If Biden Wins He Can Thank Iran
If you came here for the click-baity headline, welcome to the room where the adults are talking (and sorry).
We're midway into the Presidential election season with plenty of time for things to change, but I'm increasingly confident that Joe Biden will win in the fall. This is a shift -- just a few months ago I was 55% confident that Trump would win, and now I'm 60% confident Biden will win. That's still not much better than a flip of a coin, but I think the needle is moving in Biden's direction.
For starters, he's sured-up in the polls recently, and that's been a trend for months. These are two candidates who aren't new to the American public, so while current events can and will shape the election (remember me saying something about Iran? More on that soon) most voters are unlikely to have their minds fundamentally changed about their preferred candidate. It will all come down to turnout.
Biden's map also looks really solid. Trump would have to win all of the following to win:
Georgia
Pennsylvania
Michigan
Wisconsin
Arizona
If he loses a single one of those listed above, he's in trouble, and if he loses two he's almost certain to lose the White House. He lost all of those states in 2020.
Allan Lichtman is famous for having successfully predicted the last 10 presidential elections, and he's nearly certain that Biden will win in the fall. Lichtman uses "13 keys," a set of 13 true/false questions that assess the performance and circumstances of the incumbent party to predict its success in retaining the presidency. These keys include factors like the economy's health, foreign policy successes, the incumbent's charisma, social unrest, and the absence of a strong challenger, among others. Each "false" answer moves the prediction toward a change in the party controlling the White House. Since Lichtman's keys are dispassionate and broad, his model ignores a lot of the smoke, and a lot of the particulars, to reach conclusions. While his official predictions aren't out until the end of summer, he told USA Today "a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose."
So what could go wrong? I've spent a lot of time discussing how the American public's perception of the state of things has decoupled from the actual state of things (see footnote 1). In other words, the economy could be solid (winning Biden on the the 13 keys) while the American people mark it negative. Disinformation could also play a major role in this perception shift. Lichtman's model, for better and for worse, ignores this kind of analysis -- and so far his method has proven effective at predicting elections over the last 40 years.
But foreign policy and its consequences could always be a wild card in any election. As the old military adage goes, the enemy gets a vote.
Many analysts are currently asking whether the war in Gaza could have a major impact on the November election. After all, four of the 13 keys are having a major policy change (Biden shifting the US position on Israel is a change, but is it "major"?), "no social unrest," and right now there are large protests on college campuses across America, "no scandal," and "no foreign/military failure." To add to that and step away from Lichtman for the moment, many young activists have said that they will not support Biden if he continues to support Israel, and many others have criticized him for not backing Israel enough (Thomas Friedman, who is usually a poor use of one's reading time), published an article today with this thesis). My own assumption (I don't have polling to back this at the moment) is that Biden has more to lose by angering young voters who turned out for him in large numbers in 2020. If Biden loses even 5-10% of the youth vote it could be enough to cost him in swing states.
Biden is now openly criticizing the Netanyahu administration and it's come to light in the last week that he is withholding some arms shipments to Israel. That could be enough to make Biden's 2020 voters pull for him again.
But this policy shift was only made possible because of recent actions taken by Iran. While the American people were mostly not paying attention, we nearly went to war with Iran, and the decision making of the Iranian government is the only thing that kept us out of it.
On April 1 we learned that Israel had crossed a serious line and bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. There was significant speculation, including from this author, that Iran was being pressured by its hardliners to have a significant (and escalating) respond, potentially triggering a regional war in the Middle East. It didn't happen. Iran surprised many by instead doing what it did in 2018, 2019, and during other recent tensions. It used low-speed drones, pre-announced on Iranian state media, to launch the bulk of its attack, and it used limited strategic and ballistic missiles to attack a number of Israeli military bases, rather than Israeli cities. This is significant because the drones could easily be shot down, and while the ballistic missiles did overwhelm Israeli air defenses their damage targeted military positions and was limited in scope. This is de-escalation warfare, which seems to non-experts like a contradiction but it's definitely not. Israel responded in kind, bombing a few Iranian military installations away from the capital, Tehran. Iran held an impressive live-fire air show, Israel lit up its fireworks, everyone got to say that they responded to the external threat, and the situation has been more stable since. (Footnote 2)
If this had not played out this way, Biden would have had a major regional war in the Middle East on his hands and he likely would have been forced to significantly increase support for Israel, perhaps even with direct US military involvement. Needless to say, this scenario would have checked a lot of Lichtman's boxes and could have spelled disaster for Biden's reelection bid, to say nothing of the far-reaching and potentially cataclysmic consequences of the war itself.
So if Biden still receives strong support from protesters and young adults who are frustrated at Israel and US policy that supports it, he can indeed thank Iran (footnote 3).
Footnotes:
A recent study by Fidelity Investments has found that despite personal financial concerns and the pressures of a challenging economy, two-thirds of Americans are entering 2024 with a sense of optimism about their financial future. Many respondents in this study have articulated their intention to focus on better financial planning and management in the upcoming year (Fidelity Newsroom).
In addition, a Northwestern Mutual survey highlighted a more nuanced perspective, revealing that only 57% of Americans feel confident about their finances, with many losing sleep over financial uncertainties. This study further emphasizes the generational differences in financial anxiety, with younger generations feeling more uncertain compared to older ones (ThinkAdvisor).
This stands in contrast to their beliefs about the national economy which is a tougher sell. In other words, there's a growing sense that they are doing better but everyone else is doing worse, which is of course a contradiction, but one consistent with the "decoupling" described above.
This game is dangerous, people including civilians were wounded and killed. One misread intention or military accident, one incident where a large amount of civilian casualties are reported, and this "warfare of de-escalation" backfires terribly. These are high-stakes games, regardless of how well you or I might think the players are playing their cards, and we should seek to avoid these situations entirely. History tells us that low-probability high-risk events happen, and one day we're all going to lose this hand.
I now believe Biden has a 55-60% chance of winning. Five months ago I was 55% sure that Trump would win. That sounds like a huge advantage, but in truth it's barely better than a coin toss. Still, it's better odds than I gave him at this stage in 2020, and no candidate got those odds from me in 2016.
