AdamSmith

If he dies, the world will be a better place. Nero was a chump compared to him.

I have always subscribed to the "2 wrongs dont make a right" philosophy.  However, in Trump case with Covid, I dont think the man deserves an once of our empathy or compassion, as he has never shown any for the American people or the ones that died.  And i dont have a single well wish left for HIM, as I have used them all on the over 200K Americans that have died.....
If he is truly Ill, he got exactly what he deserved.  I hope he has learned a lesson, but I doubt he has....
And if he is at Walter Reed, I would like him to have the full Covid experience, respirator and all...
Just as HE ridiculed Biden for wearing a mask, I will ridicule HIM for NOT wearing one.  

Why on earth did they hide it there?
Like storing the toilet paper in the garage. 

By the way, the site did not lost the edit function. Look at the top right corner of each post and you will see three dots. Click there and a submenu unfolds. You will find the Edit function there... for a few minutes. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqN9aS2S3L0

There is hope now!!! Thanks to Hope Hicks !!!!

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/02/pence-trump-covid-coronavirus-sick-425329

This is pretty good...
https://www.cracked.com/article_25516_5-crazy-scenarios-you-didnt-know-constitution-allows.html

The site software has lost its ‘edit’ function. I make a finger slip, I make myself an idiot.
Such is life. 

I am quoting your last post. You have left yourself speechless. Never seen before. 

I watched the whole Pelosi interview this morning.  It was a master class in how to outsmart President Toxic.  Of course, it's not the hardest thing to do in the world. 
She's been doing it since that first meeting in the Oval Office right after she became Speaker again, when she basically allowed President Toxic to be the mean asshole who would shut down the government in what turned out to be his last gasp in the losing battle to publicly defend The Wall. 
Geez.  Why aren't we hearing about The Wall in 2020.  I'd give Nancy much of the credit for that.
The polls suggest to me that maybe 2 in 3 undecided voters are just starting to break for Biden.  It's too early to tell.  But the basic structure of the race suggests that the majority will go for the change candidate, which in this case is Biden. 
The language that the focus group types use is that they know that they don't want to vote for President Toxic.  But Biden has not yet closed the deal.  Even Republican pollster Frank Luntz asked this in a focus group he was running: 
The legitimate answer is that undecided people wanted to actually hear about policy.  From Biden in particular, because they got the memo that President Toxic has no policies.  He just rants and insults.  Luntz has also suggested that perhaps Trump's goal was to prevent Biden from closing the deal.  Or perhaps just discourage people from voting altogether.
This answer Luntz drew out ought to concern anyone who fervently dreams of President AOC:
Progressives who think Bernie would have done better winning the debate and persuading swing voters like Joe in swing states like Arizona might want to consider that.
I've already decided to be cynical about this.  Regardless of what Biden does, or how many Senate seats Democrats win, Rich Mitch will likely be around in 2022 to argue that Biden (and Treasury Secretary Warren) turned out to be socialists, after all.  Joe in Arizona will buy the message, and vote Republican in 2022.  The good news is that in 2022 Republicans have to defend the 24 Senate seats they won in 2016, including i blue states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  So even if Joe in Arizona flips back, Democrats have a good chance of having four years to get important things done.
The latest polls released, including one by Rasmussen (!), all show Biden with a 8-9 % lead over President Toxic.  But let's go with the latest RCP average, which is Biden 49.7, President Toxic 43.1.   That leaves about 7 % undecided.  Let's be generous and give Biden 5 and President Toxic 2.  This could be a 55/45 race, minus some for third parties.  After last night, it's quite possible Biden wins by a 10 point margin.  It's hard to believe Trump will do better than Biden in a Town Hall format.  
Mostly, Nancy's interview this morning was a clear indication of how strong the hand of the Democrats is.  Ideally, if Biden wins by 10 points, it's just game over on Election Night.  But she's back stopping Biden by working on the weird, unlikely, but not impossible contingencies. 
Like what happens if the contest is thrown into the House, where the slave owners made sure that the slave states were protected? In modern terms, that means that California's 39.5 million residents get one House vote for President, just like Alaska's 750,000 residents.  How democratic is that?  I'll be broken record.  We need to get rid of all anti-democratic vestiges of the Slavery Electoral College.  Nancy's immediate goal is for the Democrats to take over one more House delegation, which would deprive President Toxic of a second term based on winning a majority (26) of votes from the 50 House delegations.  
Her other immediate goal, which was quite transparent, is to pull more principled Republicans away from their party.  I don't even know that she was working on the election itself, since there are so few undecided.  My read is that leading Democrats are already thinking about the post-Trump era.  It is in the Democrats' interest to dig the trench between Trump Republicans and Party Republicans deeper.  It's a 60/40 split, so the odds favor the Trump Republicans.  But I think Nancy's goal is really to help them split apart, so that what we saw last night becomes the symbol of the losing Trump Republican Party.  They'll whine, bellow, and feel like losers.
It's sad that progressives who don't feel Nancy is open-minded enough to progressives are rigidly opposed to her sounding open-minded about bipartisanship.  It's one more data point that suggests that some progressives, like Kute Kyle, are mostly interested in purity, not power.

 

Would everybody be okay with making Sandra Bernhard moderator of the next debate?
 

Before the pandemic hit, Lichtman was saying it was going to be a very close race that was too early to call.  But it favored Trump.  Which I believed, too. 
If Trump was going to win, it would have boiled down to one thing.  It's the economy, stupid.  The logic goes like this:  President Toxic "built a rocking economy that worked for everyone."  Other than the Toxic part, that is a direct quote from a credible Republican, Scott Jennings.  I'm going to label Jennings as a "W. Republican".  As opposed to a "Kasich Republican" or a "Toxic Republican".  By that I mean Jennings came up through the conservative Republican Establishment ranks.  He is credible.  He is probably a very decent guy.  And like your friend Jon, he's been a sort of boy wonder - and still even looks like one. 
Jennings does not embrace toxic thinking, hate, and intentional division.  Unlike Kasich, though, he does not break ranks and say bluntly that this is morally repugnant and destructive political behavior.  He's basically willing to do what it takes to get and keep power.  Any Republican who does that, including President Toxic, he'll shill for.  Case in point:
Biden wants a referendum on Trump the person. That's because Trump's agenda is better than his.
That's probably one of the best arguments I've read about why President Toxic deserves a second term, based on the fundamentals.  Which is actually to say that they really don't have much of an argument at all.  Frankly, maybe it's actually better to just race bait and hate and divide and agitate, like President Toxic does.  Jennings is trying to make a rational argument that makes no fucking sense whatsoever, when you think about what he says.  At least race baiting and hating gets your base all riled up.  We all know that President Toxic knows that.  (I was slightly wrong about one thing I said above about gun sales going through the roof after Biden wins.  Here's the correction:  sales of guns and ammo are ALREADY going through the roof.)
To Scott's credit, he starts by admitting President Toxic drives everyone crazy, regularly makes his own supporters defend the indefensible,  and is "corrosive to our national political culture."  (Great selling points, huh?)    But we still need him ........... because.
The one "because" Scott cites that I agree with is that President Toxic has "delivered on deeply held Republican priorities."  That explains two things, perhaps.  First, why most Republicans are loyal to their President, despite everything else.  Second, why there are now more registered Independents (and Democrats) than registered Republicans, for the first time in US history.  Great logic, Scott.  But the political math sucks.
The main point I am going to get to is that Jennings is just wrong, wrong, wrong about the fundamentals of the economy.  That explains, I think, both why President Toxic barely won in 2016, and why he will lose pretty badly in 2020.  But before I get there, let me just tear poor Scott's asshole apart on several of his claims. I think it goes to the heart of what is happening in America.  And why President Toxic will lose.  Jennings does articulate the greatest hits the Republicans have to work with.  And they all just sound tone deaf.
First, there's the "Biden is senile" trope.  To quote directly, Jennings says Biden is "confused" and "out of touch" and "past his prime".  So here's the part that makes no sense to me.  How "out of touch" is it for Joe Biden to get on the phone to Republican or Independent guys he's known and respected for decades, like John Kasich and Jon Meacham, and ask them to say whatever they want about decency and history and unity at his convention?  Is that out of touch?  Is that senile?  Will President Toxic be getting W. or Reagan's kids or George Will - or anyone that isn't a Republican Party hack - to do the same at his convention?  (As was stated above by @Buddy2, President Toxic certainly doesn't want his sister or niece to open their mouths and speak honestly.)
I'll get to the substance of Jennings' key argument - that President Toxic built a "rocking economy that worked for everyone" - below.  But before we get to the substance, can I just ask.  How incredibly fucking out of touch is that statement, on its face?  Did you not hear about Bernie Sanders, Scott?  Did you not see the endless graphs on income inequality?  Warren ranting about wealth taxes?  Does anyone really believe that before COVID-19 the "rocking" US economy "worked for everyone"? 
To quote Scott, "...come on."  You have to be fucking kidding me. If you believe that, you are completely and totally out of touch.  And you have made Biden's (and Pelosi's) case that even the "rational" Republicans just don't get how much people are hurting.  And have been.  For a long time.
Then there is Jennings arguing that Michelle Obama thinks anyone who disagrees with her is "stupid or racist", to quote him verbatim.  It's a great argument.  Other than that Michelle didn't actually use the words "stupid" or "racist".  Or even anything close.  What she actually said, as Scott notes, is that she is a Black woman speaking at the DNC.  And for that reason many people in a divided nation will not hear what she says.  Which was mostly about voting, and democracy, and how President Toxic will try to steal the election.  
Again, I think Jennings made Obama's case.  He is saying in USA Today, in writing, that he did not actually hear what she said.  It is empirically true that she is a Black woman speaking at the DNC.  People may disagree with her about President Toxic's malevolent words and scheming.  But they are his words.  President Toxic votes by mail, and thinks that voting by mail leads to fraud.  Except in Florida, where it helps Republicans and is fine.  But wherever it helps Democrats, it is fraud.  To again quote Scott, " ... come on."  Give me a fucking break.
There is something more fundamental here, which is why I lost friendship and respect with several Republican former clients and friends I was very close to after decades of whoring, sex, travel, and fun.  President Toxic has made it acceptable to simply dismiss racism as a problem.  He's not racist.  Republicans are not racist.  If the Obamas go off about racism, that's because THEY are racist.  In fairness, Scott did not call Michelle Obama a racist.  But, sorry, I've heard Republicans I was close to and respected tell me, repeatedly, that they are not racist, but the Obamas are.  Again, who is out of touch here?  Do they say these things to Black people?  Do they talk to Black people?  Do they have any idea how most Blacks would feel if they said, "I'm a White conservative, and I think Barack and Michelle Obama are racists."  Again, who is out of touch here?  Again, to quote Scott, " ... come on."  
Meanwhile, Biden just called Kasich and Meacham and asked him to say what they deeply believe.  How racist is that?  How senile is that?
You may not like Kasich, @tassojunior . I don't know him personally.  But he's exactly the type of Republican I have worked with for decades, cut deals with, and deeply respect.  As a former lobbyist and organizer, I've worked with and cut deals with Republicans I actually respect a lot less than Kasich.  (As well as Democrats I respect less than Kasich.)  I would never vote for Kasich, because I'm a lifelong loyal Democrat.  Unless, perhaps, Democrats elected a "homegrown Mussolini", which thankfully we have not.  I'll repeat what I said above.  If there was a blip for President Toxic after the first few days of the DNC, as Rasmussen seems to be saying, I think it was because centrists who don't really like or agree with Bernie or AOC or The Green New Deal got more than a mouthful about that.  Time will tell.  But as a Warren fanboy who voted for Bernie but is at heart a political whore, it was very clear to me this week that President Toxic was right about one very important thing.  He is far worse off running against Biden than either Sanders or Clinton.
To center all this stuff back to Lichtman and fundamentals, I do think it is a key reason why President Toxic will lose.  Lichtman calls this key "charisma".  I actually think "character" might be a better word.  Lichtman's core point, which I think is true,  is that once in a generation or so, a war hero like Ike or a Reagan or an Obama are able to command respect and trust that crosses partisan lines, and brings a majority of the nation together.  Lichtman literally argued that in 2008 Obama turned the "charisma" key, but in 2012 he didn't.  It makes no sense to argue that in 2008 Barack Obama had charisma, but in 2012 he lost it.  What Lichtman basically means is that in 2008 Obama was perceived as someone who could rise above and unify.  By 2012, he'd been taken down to the level of a Democratic Party hack.  I agree with Lichtman on that.  My point here is that I think all this racist and nonsensical bullshit that comes out of President Toxic's mouth, and that Republicans like Jennings clean up and try to package as actual rational thought, is one of the fundamental keys that voters have decided on.  The majority of Americans simply don't trust or believe Trump anymore - if they ever did.  The polls are incredibly clear about that fact.
Now on to the core argument Jennings is making, which is simply not going to fly.  Sorry, Scott.  Nice try.  But before COVID-19, the "rocking" economy did not work for everyone.  As Lichtman argues, the short-term and long-term economy are the keys to Trump's impending and now almost inevitable defeat.
All Employees: Manufacturing in Wisconsin
All Employees: Manufacturing in Michigan
All Employees: Manufacturing in Pennsylvania
On this one, a picture (or graph) is worth more than 1000 Kesslar words.  And, as a caveat, the United States is bigger than those three states.  And most jobs are not factory jobs.  But the theory of the case is that President Toxic won in 2016 because of angry Joe Sixpacks in the Rust Belt who lost their factory jobs.  So I'm only going to focus on that.  That said, I think the trends in these states mostly apply in all 50 states, and for all kinds of jobs.
Long term, as you can see, the picture is unrelentingly bleak.  In all three states, factory jobs are a fraction of what they used to be.  Bill Clinton could argue in the 1990's that a rising tide did lift all boats.  Although even then it was shaky in Pennsylvania.  The W. Administration was a disaster for factory workers, even before the Great Recession.  That's the case Hillary should have been making in 2016.  All these factory job losses happened on a Republican's watch.
One thing that I really like about Lichtman is that, like me, he is a lifelong Democrat.  But he is willing to admit that President Toxic won in 2016 because people cast a very close but ultimately fatal judgment on the eight year track record of Obama/Biden.  It gets very tricky now.  Are Obama and Biden responsible for the massive job losses that occurred in these states from roughly January to June 2009? 
As a political question, David Axelrod will tell you that's a no brainer.  He says he knew by Spring 2009 that Democrats would have political hell to pay for this in 2010 - even though it wasn't their fault.  He was right, of course.  If you count from Summer 2009, when The Great Recession ended, Obama/Biden created about 1 million manufacturing jobs on their watch.  If you count from the day Obama took office, it was mostly a wash in all three states.  Obama/Biden more or less got factory jobs back to where they were when they were elected.  So these factory workers and their communities do have a legitimate reason to be pissed, I think.   When that led them to vote for President Toxic, I felt I had to give them a pass.  Particularly the ones that voted for Obama and Biden in 2008 or 2012 or both elections.  It's hard to believe Whites who voted for Obama twice are malevolent racists.
There's another thing that is worth mentioning here, if we could test different outcomes on an alternative Planet Earth.  Between November 2008 when President Toxic won, and January 2009 when he was inaugurated, there was a bunch of stories written in lefty journals that worried that Trump would govern as a centrist.  That he would cut deals with Democrats (if needed) to invest in infrastructure and create lots of blue collar jobs. Some progressives worried that Trump would be the new Reagan.  The fear was he'd move just enough to the center and compromise just enough to create an unshakable political coalition based on undeniable massive job creation. 
I was one of those Democrats - like Pelosi, I think - actually HOPING he would do that.  For the good of the country, and those broken factory towns.  And the families dying "deaths of despair".  We now know that President Toxic was too stupid or too mean or too incompetent to do that.  He'll say he cut taxes (mostly for the 1 %, in fact) and that created jobs.  Look at the data in the charts above.  To the degree that factory jobs were created, it mostly happened in 2017 - before the tax cuts.  And it was mostly on the same trend line of what has been happening from 2010 to 2016, under Obama and Biden.
On an alternative Planet Earth, it would be fascinating to see what would have happened this November if COVID-19 never happened.  If you just look at 2019 in those three states, it actually looks at lot like 2015.  Which is to say that factory job growth was flat.  If the huge Republican tax cuts to billionaires and "job creators" created lots of factory jobs in the Rust Belt in 2019, the factory workers themselves missed it.  In fact, in calendar year 2019, manufacturing employment was actually DOWN by a few thousand jobs in all three states. 
If something similar hurt Obama/Biden/Clinton in 2016, would it have hurt President Toxic in 2020?  We'll never know.  But we do know he certainly didn't make America great again.  Not if that means getting factory jobs back to what Bill Clinton managed to do.  Was the economy rocking "for everyone" before COVID-19, like Scott says?  Come on.  Give me a fucking break.
Now the question is different.  Lichtman's keys on the economy are essentially like Reagan's question:  are you better off than you were four years ago?  Today, the answer is overwhelmingly obvious in all three states:  NO, NO, and NO.  They are all worse off than when President Toxic took power.  Pennsylvania is actually worse off in terms of manufacturing jobs than at the bottom of The Great Recession.  And President Toxic thinks he can win by talking about how Biden is going to destroy fracking jobs?  Give me a fucking break.
Again, the United States is bigger than the Rust Belt.  And most jobs are not factory jobs.  But no matter what part of the economy you look at, the trend is the same.  It was "rocking" for Apple stock owners and employees before COVID-19.  And it is rocking for them now.  Everybody else?  Not so much.
All Employees: Manufacturing in Florida
I'm throwing in Florida just to reinforce my points about fundamentals, the economy, and the political price President Toxic will pay, if Lichtman is right again.  We don't think of Florida as a manufacturing state.  But it has almost as many factory jobs as the three I listed above.  Unlike the other three states, Florida is still better off in terms of manufacturing jobs than the day President Toxic took office.  I think most people know that some of those factory jobs that left the Rust Belt actually moved to Florida or Alabama or the South - not China.  
Arguably, President Toxic should be doing okay in Florida.  But he isn't.  He's about 5 points behind Biden.  Almost as much as he is in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  Is it because of the job losses?  Or the COVID-19 deaths?  Or just that seniors there think President Toxic is a mean prick? 
Who knows?  I don't.  Ask Scott Jennings.  He'll tell you.   
 
 
 

With all due respect, my beloved sister, you're no help whatsoever.
I'll be watching the debate with Dane Scott tomorrow night.  He's Italian heritage.  Why aren't you at least offering to cater the fucking cannoli?
This does work both ways.  Granted, these days my brain is too active, and my cock is not active enough.  So maybe I do need to lay off the politics for a while.  I took a break for a few months a little while back.  But it didn't break my bad habits.  You know what they say.   Once a political whore, always .........................
Flip side, I remember the moment in 2008 in Dane's apartment when he still lived in New York when I asked him whether he'd be voting for Hillary or Barack.  His eyes glazed over.  Frankly, it's the kind of look you'd want to see in an escort when your cock is deep inside him and he is about to cum.  That said, it's not a good look when you're trying to have a political conversation.
Like so many others, President Toxic has politicized Dane.  Now he's all about watching the debate, sending donations to Biden, and voting against President Toxic.  We all get older, of course.  But how sad is that?
My brother who, like you, liked Bloomberg in the primary, has nearly been radicalized.  He lost his job earlier this year due to the pandemic.  We both recently agreed that the only thing we could think of that would make us seriously consider suicide is four more years of President Toxic.  Who knows.  Perhaps even Poor Brad ended up feeling that way.  Of course, Brad is in my thoughts and prayers.
So whatever it is that's going around, other than COVID-19, seems to be catching.
Not to worry.  Since you won't be making good on the promised cannoli, we'll just make do with a few bottles of cheap wine.  And wishing and hoping that Uncle Joe makes us cum ............... I mean, in a political sort of way, of course.

 
 

So, trigger warning.  Even by my own standards, this is going to be be a particularly obtuse and rambling post. 
Every month or so I Google Allan Lichtman's name to see if he has anything new up.  This month he didn't.  But I found a long essay (actually a book chapter) I linked below that I found really interesting.  It's another author who admires Lichtman's theories commenting on their validity.
Reading it generated two ideas.  I'll summarize them, and then return to them in more detail in my rambling below:
1.  Lichtman's model provides an interesting way to think about how President Toxic could win.  The three keys in his system that turned this year that led Lichtman to call the election for Biden are the short-term economy (recession), the long-term economy (laggard GDP growth), and the social unrest.  In theory, those are decisive nails in President Toxic's political coffin.  That said, Trump is clearly trying to get people to ignore those three things.  If he succeeds with a majority of voters in the Electoral College states, he could win.  If he fails, he'll lose.
2.  2020 is only the third time that Lichtman has called his "social unrest" key against the party in power.  The other two times were 1932 and 1968.  I932 marked the beginning of a new political era.  Arguably, so did 1968.  Could the social tumult that ignited in 2020 be an indicator of a major political turning point?
Like I said, I'll return to those two ideas below.
Lichtman's claim to fame is that his system can predict who will win the Presidency.  What I actually find more interesting is that his system describes why they will win or lose.  Which boils down to governing effectively. 
I think it explains what is happening right now.  So far, nothing President Toxic is saying is really sticking to Joe Biden.  And Biden is mostly being Silent Joe.  Some of that is Biden's staff trying to avoid gaffes, I suspect.  But probably they agree with Lichtman's basic theory.  This election is a referendum on President Toxic that he is going to lose.  So they just don't want to get in the way of letting Trump lose it. Biden's staff has pretty much told reporters as much.
CHAPTER 5: WHAT DOESN'T WIN THE PRESIDENCY
That's 33 bold-faced pages from a 2006 book called Campaigns Don't Count from an Ohio newspaper columnist named Martin Gottlieb.  He declared in his column early in 2004 that Bush had already "won" the 2004 election.  He did that using Lichtman's model.  But this chapter goes through each of Lichtman's keys as they relate to the 1988 election.  It was interesting to read a smart journalist's take on Lichtman's own analysis.  The reason Gottlieb chose 1988 is he argues that was an election that everyone thought Dukakis would win.  Especially in May 1988, when Lichtman published his article in the Washingtonian saying George H.W. Bush would win.  Here's the Gallup polls from 1988:

You can see that in May Dukakis had a lead of 16 points.  So the prediction was as outside the box as Lichtman saying in September 2016 that Trump would win.  Here's the last paragraph of the chapter:
Just to make sure it's clear, Lichtman says that if the party in power has six or more "keys" turned against them, they lose.  Right now, President Toxic has seven turned against him.  In 1988, Bush only had three.  So it was an easy call that Bush would win.  And by the end of the race, reality reflected Lichtman's prediction about the voter's imminent judgment.
The whole 33 pages is a good read.  But a brief summary is that this had nothing to do with Willie Horton or Lee Atwater's campaign gimmicks.  It had to do with a growing economy, Reagan winning The Cold War, and other "big picture" factors that led people to conclude they wanted four more years of Republican leadership.
What I learned reading this that I didn't know is that when they built the model, Lichtman and his Russian seismologist colleague tested all kinds of theories of what might drive an election.  Including, for example, campaign messages and campaign tactics.  When the tested possible algorithms, characteristics of leadership and governing always trumped campaigning as predictors pf who won. 
So many of Lichtman's keys are right most of the time.  If all you do is say any incumbent President running will win, you are right about 2 times out of 3.  The key that is the most accurate on its own is whether there is a serious contest for the nomination of the party in power.  In 2020, President Toxic had no real opposition.  So that in itself would predict that about 80 % of the time, that candidate running o behalf of the incumbent party will win.  
So the idea of the 13 keys is that it's not armchair judgment.  They went through a larger menu of possible factors that could predict the winner, and picked 13 that seemed to be the most reliable.  Another interesting point is that when this article was written, there were 14  "subsystems" - combinations of some portion of the 13 keys - that were just as good at predicting the winner.  The reason they picked 13 keys is they figured that it gave them the best chance of being consistently right every time.
That leads to this statement from the caper above:
i thought that was interesting in the context of the 2020 election.  Here's the list of 13 keys.  If you only pay attention to the six listed in that quote, President Toxic gets four of the six.  Meaning that in 2020 that subsystem says Trump should win.  Lichtman was saying last year that Trump had lost Keys 1 and 13.  But he had 2, 3, 4, and 7, and still does.  So this subsystem contradicts what Lichtman predicted based on the full 13 keys: that Trump would lose.
The three keys that turned against Trump this year are 5, 6, and 8.  Basically the economy went to shit, and all hell broke loose in the streets and there was suddenly mass social unrest.  Lichtman has called it the quickest turnaround in Presidential history.  Because mostly these keys are big picture items, and they don't turn in a day or month like polls do.  So Trump went for having four keys against him in 2019, which is two short of a loss, to seven turned against him, which is one more than needed to predict loss.  
Here's what I find very interesting about that.  I think this is a good way to think about what President Toxic is clearly trying to do, and what he in fact has to do to win.  In effect, he has to be The Wizard Of Oz saying, "Ignore that man behind the curtain."  He has to get people to pretend like the economy is fine, and the social unrest doesn't matter.  That's what his show on The White House lawn was intended to do.  Lichtman's keys say that President Toxic does not get to decide how voters judge him.  That said, if you buy the idea that Trump runs a cult, in theory he could be uniquely able to control how people judge his successes and failures.
The real question is whether President Toxic can get people outside his core base, plus Republican party stalwarts, to see the economy and the unrest that started with Black Lives Matter as he wishes them to.  So far, it looks like he simply does not have the unique ability to change the verdict of history, which Lichtman says is definitely against him.  We'll see.  Again, what interests me the most about Lichtman is not the voodoo prediction part about who will win.  It's the deeper meaning of why they win or lose.  So if Lichtman is right, it means that Trump simply can't script his own Reality TV Presidency.  He is stuck with reality.  And with voters who think like Bob Woodward.  They will conclude he's the wrong person for the job.
The second thing I mentioned above that jumped out at me reading this article is that the 8th key, social unrest, was last turned against the incumbent party by Lichtman in 1968 and 1932.  Like his other keys, Lichtman is focused on big picture things that suggest a political earthquake is coming.  Those two years were very eventful years.  So now I'm straying from anything Lichtman says.  But it struck me that 2020 could be one of those really eventful years.  When people say it's the most important election of our lifetimes, they may be right.
1932 was obviously a really big deal.  It was a landslide that shattered an old political coalition and birthed a new one of Democratic dominance that basically endured (with a pause under Ike) from 1932 to 1968.  I'm not sure 1968 fits in the same category.  If there is a conservative version of a realigning landslide like 1932, it is obviously 1980 and the Reagan Revolution.  1968 was actually a fairly close call between Nixon and Humphrey.  But the sense in which 1932 and 1968 fit together is that the social unrest did signal a political earthquake.  You can view 1968 as a signal that a coalition and liberal ideology that more or less prevailed from The New Deal to The Great Society was really starting to fall apart.  
It actually did start to fall apart in 1969, when Nixon began picking SCOTUS justices that gradually ended the Warren Court's activism.  There was also the Silent Majority, the Southern strategy to take over the White South, and then the 1972 landslide against "McGovernment".  On Election Night 1980 historian Teddy White argued that Carter lost because of the weight of history itself.  The old Democratic coalition just no longer worked, he said.  I think you can argue that a political coalition that was clearly starting to fall apart in 1968 finally just collapsed by 1980.  It took until 1992 for Clinton to start rebuilding a different coalition, in part by co-opting conservative ideas.  This is where @tassojuniormight argue that even Obama and his ilk were essentially closet corporate Republicans pretending to be liberal Democrats.  At the very least, Obama explicitly wanted to change history in the way Reagan did.  I don't think Obama quite did that.
All of this sounds very esoteric.  And this stuff about 1932 and 1968 is my thinking, not Lichtman's.  I'm not even sure why Lichtman picked only 1932 and 1968, because there were other years in US history when there were mass movements and protests.  But after thinking about it I buy the idea that 2020 and 1968 and 1932 are fairly unique Presidential elections that all have a depth of spontaneous social unrest that doesn't happen very often. 
I also buy the idea that each year may represent a fundamental turning of the tide.  1932 for sure was a massive tidal wave shift to liberalism.  1968 can accurately be described as the beginning of the end of a liberal era, that climaxed 12 years later in the Reagan Revolution.
There's a few other things about 1968 that fit to me.  Nixon was himself a transitional figure.  By today's standards he would be too liberal for Republicans.  The lowest the poverty rate ever got in the US before Bill Clinton was under Richard Nixon, in 1971.  He basically embraced most of the anti-poverty programs Reagan later used as his whipping boy.  Biden is likely to be a Nixon-like figure in that sense.  He explicitly calls himself a transitional figure.  It does make sense to me that just as Nixon lead to Reagan, history could be arcing so that Biden ultimately leads to a figure like Sanders or Warren or AOC a decade or so down the line.
The other comparison that strikes me is "The Silent Majority".  When Kenosha happened there was a lot of concern that President Toxic might be able to adopt a Nixonian "law and order" tone that would wipe out Biden's lead.  "Law and order" is the issue some Trump supporters list as their top priority.  But Biden is the candidate a majority of voters see as better at dealing with the issue.  And his lead in Wisconsin has held steady at 7 %.
What the polls seem to be saying consistently is that there actually is a Silent Majority, and Biden is the one who is building it.  The Liberate The Virus crowd with guns on State Capitol steps and the maskless MAGA rallies are the minority.  That's now 100 % clear.  Overwhelming majorities are for masks mandates.  Meanwhile, there is at least a slender majority that says there is systemic racism in America.  And that views Black Lives Matter mostly favorably, and not as a radical group out to abolish suburbs.  If 1968 can be viewed as the end of a liberal era with the Warren Court and a series of liberal Presidencies, the social unrest of today could be a signal that Trumpism has basically failed. 
John Harris of Politico wrote a nice piece last week that argued just that.  Essentially that Trumpism and McConnellism is the bastard child and dying gasp of the sunny ideal of Reagan conservatism that climaxed in the 1980's. 
Before someone points it out, I recognize that the kinds of people protesting in 1968 were the same kinds of liberals and progressives and Blacks protesting today.  The difference is that in 1968 Nixon had the support of The Silent Majority.  I can't find polls about MLK or the Viet Nam War protests in 1968.  But here's a poll about views on Nixon and the war in 1969. All adults supported Nixon's Viet Nam policies 64/25.  Even college students supported Nixon's war policies 50/44.    Today, Biden seems to have the support of 2020's Silent Majority.  54 % of Americans say they view Black Lives Matter favorably.  Only 44 % view President Toxic favorably.  Who has the majority now?
Like I said, this was just a long intellectual masturbation about Lichtmanland.  Some part of my feeling is that I would much rather choose cynicism than hope.  The cynical part of me does have to consider the possibility that President Toxic may be able to pull off his Great And Mighty Donald routine, and convince people to ignore the economy, the virus, and the social unrest.  More likely, I think hope will win in 2020, like in 2008.  I'd like to believe that like in 1932 and 1968 the tumult signals a major change in the tide.  And this time it's going to shift decisively from a waning conservatism to a rising progressive and Democratic majority.

My favorite community organizing mantra is Saul Alinsky's "the action is in the reaction".
The more I read about this SCOTUS nomination, and its potential long term consequences, the more I think this could be the mother of all political reactions for much of the 21st century.  

So far, the title of Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson's book has been more right than wrong.  In 2018, the Republican House majority died.  No one is even suggesting they'll get that back in 2020. 
For the next month we'll hear endlessly about the amazing mandate the Senate Republicans were given in 2018 to do what they're about to do.  One big clue that they had no mandate is that the majority of Americans oppose Republicans filling the seat now.  Another big clue is that in 2018 Democrats had 24 seats to defend, and Republicans only had 9.  So Republicans netting 2 seats isn't a mandate.  They won Missouri and North Dakota and Indiana - red states - in 2018.  But losing red states like Montana and purple states like Arizona wasn't exactly a huge Republican victory.
2020 will be the real test of Wilson's book title.  As of now, it's looking like the Republican Senate majority will die.  And the grand prize - the Toxic Presidency will die, too.
Boo hoo.  Boo hoo.
Now there's a new question.  If Barrett is seated, President Toxic will definitely have touched the Supreme Court.  So will it die, too?  
My guess is it will.  It will die in the sense that in a decade it will have lost much of the legitimacy it has today.
This article is a good compilation of what a bunch of legal scholars think about the likely impact of Barrett (and President Toxic's other justices).  I'm quoting two of scholars, who express one of the strongest themes of the various prognostications.
How Amy Coney Barrett Would Reshape The Court - And The Country
Of course, we don't know whether Barrett will be confirmed, let alone what she'll do.  But this seems to me like a grim and realistic prognosis.  If correct, it suggests that the legitimacy of SCOTUS will diminish.  Depending on how far they go, SCOTUS could simply be seen as an appendage of the Republican Party.  Or of corporate America.  Or of climate change deniers.  Or even the most right-wing religious organizations in America.
None of these legal scholars mention anything about political reactions if their predictions come true.   But the reactions could be massive.  It's one thing to be a conservative bulwark that blocks what even many Republicans in 2020 would view as progress:  child labor laws, minimum wage laws, income taxes that fund popular social programs.  It's another thing to actually roll back progress, or repeal it. 
I assume that a 6-3 conservative court will do everything they can think of to NOT repeal Roe. v. Wade.  Instead, they will incrementally kill it in all but name.  That won't work as easily with the ACA.  They've already killed part of it.  But now it's sort of all or nothing.  Another one of the themes of the Politico piece is that this is probably the end of the line for efforts by Justices like Kennedy and Roberts to zig zag in a way that kept SCOTUS near the center of American political gravity. 
No matter how well they try to disguise it, Americans will figure out that the Court has swung hard to the right.  That will likely cause a huge political reaction.  A lot of that reaction will happen at the state level.  Including in the state elections of two US Senators.  Long term, this could address the Democrats' biggest structural problem.  There's a lot of data being put up right now about how the Senate naturally favors Republicans.  I'll post some of it below.  My point is that a far right SCOTUS might have the effect of gradually loosening the Republicans' hold on some of those states, and thus the Senate.
I'll use abortion as an example.  I don't think anyone knows what the political implications of a repeal of Roe v. Wade will be.  I cited poll data above from Pew that suggests that right now 61 % of Americans support legal abortion in all or most cases, and 38 % oppose abortion in all or most cases.  Pew also found no difference between men and women - 60 % of both sexes support abortion in all or most cases.  This Gallup poll which is also recent provides a significantly different picture.  It is perhaps a classic example of the answer depending on how you ask the question.  When you ask about "pro-choice" or "pro-life",  it's much more of a 50/50 split. And a gender gap appears.  A slight majority of women are "pro-choice", and a slight majority of men are "pro-life".  On the bottom line question of whether it should be legal, Gallup's numbers suggest that as few as 43 % of Americans support abortion that is legal in most cases.  And up to 55 % of Americans want abortion to be legal "in only a few circumstances", or not at all.
If you believe the Pew numbers, Republicans appear to be asking for massive long-term pushback in most states, with the exceptions being ones like Alabama.  If you believe the Gallup data, it might explain why McConnell and The Divine Miss Graham are pushing full speed ahead.  They may believe this will help them in all red states, and most purple states.  The 2018 Senate results don't suggest that.  Nor do the polls in 2020, so far.  But nobody knows.  We will have a very good indication when we know what happened in Senate races in Montana, Kansas, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Texas.  (Of those purple to red state, three had Senate elections in 2018.  Democrats won Montana and Arizona, and came closer than expected in Texas.  Like I said, 2018 was not a Republican mandate.)
The same goes for the ACA and a long list of other issues.  My guess is that Mitch McConnell is politically unassailable in Kentucky.  But Andy Beshear just won the Kentucky Governor seat back in part because of the ACA, basically avenging his Dad's loss to a one-term right wing Governor.  If SCOTUS repeals the ACA, it's not completely clear what reaction that will cause even in a deep red state like Kentucky.  If we are doomed to repeat the obstructionist conservative court of the 1930's, it's even less clear what the political reaction will be when they throw out whatever watered-down parts of the Green New Deal Biden and Democrats are able to pass.
I agree with the authors I cited above.  The Supreme Court will likely revert to being what it was for much of US history:  a block against democratic and progressive majorities, and a protector of powerful minorities and elites.  The reaction at the state level could be to move more states to the left, driven by social issues like abortion and economic issues like health care and minimum wages.  If that happens, I could also see it eliminating any structural advantage Republicans have in the US Senate.
The Senate’s Rural Skew Makes It Very Hard For Democrats To Win The Supreme Court
That article has good data on two things:  the partisan lean of all 50 states, and the  urban/rural geography of all 50 states.  
I don't buy the idea the the Senate is the biggest obstacle to Democrats "winning" SCOTUS.  I think it's obvious the Slavery Electoral College is the biggest obstacle. Were Hillary Clinton  the winner in 2016, we'd potentially be looking at a 6-3 liberal majority (assuming Kennedy resigned.)  If you also assume Gore was President in 2000, there would never have been a Bush second term during which he appointed two justices.  Arguably, up to 8 of the 9 SCOTUS justices would have been appointed by Democrats.  What screwed Democrats (and democrats) first and foremost is not the Senate, or McConnell.  It's the Slavery Electoral College.  If we want democratic politics in America, we have to get rid of the Slavery Electoral College.  The idea that the woman who wins the most votes is the winner is NOT a radical idea.  
I'm assuming any court packing scheme designed to give liberals a court majority will be politically toxic.  An effort to restructure the Senate to look like more like the House would be even more politically toxic.  What Democrats should be thinking about is getting and keeping a 50+ vote majority in the Senate.   And then getting rid of the Senate filibuster, which relied on a level of bipartisanship and comity that is now just dead.  
I've read a bunch of good articles this year that suggest that "it's the geography, stupid" is even more important today than "it's the economy, stupid."  The way I understand the first phrase is that it incorporates the economy.  Areas that are more rural and Whiter tend to be more culturally conservative as well.  They tend to be the areas that feel, and often are, left behind economically.  Everything about the sunny and outward optimism of Reagan (California, pro-trade, pro-immigrant) is now associated with the Democratic Party.  Reagan was the one who said Hispanics are Republicans, but they just don't know it yet. The post-Trump Republican Party fits more into the pessimistic tradition that America and American values have been lost.  I love the phrase "coalition of restoration" to describe the Republican Party as it will probably exist for a long time to come. 
So if all that is accurate, if you look at that 538 list of states by partisan lean the Democrats can probably just forget about states that are the most rural.  They already have been the least Democratic:  like Wyoming and Idaho and perhaps Montana.  That said, Tester survived 2018, right after voting against Justice Rapist.  And they have a Democratic Governor that may be their other Senator soon.  There are only three states that have 0 % of their population in the big urban cores and small cities that are supposed to favor Democrats.  They are Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.    Given that Vermont is both one of the most rural AND the most Democratic, it's obviously more than just the geography, stupid.
Here's numbers 20-24 on the list of states by Republican partisan lean, in order:  South Carolina, Texas,  Georgia, Iowa, Ohio.  If those five states were always in play for Democrats, plus the next 25 states that are most favorable to Democrats, that would mean Democrats ought to be able to have realistic chances to get up to 60 Senate seats in any cycle.  Right now, it looks like Iowa and Georgia and even South Carolina are toss ups.  Again, what happens in 2020 will give us a really good read on how hospitable those states are to Democrats.   But my basic premise is that when the SCOTUS turns hard right, there will be a broad and deep reaction.  My guess is that as this plays out it will make it easier, not harder, to win Senate seats and state legislatures in states like Ohio, Georgia, Texas, and maybe South Carolina. 
I'm actually most pessimistic about Iowa, which used to be a pretty solid Democratic state.  It has neither significant concentrations of urban areas, nor significant concentrations of non-Whites, which are the the trends favoring Democrats the most.  South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, and Ohio do have concentrations of either urban areas, or minorities, or both.  So if Iowa is going to stay Democratic, it's going to be despite the trends rather than because of them.  
I'm trying to get my head around the bright side of a 6-3 conservative SCOTUS.  It pisses me off, because but for the Slavery Electoral College Democrats won 6 of the 7 last Presidential elections, and therefore should have "won" the SCOTUS as well.  But being pissed off isn't a good place to be.
For a lot of US history slave owners and robber barons and corporate interests used SCOTUS and the Slavery Electoral College to dominate and secure their interests, including owning Black people as property.  I don't have a big conceptual problem with letting them go back to being just that.   In a system of checks and balances, it will create a reaction.  The more conservative a little club of nine people gets, the more liberal the nation's reaction will likely be.  At least in a majority of states, which are the ones Democrats should target.  Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Texas - those should all be in play.
In the last three Senate election cycles (2014, 2016, 2018), Republicans won a total of 57 seats, and Democrats won 46 (that includes special elections).  Meanwhile, Republican Senate candidates in those elections won a total of 100 million votes, whereas Democrats about 125 million votes.  That right there speaks to the structural advantage of Republicans winning all these smaller, Whiter, and rural states like Wyoming and Idaho.
I think Democrats have to elevate the issue of democracy and legitimacy.  I'm now ready to let the SCOTUS damn themselves.  Let them be the opposite of the Warren Court.  Let Blacks and Hispanics and lesbians and liberals and progressives see this club of nine as the place where religious bigots thrive, White racism has a welcome home, civil rights legislation is viewed with hostility, and progressive ideas go to die.  It would be consistent with much of US history.  It really did not have to be that way.  But the Slavery Electoral College, Gore and Hillary would have been elected.  And it would not have been that way.  But, as President Toxic says, it is what it is.
There is no mandate for conservatism.  So whenever Republicans say "mandate", we should do what President Toxic does and say, "No, assholes.  You stole it.  In a democracy, the person who gets 3 million more votes wins.  So yeah, asshole.  You stole it.  If Democrats get 125 million votes and Republicans get 100 million votes, that's not a Republican mandate.  Even if it means you got more Senate seats.
Mostly, I think what Democrats need to do is lock down the Presidency and the Senate.  Time and demography is on our side.  We ought to be able to win and hold both a lot more than Republicans do.  And a hard right wing SCOTUS ought to be able to help Democrats do it as this plays out.  It probably won't work in Alabama or Idaho.  But it should help tip states like Georgia and Texas.
We'll know a lot better whether I'm right or wrong two months from now.