Panel’s focus: 2020 Presidential campaigns

WASHINGTON — A symposium, “Prescient Predictions: Who Won 2020,” set for 3 p.m. Sunday, will feature a discussion on the dominant forces driving the campaign and how they will determine who wins. The panel of allstar forecasters will explain how the two major-party candidates are assembling their coalitions, what voting blocs will tip the outcome, and which states are key to victory.

The forum, Conversations On the Green’s fourth event of the season, will be led by Steve Kornacki, whose smooth statistical flights across his famous MSNBC “Big Board” on election nights defy gravity and leave viewers breathless. A lifelong politics wonk, he is an NBC national political correspondent and the paragon of a statistical geek who effortlessly can turn columns of numbers into comprehensible analyses of trends.

An exception to the partisan zealots that dominate cable news shows, the 40year-old Kornacki is a selfdescribed sports nut who is obsessed by game shows and has written for myriad major newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Salon. In addition to piloting “The Big Board” on MSNBC’s election night coverage, he has hosted several of the network’s programs.

The “It-Girl” of political forecasting, Dr. Rachel Bitecofer, a 42-year-old election forecaster and senior fellow at The Niskanen Center, will headline the panel with Kornacki. She was largely unknown in the male-dominated world of political forecasting until November 2018, when she nailed the Democrats’ win in the House. Not only did she get the numbers right, she did it earlier than anyone: she made her forecast in July, then stuck with it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall.

The method behind Dr. Bitecofer’s madness blows up conventional wisdom and, as she puts it with characteristic chutzpah, amounts to nothing less than “flipping giant paradigms of electoral theory upside down.” Her concept is that modern American elections aren’t determined by swing voters but rather by shifts in who votes. She’s an extreme apostle of the old saw that “turnout explains everything” and argues that most experts have been slow to understand the impact of polarization’s heralded rooting.

David Axelrod, the chief strategist for arguably the two best managed presidential campaigns - Obama’s longshot but victorious effort in 2008 and his re-election drive four years later - completes the panel. Mild-mannered and soft-spoken with an appreciation of Chicago’s bare-knuckled campaign tactics, Axelrod is credited with implementing the people-powered, grass-roots campaign style that allowed the obscure Illinois senator to overwhelm better known and better-financed opponents.

Now a senior CNN political commentator, Axelrod began his career at The Chicago Tribune covering national, state and local politics. He says politics appealed to him because he is an idealist and in 1985 started the political consulting firm, Axelrod & Associates. He soon became known as a specialist in urban politics and for working with black politicians, advising minority mayoral candidates in major cities around the country. He nearly sat out the 2008 campaign as five of the leading candidates were former clients and he had deep personal ties to Hillary Clinton, who had raised major funding for epilepsy research on behalf of a foundation co-founded by his wife and mother, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, CURE. He ultimately decided to become Obama’s chief strategist and media advisor. After helping to lead Obama’s 2012 reelection drive, he stepped back from American campaigns and founded the non-partisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, where he serves as director.

Moderated by former NBC correspondent and national talk show host Jane Whitney, this interactive symposium, which begins at 3 p.m. and runs 90 minutes, will be live-streamed, allowing anyone with an internet-connected device to participate and ask questions. To register and for more information, go to www.conversationsonthegreen.com/