Everyone is laughing at Allan Lichtman. I'm not. I think the man is a genius, and I think you're all too proud to admit what he's actually invented.

Lichtman is the American University historian whose "13 Keys" system called nearly every presidential race since 1984 and then called 2024 for Kamala Harris. Trump won. The keys, it turns out, opened the wrong house.

Now he's back with a midterm forecast. Democrats have "a better than 90 per cent chance" of taking the House, he said in a YouTube video. And in the Senate? "I am upping my prediction. I originally had it at 67 per cent likelihood Democrats would retake the Senate. I am now going to say 70 per cent chance."

Upping it three points. From 67 to 70. You can't buy that kind of precision. That's not a forecast, that's a man adjusting the thermostat.

But here's what the critics miss. Read the fine print. On the Senate, he told The Times of London: "This is not based on a model, understand; it's just based on my knowledge of history and current politics."

Do you understand what he's done? He's removed the model. The model is the thing that was wrong. So he threw it out and kept the part that was also wrong, which is him. That's not failure. That's efficiency.

And when he noted that a president this unpopular usually costs his party 40 House seats and six Senate seats, he added this beauty: "It's not a prediction; that's just showing how heavily the winds are blowing against Republicans."

So it's a prediction that isn't a prediction, from a model he isn't using, with a percentage he just raised. Folks, he's unbeatable. If Democrats win, he called it. If Democrats lose, it was never a prediction. It was a weather report. Nobody sues the weatherman.

People say he's lost his touch. Wrong again. Lichtman told The National his 2024 call failed because "If you trash a sitting president so badly, that's going to taint anybody associated with that president." Notice who's at fault there. Not the keys. Not the professor. The president. Lichtman wasn't wrong about 2024. 2024 was wrong about Lichtman.

The contrarian take, and I'm the only one brave enough to say it, is that Lichtman is the most honest man in American punditry. Every other forecaster hides behind computer simulations and fancy charts. Lichtman just tells you how he feels, assigns it a number and dares you to check. That's not science. It's astrology with tenure.

To be fair, he has good company in the confidence business. Two years ago the final Des Moines Register poll had Harris up three points in Iowa. Trump won Iowa by 13. Nobody upped that one to 70 percent. It went straight into retirement.

So I'll make my own forecast, and I'm 70 percent sure of it. Up from 67. Win or lose tonight, Allan Lichtman will be on television tomorrow explaining that he was right. And somewhere, the 13 keys will be sitting in a junk drawer next to the batteries that don't work.

Tonight we find out if the winds really are blowing. Lichtman has already found out which way to lean.

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The Demorat is a satire publication. This article is parody and commentary based on real news reports; jokes, exaggerations and fictional elements are not factual claims. Quotes attributed to real people are drawn from published reporting.

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