What If America’s Melting Pot Is Melting?

An historian who’s called the presidential election correctly almost every time since 1980 told Fox News he uses scientific “keys” that make him more accurate than poll pundits. But, will that hold true if THE key of keys this time is our bottomless cultural war?

American University historian Allan Lichtman says it’s still too early to call Biden v Trump. But, he quickly adds it’s going to be critical for both Biden & Trump ... in our hopelessly divided tribal society ... to win over the “moderate & swing independent voters” as the next few weeks unfold, including the fallout from the Trump trials & Joe’s struggles with foreign wars, a leaking border & inflation.  As the Fox News story notes, the professor is no “psychic. The formula he’s used to correctly predict [9 out of the last 10] presidential races was developed in 1981 with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok is based on their analysis of presidential races dating back to 1860.” The “keys” consist of 13 true or false questions, parameters that, if true, favor stability, which voters presumably want to vote for. When eight or more of the keys are false, the incumbent White House party is the predicted loser. That’s how Lichtman predicted Trump would win vs Hillary Clinton in 2016 & Obama would win vs Romney before that, even though most pundits (and polls) suggested otherwise. His keys are: strength of party mandate, contest acumen, incumbency, third party influence, short-term economy, long-term economy, policy changes, social unrest, scandal, foreign/military failure or success & challenger charisma.

Well, it's hard to argue with the professor’s .900 batting average. But, one has to wonder if his "proven" calculations take into account that a given key can dominate over all others in a given year. Isn’t today’s “total war” politics & immovable cultural differences unique, at least, in modern America where the “melting pot” seems to be melting?

Davd Soul