It’s a moment of absolute discord in the Democratic Party, as President Joe Biden is being forced to contend with internal pushes for him to drop out of the presidential race.

Over the past week, pundits and Democratic politicians of all levels have suggested that Biden step aside after his disastrous debate performance and poor polling against former President Donald Trump. In addition to dozens of representatives, vulnerable senators like Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown have called on the president to end his campaign, and heavyweights like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama have made increasingly clear which way they’re leaning behind closed doors. 

This weekend, Biden’s troubles hit an inflection point, and the voices making a strong case for Biden to remain are dwindling. They range from progressive figureheads like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to longtime Biden allies like Chris Coons, but one of them in particular certainly got our attention: Allan Lichtman.

Lichtman is the American University professor famous for correctly predicting a number of presidential elections. He claims a perfect record, a claim that we have thoroughly debunked. The short version is that, in 2016, Lichtman predicted that Trump would win the popular vote and after that result failed to materialize, he not only took credit for a correct prediction anyway, but was dishonest about the content of his own work, incorrectly and inconsistently claiming that the Keys had only been designed to predict the winner of the general election, not the popular vote, for every election held after 2000. Now, Lichtman has also been a particularly vocal advocate for Biden remaining in the race. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se – there are perfectly valid arguments for the president to stay in the race, or to drop out. But what is notable is how Lichtman’s advocacy may factor into the Biden campaign’s decision making. 

In a brief video published on the night of July 19, Lichtman claims that he corresponded with Ron Klain, the president’s former chief of staff who also led the preparations for Biden’s ill-fated debate performance. Lichtman states that Klain assured him that Biden is “staying in,” and that he reportedly added, “Here’s to the 13 Keys which don’t turn on fickle polling.” We have been unable to independently verify this exchange.

In a moment where the Biden camp is grasping at any single piece of data, analysis, or support to justify its ongoing campaign, there are two main takeaways from this supposed interaction, and neither of them are flattering. The first is that those close to Biden are so desperate that they’re willing to latch on to anything, including a debunked, unscientific model like Lichtman’s, and the second is that they likely failed to do the due diligence provided by even a quick glance at Lichtman’s (or the 13 Keys’) Wikipedia page. In other words, if this exchange is true, the campaign’s desperation has made them either ignorant, outright naive, or both, willing to leap at anything available to them to support a weak position. 

If Biden campaign’s position is indeed so weak that they’re pointing to the 13 Keys to justify the president remaining in the race, it should immediately cause concern for any serious pundit, pollster, Democrat, and American. If Biden is being told by those closest to him to stay in the race because of a disproven, debunked, and dishonest system, the campaign has only themselves to blame for any impending failure – and they’re tipped off how untenable their position truly is.