After Biden dropped out, he guaranteed that Kamala would win. His Keys proclaimed her victory!
But some other people looked at his stupid “keys” and found that, first of all, they were largely about highly subjective things like whether the short-term economy and the long-term economy were positive for the incumbent or not.
Despite that the fact that America is in the grips of high inflation (short term) and on the edge of a recession (long term), Lichtman gave these two “keys” to Kamala Harris.
Nate Silver said, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t seem right to me.”
Lichtmann blasted him as a know-nothing punk who just didn’t know how to properly work the Magic Keys.
During election night, this alleged political “scientist” just kept making up excuses for why his Keys weren’t as magical as they usually are, and offering increasingly desperate statistically-unlikely scenarios whereby the Keys would be vindicated and Kamala would win.
Here’s some more pathetic cope.
After the election and his complete humiliation, Lichtman announced that he was stepping back from the media and internet to ponder why his Keys had been so wrong.
“My prediction for this presidential election was wrong. I own up to it right now. I am taking time off today.””My aim is to assess why the keys were wrong and what we can learn from this era and what the election means for the future of our country going forward.”
That lasted about 48 hours. Within 48 hours, he’d figured out the problem:
The Keys were right. They’d always been right.
It was the voters who were wrong.
And how, according to Lichtman, 77, and his incredible circa-1964 Paul McCartney coiffure: The ‘foolproof’ election forecaster who predicted Trump would lose – what went wrong?
Which brings us to the exchange you may have seen last night. If not, do not miss this classic: As Ace writes, “Piers Morgan had [Lichtman] on to offer more excuses for his Fortune Cookies not correctly forecasting the future, but he was confronted by someone smarter, wiser, saner, and more emotionally intact than he is. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that Hero was Cenk Uygur:”
Lichtman kept offering a 3M factory’s worth of excuses — misinformation, Musk, and misogyny — for why his Keys failed, arguing that his Keys were as perfect as they ever were, and Uygur basically kept repeating one simple point that, while very basic, was very insightful: “But you were wrong.”
Lichtman began yelling, which he always does when his precious Keys are questioned, and culminated in telling Uygur, who I think is a Muslim, that when he says that Lichtman is wrong and his Keys are dumb, that is committing “blasphemy against me.”
Yes, this “scientist” said that.
It’s a real hoot.
GIVE ME THREE HOURS OF THIS pic.twitter.com/0FRJsGaXlm
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 20, 2024
Full disclosure: I assembled the above exchange between Nate Silver and Lichtman using a copy of Lichtman’s tweet from the Wayback Machine — because Lichtman is yet another lefty who has very dramatically flounced out of Twitter for Bluesky. But why?
Come on Lichtman, you didn't have to quit X. People will have stopped making fun of you in a year or so. pic.twitter.com/JuAy4uwQet
— MAZE (@mazemoore) November 20, 2024
UPDATE: As for Silver himself, he’s sticking around Twitter for surprisingly sane reasons:
The Jack Dorsey 2020-era Twitter is when users could have their accounts deleted or suspended for simply suggesting “learn to code” to a DNC-MSM journalist, and of course when Dorsey’s Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde and “head of trust and safety” Yoel Roth suspended the New York Post’s account at election time because they dared break the story about Hunter’s laptop. Recreating that atmosphere at Bluesky will make it a fun clubhouse for a select group of leftist grandees, but to borrow from Silver, “the most miserable place on earth” for everyone else.