

[_Jersey Girl]

So of course, I go to wiki. Here's an excerpt from the wiki on Lichtman.

Author and commentator[edit]
Lichtman is the author or co-author of nine books and more than 100 articles. He is best known for the "Keys" system, presented in his books The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency and The Keys to the White House. The system uses thirteen historical factors to predict whether or not the popular vote in the election for President of the United States will be won by the candidate of the party holding the presidency (regardless of whether the President is the candidate). The keys were selected based on their correlations with the presidential election results from 1860 through 1980, using statistical methods adapted from the work of geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok for predicting earthquakes. The system then correctly predicted the popular vote winner in each of the elections from 1984 to 2012, including 2000, but failed in 2016.[8] Based on his model, Lichtman predicted that Donald Trump would win the popular vote in the 2016 Presidential Election; in fact Trump finished more than two million votes behind Hillary Clinton, though he won the electoral college and thus the presidency.

I'm completely confused. Not surprised.

[_beastie]

Apparently Lichtman first predicted a clinton win (in August) and then changed his mind and predicted a Trump win.

http://dailybruin.com/2016/08/15/expert ... lecture-2/

[_beastie]

I'm really depressed after listening to this Diane Rehm show today.

http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio/#/sho ... 285/@00:00

[_honorentheos]

But my concern is this: this is the type of dialogue that liberals lap up with a spoon. I think it's the type of "elistist" dialogue that many US conservatives dismiss. So I don't see much progress being possible.

I think we're at the point where we have to be practical about saving our democracy if possible. That's why I agree with doc when he concludes that the left has to learn some lessons about communication in this era. The right has been a bit more savvy about that all along, oddly enough. They were the first to recognize the power of language in terms of labels, for example. Call it a death tax instead of an estate tax, for example. Liberals have to wise up.

Clegg, in the second video, makes the same point to Haidt. He comments on the approach many liberals take of trying to make cases through hard logic and accounting. And he suggests that conservatives are decades ahead in using spin to sell their ideas. He also wants to see a more emotion-based approach to selling liberal ideas.

While I think there's value in this, I have deep concerns as well. When Sarah Palin described death panels as being part of the ACA, she didn't just appeal to people's emotions. She lied. When Donald Trump proclaimed he was going to build a wall between the US and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it, he didn't just appeal to people's emotions. He lied.

We are told repeatedly that one of the differences that mattered in this election was that some people took Trump literally, while others took him seriously but not literally. That's just code for his being able to say whatever might trigger a person's emotional reaction but not being accountable to that potential voter to provide real information as to how he'd govern, what he'd actually accomplish, or even how seriously he could be taken. I'd also say this was a concern I had in 2008 with Obama where the promise of hope essentially created space for people to insert almost anything they wanted into the idea.

That's bad for democracy. So, yeah, I guess there is an argument to be made that the liberal political agenda should take a page from the conservative playbook if they want to win in this post truth world. But that's a different argument than what it takes to defend democracy.

[_EAllusion]

This is what I found about that, EA. I don't think it says he predicted a Clinton win. I think it's says that Clinton was the best hope for the DNC nomination to secure all keys and I don't think that's quite the same thing as predicting a Clinton win for election.

Am I wrong? If so, what am I missing?

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/2 ... on-in-2016

He got a lot of press because his keys were predicting a Trump win at a time when Clinton looked like a surefire victory. Then Comey happened and Trump won. However, his keys contain some fluid options and his narrow Trump victory switched into Clinton when a 3rd party candidate failed to get 5% of the vote.

Basically, either his keys were right in 2000 or they were right in 2016, but they weren't right in both. He likes to brag about his track-record, but he had to have gotten one of those wrong. There's no shame in that, but he seems attached to peacocking his perfect record.