Allan Lichtman’s weekslong on-air meltdown, refusing to admit his election prediction was wrong, is a symbol of the times.
Allan Lichtman’s weekslong on-air meltdown, refusing to admit his election prediction was wrong, is a symbol of the times.
A funny thing happened this week.
Historian Allan Lichtman had yet another televised postelection meltdown, exchanging a barrage of words with Young Turks host Cenk Uygur over the professor’s botched 2024 predictions.
Lichtman had prophesized that Vice President Kamala Harris would defeat Donald Trump. Hilariously, he is unwilling to admit his obvious mistake. Instead, he insists the voters got it wrong.
His on-air tantrum this week wasn’t the funny part, though. The funny part came when it dawned on me that there would be no reckoning by members of the press — or by their favorite on-air pundits — for having botched their presidential-election coverage, missing all the signs that pointed to a decisive Trump victory. There would be no reckoning precisely because it is an industry filled to bursting with Lichtmans — hopelessly committed ideologues unwilling to admit their flaws.
They will not try to do better next time, even after failing in 2016 and 2024. They will make no special effort to avoid similar embarrassment in the future. These people aren’t committed to getting the story right so much as they are committed to influencing opinions. For them, the takeaway from 2016 or even 2024 is not “report better” or “find better experts” but “resist harder.”
Indeed, what little we’ve heard from the press thus far about doing better and working harder to understand the 335 million people who make up this country is merely a face-saving exercise. Neither they nor the pundits they rely on are the experts they claim to be — they can’t hide it, so they’re just trying to soften the embarrassment.
Lichtman, especially, is an avatar of our modern media and the constellation of pundits who confidently make pronouncements. People like him are disproportionately represented in this country’s largest and most powerful newsrooms.
You may recall that Lichtman co-authored the preposterous “13 keys” predictive model. This model relies on a 13-point true-or-false checklist to forecast the winners of presidential elections. Even though the model has enjoyed a certain amount of historical success, it has always been ridiculous guesswork and wish-casting — and it looks even sillier now that its co-author incorrectly predicted the outcome of the November 5 election specifically using this model.
Since Election Day, Lichtman has retreated into total obstinacy, insisting that his model is correct and that he personally is correct. To his credit, Uygur, who, like me, is on record as having dismissed the 13 keys as cockamamie academic nonsense before November 5, challenged Lichtman to admit he got it wrong.
“Don’t blame the voters,” said the Young Turks host. “I think, look, we can get into this discussion, but one, I think you’re blaming the voters. I think it’s a terrible idea.”
Uygur added, perhaps a bit too triumphantly, “I was right; you were wrong.”
Nothing doing, responded Lichtman.
“That’s a cheap shot,” bleated the professor, “and I won’t stand for it. I read your own followers’ comments, and they all trashed you. Every one of them and [they] supported me, so quiet with your personal attacks.”
The two then began to bicker, prompting the consistently bellicose Uygur to shout, “Hey, Allan. You deserve a tall glass of shut-up juice, so can you just shut up for a second and let someone who knows what they’re doing?”
This prompted what is perhaps the weirdest response from Lichtman, who retorted, “I will not sit here and stand for personal attacks for blasphemy against me.”
The professor’s downward spiral is as pitiful as it sounds, and it has been going on for about three weeks now: the credibility implosion of a once-vaunted political theorist, historian, and media darling.
More interesting than the slow-motion humiliation of a professional academic, however, is how it serves as a real-life model for what has happened to our news media. Lichtman’s continued presence on television, particularly on political news programs, is instructive. This data point, that television bookers tend to prefer guests who are wrong but have the “right” politics to guests who get things right but have the “wrong” politics, underscores a more significant trend of which Lichtman is the embodiment.
The press is teeming now with thousands of such figures: overeducated, inexperienced, ideological would-be pundits who are either too arrogant or ignorant to admit to their errors.
There’s a reason the legacy media missed 2016. There’s a reason they missed 2024. Rather than a course-correction, expect them to keep the losing streak going.