Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, November 8, 2024
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41 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
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As we were moving boxes and piling chairs to shut down the campaign office, one of my fellow workers brought his daughter who is studying law with him. During the lunch break she read the 25th amendment which relates to the removal of the president due to, among other things, inability to perform the duties of his office.
( https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-25/ )
It’s a trickier amendment – and one of the longer ones on the list – than we might suspect.
It’s interesting how much power the vice-president has to make that happen. Speculation about Trump’s mental state sometimes mentioned this amendment but always in terms of Democrats pushing and GOP resisting. I wonder how much faster and more thorough it might be if the vice-president was leading the effort.
So my question is: how long will Vance let Trump remain president, and under what circumstances might he try to force him out? I’m thinking as long as Trump plays golf all day and lets Vance run things, then he’s safe.
@Not the IT Dept.: Vance is ambitious, but he’s going to tread very carefully around the Trump juggernaut. Depending on how pronounced Trump’s decline is, I see a range of scenarios:
1) Staff props Trump up Dianne Feinstein-style, pushing him onto the golf course and running things pretty much without him unless they need his signature.
2) Decline is steep enough that Trump staff start to see the writing on the wall, and begin to migrate over to ingratiating themselves with Vance. External (aka, corporate) actors get involved and start to suggest invoking the 25th. Trump gets his pardons, some anodyne statement is issued about wanting to spend time with family (LOL), and he is pushed out the door
3) Trump has a medical issue out in public and Vance’s team pounces.
4) Some other combo of palace intrigue, up to and including Trump losing faith in JD and trying to ice him out of the inner circle, or perhaps even trying to replace him (this is harder than it seems)
The good(?) news is all of this nonsense will distract them and maybe delay their ability to break things.
Was there a Trump juggernaut? Or was there a combination of religious and corporate interests that fueled the election effort that Trump was the figurehead for? The GOP officially was gutted and turned into a clearing house for donations for Trump; it certainly isn’t going to be reinstated as it was a few years ago. It has been cannibalized from within. For all intents and purposes, the GOP is dead.
What is here now is what we’ll call the New-GOP, with a Congress that owes nothing to what happened before. And we’ll see how much loyalty there is to Trump when Vance starts showing leadership with Congress. Will Trump even care by 2026? Will Vance be the de facto leader going into the mid-terms?
I think it’s worth considering whether Trump peaked on election night and it’ll be fading into the sunset for him from now on. Vance and the billionaires are the ones we should be concentrating on.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Apologies, I should have defined what I meant by that. His supporters in the general public are LOUD and active, and this terrifies politicians. That is the “huge and powerful force” (juggernaut) of which I speak.
Agreed, but with the caveat that Putin is a factor here, along with Saudi money. All that matters to Trump is money, and both of those camps hold his strings. If Putin wants Trump to stay, he’ll stick around, no matter what Vance’s camp wants.
@Jen:
And doxxing and death threats and other stochastic terrorism keeps them in line.
There are physical symptoms with frontotemporal dementia, he has a wheelchair in his future followed by bedridden. So more stick him in front of the TV machine to watch Fox and Friends,
@Jen:
And doxxing and death threats and other stochastic terrorism keeps them in line.
There are physical symptoms with frontotemporal dementia, he has a wheelchair in his future followed by bedridden. So more stick him in front of the TV machine to watch Fox and Friends,
Musk is going to try to insert himself pushing his pet wishlist, I wonder how that will go.
@Not the IT Dept.: Just so. There are hundreds of examples of powerful leaders (almost all men) being undercut by rivalries within their retinues. Trump will become a lame duck on January 20, 2025 and I expect the throat-cutting among his potential successors to begin within the next 24 hours.
I unexpectedly finished season 2 of The Diplomat yesterday.
Meh.
Unexpected, because season 1 was 8 eps, but season 2 only had six.
The first season was pretty good, but I can’t say much about it without massive spoilers. that’s one inconvenience of arc shows.
The premises is Keri Russel playing the US ambassador to the UK, taking office just after a terrorist attack kills 45 sailors in one of Britain’s aircraft carriers. Most of the first season involves her efforts to help the Brits, especially the foreign minister, to find out who did it and why.
That’s about all I can say without spoilers, except to add I required a stronger crane to suspend my disbelief as the investigation uncovered more facts.
Season 2, though, takes a situation that’s hard to believe but interesting, and blows it up in complexity and disbelief by like ten orders of magnitude. But even worse, it’s too similar to the motivations shown on season 1. In between there are twists and turns and rash actions taken decisively at great risk for the wrong reason.
Oh well.
On the plus side, Allison Janney guest stars in the last two eps of season 2.
We gotta get out of this place.
I am going to get some estimates from body shops for my car after the fender bender yesterday. Of course, I drive a sedan and got hit by an F-250 (work truck) and even at the parking lot speed he was going, damaged the hood, the bumper, the grille, and pushed back a cowl or collar or whatever the f under the hood.
Fast forward to this morning. My girlfriend calls me to tell me that as she was sitting at a traffic light, and there were sirens. She spotted them in front of her and waited. The guy behind her, you guessed it-in a work truck, apparently thought they were coming from behind, accelerated and hit her from behind.
What makes people think that it’s okay to get into giant metal boxes that can travel at high speeds and pay only half attention?
@charontwo: Is Musk still on his ketamine injection therapy for his clinical depression? Is he still micro dosing hallucinogens?
Hopefully, he will totally crash and burn before he can destroy anything else.
@Jen:
The problem with a palace coup is the Sulla Principle. You show those below you how to go about removing you.
Te best argument for loyalty in a group of thugs where each is out for himself only, is that a fight for leadership may get you a beautiful headstone.
And a couple of other things:
Funny how all of a sudden winning the popular vote counts for something. All these years I’ve been told that we are a republic, not a democracy, and that the popular vote simply doesn’t matter. But now, with Trump winning the popular vote, apparently it counts for a super-duper mandate for Trump to do whatever the hell he pleases. Odd how things change…
I think for a very long time American voters have been immune to their bad decisions in the voting booth. I’m talking about Roe vs. Wade, the filibuster, general gridlock, and veto points all over the place. This allowed voters to treat politics like a sporting event knowing that there would be very little real world consequences to their decisions. Well that ends now. The Republicans will blow up the filibuster to ban abortion, repeal the ACA, and god knows what else. They are going to bring a world of hurt on a lot of people, including people who voted them into power.
@Paine:
That’s nothing! Wait for the new super-duper-powered Federalism. Fiat executive orders will now be cheered. People will say that this was the intent of the framers all along, and how DARE we question the power of the Unitary Executive.
States rights? Pffft. that was so 2023.
I read quite a bit about generative AI, largely online articles because there’s little else.
One thing that comes up when discussing prompts for useful tasks is brainstorming ideas. This seems ridiculous because the AI has no original ideas, only those it’s been trained on. So any ideas for stories will be a rehash of existing works.
But if you keep this in mind, and are careful to avoid IP issues, you can get exposed to existing plot, character, setting, etc. ideas you might not otherwise have found. This is not very valuable, but now and then you may hit on something good.
It pays to ask for the provenance of these ideas, or you may find IP issues later. Most times it won’t cite sources on its own.
It does better if you ask for ideas for other things, like a work email, a tank you note, a recipe, a menu, etc.
BTW, the big money in generative AI won’t come from the stand alone apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, etc., but with the apps that incorporate them into something directed, delimited, and with a more specific purpose. For instance, an assistant to generate legal documents that will check real cases instead of making them up. If such a thing is possible.
Voter disinformation:
“Dea Baket“
@Kathy:
It’s never about the Big Idea. The Big Idea is what everyone focuses on. Let’s say, an FTL starship roams the galaxy meeting aliens and killing some – Star Trek. Or, a band of rebels resists a galactic empire – Star Wars. Or, an adventurous archeologist foils Nazis – Indiana Jones.
Everyone always wants to know, ‘where do you get your ideas?’ And they mean, the Big Idea. Say, kids turn into animals and fight a parasitic alien invasion – Animorphs. I have a laptop full of Big Ideas. That’s the easy part. Everyone has a Big Idea. What they don’t have is the imagination, talent and discipline to make it work.
So, sure, they can use AI to stumble on a cool idea. I can do the same thing just sitting on my balcony smoking a cigar. And I also know how to have the next ten thousand smaller ideas that make it work.
@Michael Reynolds:
True, but idea is not the same as big idea. IN particular for small things, not the overarching premise.
You must have read a novel or story, or seen a movie or TV show, where something clever catches you by surprise. Something you didn’t see coming, but if you look back on it the clues, sometimes very small and subtle, were there. Or merely something clever that you know you’d never have thought about in a million years.
This happens to me from time to time. Maybe this means I’m not very creative, or maybe this means people are different and what Alice thinks up is not something Liz would think about ever.
I sometimes do this not for big ideas, but for details that bother me ir I get stuck on. Most times what the AI comes up with is not that good or clever, but even then it may get me thinking along lines I’d overlooked or plain didn’t know about.
BTW:
Dune? 🙂
Vance has as much of a chance of running the show in the next few years as Pence had during Trump’s fist stint in the White House. The only reason Vance was added to the ticket is because it is unheard of for someone to run for President without a VP candidate also on the ticket.
Trump could have chosen some rando named Shecky Williams that he saw hanging out in front of the McDonalds he “worked” at for about 15 minutes and this guy would have the same power as Vance in a Trump Presidency, that is to say, no power.
If Vance is needed (and he might not be needed much at all if the GOP controls all levers of power), he will read some words from a script that make him sound like someone with gravitas and step forward to cast his vote to eliminate the filibuster or something like that. He is the ultimate definition of a tool.
Putin, the Saudis, Musk, Kim Jong, Xi Jinping, they all have way too many incentives to keep Trump propped up as the head of the United States. So no…even if Trump starts to say hey folks lets just listen to music and dance at the 2025 SOTU address, he will remain President until the day he dies. good luck to anyone trying succeed Trump in 2028, even if they are a hardcore member of the MAGA club. Trump is leaving the White House with his boots on.
If that ever starts to sink in with the half of the country that voted for Trump, then that might give them pause and give someone else a chance to sit in the White House. However, for at least the next 4-8 years, forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.
So, I’m still seething with anger and disappointment.
And every day is worse, and I do not believe it will abate.
I’m 64. Married. No kids. Financially more than comfortable, and adept at making the best of almost any situation. (ex: I just bought a brand new $52K Tesla for $25K because I read the fine print and acted on it.)
And at the same time, I will always be the son of immigrants that fled their home country as refugees when fascism and communism decided that Lithuania was to be the battleground.
As America never seemed to make sense to me (as is common for many people that grow up in a multi-cultural home), my pursuit in college was a dual degree: PoliSci and Sociology, minoring in Geography. Overseas study as well. And I paid, loaned, and worked my way through it, with the help of Pell Grants.
After my parents were out of the picture, I raised my sister and brother with the help of Social Security, the social safety net, and a lot of luck.
Apparently, I found myself better suited to understand the world far better than understanding America. Here, continuously, I kept seeing racism, ignorance, anger and opportunistic manipulation of the population.
While I am not a Rick Steves, I have worked and lived throughout the world, with millions and millions of air miles behind me. Because lucky by fate and birth, I found myself a white guy in high tech.
I say white guy, because that is what you see. But I grew up poor in a Ford row home in Southwest Detroit. My sympathy was always more with the folks throwing the bricks against authority than the folks that clutch their pearls and say “oh my” when they read about it in the paper. Then, the “UMC” was just a song that Bob Seger sang about, not something within reach.
The people that I found that were my peers were thieves and drug dealers. Living in the “straight world” was for others. When TSA asked me in the interview if I had ever been in jail, I answered: “Hell yeah… I grew up poor in Detroit. It didn’t matter your color, if you were poor you were going to jail.” (The younger, black TSA agent that was interviewing me first was shocked, then smiled and laughed. Yes, I have Global Entry.)
But yet… Detroit also meant Windsor. a different country 15 minutes away (that had a lower drinking age, btw.)
So, here is where I am: I have become successful because I was able to foresee where technology was headed because my ill-spent youth taught me how to survive in a deadly environment.
This wildly liberal individual found himself surrounded in corporate America by (again) folks that I could not believe existed on this planet. And yet, I was able to thread my way though all that (But I will admit, it was to a certain degree career limiting. Corporate America is suited for sociopaths. And I chose not to be that.)
I told you all that, so I could say what many people here know: We are fucked.
If there were only 1 or 2 or 3 things that would be devastating with the upcoming administration, we could likely weather it. But every day makes me realize the threads of this destruction will just impact so many aspects of what we consider our lives.
So, I’m out. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
I am tired of folks acting like everything is just fine and the Titanic won’t sink. Like the quote about bankruptcy: “It occurs first very slowly, then all at once”.
We are at the precipice of all at once.
Biden getting on TV and saying: ” The election was fair, it will be OK, and we need to stay engaged” is the band playing and deck chairs being arranged for the first-class passengers.
Our home in Colorado is set for a closing in May 2025 . 2025 is the target because it is long enough to avoid capital gains, and also register for Medicare though Colorado’s coverage (fyi: the state that you live in when you register matters as their benefits follow you the rest of your life, no matter where you live,) The money from the sale gets invested with the rest at Fidelity and managed. The Florida home will likely go in less than a years’ time. It should sell well enough while the early glow of fascism is still happening (in the reddest if the red state districts, #1.) Ironically, my investments are well suited to benefit from the oligarchy / Unitary Executive reign, but yet with global warming denialism, the prices of homes in FL have dropped. A small loss is worth the price to leave.
I am already considering a small home in New Hampshire to keep as a pied-à-terre… not because I am crazy about granite, but because homes are (relatively) cheap, and taxes are non-existent. Air connections (via Manchester, Nashua and Boston) are plentiful. That will be a mailing address more than anything, anyways.
Our vision is turning to Europe and Asia. EU because we are only a few final steps away of LT/EU citizenship… Asia because cost of living. We are going full digital nomad. There is no reason to live here fearful of my status as an “enemy of the state”, instead of living well overseas, with potential neighbors that don’t suck.
When we lived in Brazil, people asked us what we liked about it best. My wife and I agreed: lack of racism. (And, if a Brazilian wants to step in and say that there is still some but mostly it is economic segregation, sure. I agree. But the difference between the two is not by degrees but by… well, just… the scale is beyond my putting into words. If you want to see Democracy and equality in action, then the beaches in Rio will teach you much.)
So, that’s it. I am devastated, heartbroken and disillusioned somehow thinking that we had gotten past the 1960’s race riots of my youth. Not a fucking chance.
The Republican party and all the folks that voted for Trump ARE the iceberg, and their glee will cause the destruction of this country and Pax Americana will be gone.
And to the trolls that may say: Fuck you, leave, you were never American, you hate America, or any of the other “patriot” thing s that the fascists now say… die. Just die.
Immigrants like my family are what built the core of the USA. And instead, America has chosen authoritarianism and oligarchy. Good fucking luck with that.
@Kathy:
Finished Season 2 last night. The last two episodes bring it all together.
I can suspend disbelief in light of our current national situation. But mostly, I just needed distraction and it helped.
@Skookum:
While they don’t use party labels in the US side (but oddly do in the UK side), its clear the US in the show portrays a Democratic administration, with experienced and competent people in various important posts.
I was also bothered by the out of thin air reveal at the end of ep. 5, and by how Grace flips on her own employment prospects on ep. 6.
I expect I’ll watch season 3, whenever it comes out, because 1) more Allison Janney is likely, and 2) it is an arc series, not just a series with a seasonal story arc.
I also enjoy the performance of the actor who plays the foreign minister. Right now I can’t recall his name.
Mike Davis to Letitia James:
“I dare you to continue your lawfare against President Trump in his second term. Listen here, sweetheart. We’re not messing around this time and we will put your fat ass in prison for conspiracy against rights. I promise you that.”
Davis may be Trump’s attorney general pick.
@Liberal Capitalist:
We are having the conversation about going expat. I’m ready to renounce and seek citizenship in the EU. Wife not there, yet. She’s a gentile from an upper middle class family; I’m culturally Jewish, to a degree. I always admired the fact that Einstein saw the way things were going early and got out of Germany. Jews have survived this long by knowing when to GTFO.
@Michael Reynolds:
Hold of on resigning if you can get dual citizenship. It’s a lot more common these days.
Since you’re Jewish, it’s possible you may qualify for citizenship from Lithuania, Poland, or Spain, if your grandparents were born in either of those countries.
Michael Tomasky, writing for The New Republic: Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?
I don’t know what to do. I think the MSM also bears a big share of the blame—it was their outrage about the end of the Afghanistan war that led to Joe Biden’s poll numbers dropping, and they never recovered.
@Liberal Capitalist:
We’d welcome you as a neighbor! A quick caution though–homes aren’t that cheap, and taxes are almost all property taxes. Research any communities you are interested in thoroughly, and make sure that the Free Staters aren’t a presence–they make life miserable for everyone (even our local Republicans have had enough, shockingly).
But yeah, I get it. It feels wrong to pretend that it’s all okay, but I can’t let myself go too far down the path or my anxiety will take over.
Two thoughts came when I read the below Tweet:
1. We are SO fucked
2. You’re about to find out
https://x.com/ZachWLambert/status/1854915613594128444?t=A6B3o_UwCrbbhVvP0_XQKg&s=19
@Jen:
I’m afraid this may well be the best hope for the nation. I’d like to see Trump accomplish everything and bring the whole house of cards down in flames, but I’m a sociopath with a relatively short remaining life span.
At the request of Jack Smith, Judge Chutkan has vacated all the charges against Trump in the Jan. 6 case.
A few questions and a comment
1. Where did all the votes go? 14 million fewer people voted. How was this not a huge turnout election? By all accounts Harris team had a very good GOTV plan. What happened? What happened to the turnout among women?
2. The situation with young males seems very serious. If you think Donald Trump is a “real man”, your main sources of info are Joe Rogan and X, and half your life revolves around the MMA and sports betting, you are a pretty sad case. If I were a young woman and ran into a guy like that I’d run for the hills. Is this a forever thing with young males? And I wonder when young male POC who supported Trump get to experience stop and frisk how they will react?
3. Should this change how Democrats run elections at the Congress level and up? The Republicans don’t talk about policy almost at all, and if they do, they use made-up facts to support their arguments. Should the Democrats follow their lead? Should all campaigns be negative? All Republicans run negative campaigns, why not, it seems to work.
4. How will his supporters react when Trump doesn’t deliver on almost any of his major promises? Obviously, 15M people will not be deported. There is no way his tariff plan will ever be put in place. And it certainly will not replace personal income taxes. Prices on necessities will not come down, especially food. He’s not going to cut their insurance rates by 50%, and the deficit and debt will continue to increase, probably at an accelerated rate.
5. Will Vance be the day-to-day president with Trump basking in the adulation of supporters and staff? I can’t see Trump, who knows nothing about government, policy or real life getting involved in the actual job of presidenting.
6. How does any woman vote for a person who was found in a court of law to have committed sexual assault, is on record bragging about committing sexual assault, and has more than two dozen women giving detailed descriptions of how he sexually assaulted them?
@Monala:
The political pundits sometimes forget how small a percentage of the public pay any attention to them and the political horse-race addicted cable news stations. A great number of people pay zero attention to any of the noise until an election comes around. And many only tune in superficially then. They are not looking for the criticisms and the crafted arguments which pundits think are key, so much as they look for the core messaging.
The pundits tend to overthink things IMO. As I posted yesterday in response to Roger, I suspect losing the key Rust Belt states was everything, and that happened because:
It appears Trump’s message ‘The nation is messed up and only I can fix it’ beat out Harris’s ‘More of the same’ in the rust belt areas.
The Ds lost to by far the worst human being ever to run for POTUS, it’s the economy (stupid), quoting GDP figures goes nowhere with someone who is getting poorer, and that’s a change they most definitely believe in.
@CSK: She may well do that because of the DOG’s long standing policy that a sitting President cannot be prosecuted, but it appears all she has done at this point is vacate the deadlines.
@Lucysfootball:
6. Ask Phylicia Rashad, who congratulated his friend the sexual predator for getting out of prison on a technicality.
1. Heinlein’s Electoral Principle is not correct. While he’s right there’s always someone worth voting against, the enthusiasm for doing so is far lower. I speak from personal experience.
@Lucysfootball:
Need to make more negative part of the mix but still need to get message out of plans/accomplishments also.
@a country lawyer:
the article I read seems to have misled me about exactly what happened.
@a country lawyer:
What the news don’t say and what I hope Smith has the foresight to do, is whether it’s possible to keep the charges from being adjudicated, in order they can be brought up again after whatever passes for a government between now and 2029 changes.
But the lucky felon will likely die before then.
@charontwo:
Yes, some negative campaigning is to be expected. But any candidate who’s served as a DA, AG, or governor, as well as any state or federal legislator who’s had to vote conscientiously on poison pill or messaging bills, will have a record that can be misleadingly portrayed by a cynical, cash-flush PAC ad machine as having enabled a hundred different Willie Hortons in the commission of heinous crimes.
Pelosi is blaming Biden for Trump’s win, because he didn’t get out of the race earlier,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/08/nancy-pelosi-biden-democrats-election-loss
I might be biased, because Biden is probably my favorite ancient politician, but she can fuck right the fuck off. She was a big part of the circular firing squad that got Biden to drop his bid this summer.
If she felt this way, the time to say it was 2023.
There was no chance for an open primary in July. None. If it wasn’t going to be Biden at that point, the only alternative was Harris.
I don’t particularly like Harris*, but she did a far better job than I was expecting. There has been reporting that the rightward shift in counties in swing states was less than in the safe states. And if that bears out, we have to credit Harris for it as she clearly pushed against a massive headwind in the places that mattered.
I have more respect for Bernie Sanders’ claim that Democrats have abandoned the working class. (Democrats like Pelosi, I would add).
But Pelosi can fuck off. She and her ilk destroyed Biden’s campaign, and they own the consequences. It turns out that if you take the old horse out back and shoot it you don’t suddenly get a unicorn.
I wish Pelosi the best in her future endeavors, but I hope to never hear of her again.
*: Harris irks me. It’s pretty minor in the scale of things, but she irks me. Much the way Warren seems to irk everyone who isn’t me (I love Elizabeth Warren). Gavin Newsom also irks me. Maybe I just don’t like Californians.
All incoming data indicates that the key vote drivers were experience of inflation, and (a long way back) perceptions of migration.
The key vote seems to have been little influenced by ANY news media, or events, or policies, and simply treated it as a referendum on “was I hurt by economic events ?” meaning inflation.
Also relating to a post-2008 “it was them that diddit!” view of economic events.
Increasingly ingrained conspiratorial interpretations of policy.
Combined with inchoate social resentment.
But above all, the inflation effects.
Wednesday, I ran into a couple I know from the shelter. Right outside of Hy-Vee downtown. Both were pretty fucked up – both a bit drunk and meth. (Man, I hate meth.)
It was sad. Both are pretty smart. Capable. If they applied themselves, they could get off the streets. There is this weird attraction to street homelessness I’ve seen in a lot of people. I don’t get it, but it exists undeniably. Some people prefer/want the freedom away from a shelter. Some people can’t abide by the rules.
I, myself, would pick a roof and a meal and a toilet over the street any day of the week, but some don’t. Heck, just to charge up my phone.
I interacted with the woman of the couple more than the man in the last months. She could get out of the cycle, easy. He couldn’t now because of regular meth usage, probably dependency or addiction.
Bummed me out a little. I still stopped and said “hi” and did a bit of outreach. They are not bad folks, by any means. They could get out.
You helped me a lot with this post. I love the subject and I hope you continue to write excellent articles like this.