It's All Over But The Counting!

Allan Lichtman has a tradition of making early election predictions based on his Keys to the White House. Lichtman developed his Keys in collaboration with Volodia Keilis-Borok, a world reknown authority on the mathematics of prediction models. Retrospectively, the keys accurately account for the results of every presidential election from 1860 through 1980. Prospectively, the keys predicted well ahead of time the popular-vote winners of all seven presidential elections from 1984 through 2008.

Lichtman's keys show that the choice of a president doesn't turn on debates, advertising, speeches, endorsements, rallies, platforms, promises or campaign tactics. The presidential elections are primarily a referendum on the party or person holding the White House.

For Lichtman , the enactment of the landmark health care reform bill secures the important Policy Change Key 7 (wonderful way to think about it) and it means that the Democratic Party has only four of the keys against it--six are considered fatal. So, according to this model, President Obama can even endure a serious setback and still win re-election. And the Democratic ocratic can reverse any key against it at this point.

On the negative side, President Obama could face a scandal or an unexpected foreign policy disaster. Or the economy would slide back into recession in election year. However, all he needs for Lichtman is a foreign policy triumph--say capturing or killing bin Laden; or robust economic growth and he averts any possible defeat.

In this his earliest predicton, he calls Barack Hussein Obama the winner of the 2012 Presidential elections. He emphasized the healthcare bill solidified the most critical key in his model. His model has never been wrong so here's hoping.

So from the professor at American University, let's go to the Obama-meter. This measures how President Obama is fulfilling the 504 promises he made during the campaign. I tend to think the Obama-meter is rather tough in their judgments. But here's the take: 110 kept;34 compromised;19 broken;82 currently stalled;256 in the process of being fulfilled; and only 3 not started. That's still not bad for someone who hasn't been in office for 18 months. It looks like at the time of his re-election bid, he will have fulfilled or partially kept over 400 of his promises.

The three outstanding are 1. Direct rebuilding efforts from the White House after a catastrophe; 2. appoint a Chief Financial Officer to oversee a disaster; and 3. invest $50 billion into the manufacturing of more efficient cars.

When I come up for air, I'll talk about the continuing blather of bummertude. Just shut off the tube and radio on the Kagan nomination. She only needs 1 Republican vote to get to a vote in the Senate. Everything now is just noise.

I must say I have been impressed by Senator Dodd, someone whom I have always opposed in foreign policy, and his management of the Financial Reform package making its way to the finish line. This is one of those pieces of legislation ,which is monumentally significant, but which no one will ever be able to explain to anyone's political advantage. I'm not sure after all the serious work on the bill and the amendments that the Republicans have the cojones to try and block it. It also occurred to me that there are no longer any Republicans--either members of Congress or staffers--who can actually write a serious piece of legislation. This became very obvious during the healthcare debate and it's very obvious now during the debate over amendments to the Financial Reform package.

No we are not Greece but we can't let the deficit hawks use the European problem as a pretext for gutting social security and Medicare. The more that comes out about the Republican plan the worse it gets--it would solve our deficit problem--with a draconian austerity program and the elimination of entitlement programs--in... drumroll--70 years! This is alot like the Long War program under the Bush Administration. Totally impractical and unable to sustain political support beyond the moment.

And the mid-terms get uglier than ugly. More later.