A professor who correctly predicted the last nine presidential elections told Hill.TV that the conventional wisdom of Democrats when it comes to selecting a presidential nominee is all wrong, saying the party should instead support more “off-the-wall candidates.”
“The conventional wisdom — and you hear if from [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi [D-Calif.] and others — is we need to go down the center line,” Allan Lichtman, who is a political historian and a history professor at American University, said during an interview that aired on Thursday. “Nominate an establishment, experienced, proven candidate and they’ve done that many times.”
“Mike Dukakis in 1988, Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and what do they all have in common? They all lost,” he added.
Lichtman advised Democrats to instead choose political outsiders, citing former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as prime examples.
“It’s the off-the-wall candidates — the Carters, the Clintons, the Obamas — [who’ve] won,” he said.
The 2020 presidential campaign is well underway, with former Vice President Joe Biden holding a sizable lead over his fellow Democratic contenders.
Despite a string of recent criticisms from some Democrats, Biden boasts a 11-point lead over the rest of the Democratic field, according to a new poll that was released on Thursday.
Almost 27 percent of Democratic voters named Biden as their first choice, according to a recent Economist-YouGov poll.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) came in second at 16 percent and another 11 percent said they preferred Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) as their top choice.
Biden was the only candidate to break double digit numbers in the survey.
—Tess Bonn
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