In the wake of President Biden’s debate performance, critics, including the editorial boards of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, have called upon the Democratic Party to replace Biden with a younger, winnable candidate. If Democrats followed this advice, they would almost surely doom their party to defeat and reelect Donald Trump.
Biden’s detractors have no track record in predicting the outcome of presidential elections. Yet they still claim to know what Democrats must do to prevail this year. Neither myself nor Biden’s critics are neurologists competent to judge Biden’s mental health; I will focus only on the hard politics of bumping Biden from the party ticket.
My prediction system, the 13 Keys to the White House, does have a 40-year record of successfully predicting presidential election results. The Keys track the finding, developed through the study of presidential elections since 1860, that the electorate votes up or down on the strength and performance of the party holding the White House.
The Keys gauge the big picture of a presidential term, including midterm election results, incumbency, internal nomination contests, third-party challenges, the short- and long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, and foreign and military failures and successes. Only two keys relate to the candidates, asking whether the incumbent or challenging party candidate is a once-in-a-generation broadly inspirational, charismatic figure. The party in power is a predicted loser if six or more keys fall against it.
According to The Keys, a continued Biden reelection campaign gives the Democrats their best chance at keeping the White House by securing the incumbency and the internal party contest key. Six of the remaining 11 keys would have to fall to predict the Democrats’ defeat. If the party booted Biden off the ticket or he voluntarily stepped down, the Democrats would find themselves in a perilous position by forfeiting both these keys; the loss of only four additional keys would predict the party’s defeat.
Currently, the Democrats are down two keys: the mandate key based on midterm losses in the last U.S. House elections and the incumbent charisma key because Biden does not match the inspirational appeal of Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. Third-party, social unrest and foreign/military failure and success are the remaining uncertain, shaky keys.
All four keys would have to fall to predict the Democrats’ defeat. If the party replaces Biden, they begin four keys down: Mandate, incumbency, contest, and charisma. Under these circumstances, only two of the four uncertain Keys would have to fall to predict the Democrats’ defeat.
If you don’t believe the Keys, examine history. Since the turn of the 20th century, Americans have voted in five elections with no incumbent running and an uncertain nomination: 1920, 1952, 1968, 2008, and 2016, all of which the White House party lost.
Contrarily, debates do not predict election results. Hillary Clinton in 2016 and John Kerry in 2004 won their debates but still lost. In his first debate with Mitt Romney in 2012, Barack Obama suffered a worse drubbing in the CNN poll than Biden, losing 72% to 20%, compared to 67% to 33% for Biden. News stories proclaimed a “debate disaster” and “panic in Obama’s Chicago HQ.” Obama recovered to win an Electoral College landslide, with 332 votes to 206 for Romney.
If the Democrats replace Biden now, all they are doing is re-creating the environment from 2016 that led to Donald Trump in the first place — a disorganized party without an incumbent president and a contested nomination. In 2016, the “political experts” declared the end of Trump after “Access Hollywood” and assured Americans that Clinton could not lose. Trump still won, as the Keys predicted.
When the incumbent party is unified behind the president seeking reelection, history shows that since the turn of the 20th century, it has won 13 of 16 elections, with exceptions in 1932, 1992, and 2020. What did those contests have in common? Economic recessions and the loss of both economic keys.
Take all you’ve read about the need to bump Biden off the Democratic ticket and follow the great British philosopher David Hume’s advice for works of superstition: consign them to the flames. The prescriptions on how to win presidential elections dispensed by critics lacking a record of successful predictions have no greater validity than consulting tea leaves or reading the entrails of goats.
History is clear. United parties with an incumbent president win elections. Democrats must resist replacing Biden and re-creating the conditions of 2016 that led to President Trump in the first place.
Lichtman is a distinguished professor of history at American University and author of “Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House,” 8th ed., 2024 (Rowman & Littlefield).