Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, September 8, 2025
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43 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).
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The Washington Post is apparently* reporting that Speaker Johnson is “backing off” that bonkers claim that Trump was an FBI informant on Epstein.
I wonder if he realized that, if true, it’d actually be WORSE for Trump. FBI informants are typically people on the inside with a deep knowledge of a situation. If Trump actually was an informant, it is an acknowledgement that he was up to his chin in Epstein’s trafficking ring.
IDK if Speaker Johnson made that up as some sort of an attempt to make Trump the good guy in this situation or not, but wow if he did boy did he mess that up.
* No direct link because my subscription has expired
@Jen: He did not make that up, it’s been part of the QAnon canon for a while apparently. That was the justification for staying latched on Trump even when he was a known Epstein associate: that he was secretly working to take down the entire pedophile ring.
Mike Johnson probably said it because he heard it “somewhere” from his wackadoo voters, so he figured it would play well to repeat it.
I despise them saying “backing off” though. Use the goddamn word. He tried to lie. He thought he could get away with it, and you’re letting him.
These people are like 4-year olds, and the media treats them like precious little snowflakes who just made an innocent little mistake when they scribbled on the walls and blamed their baby brother. They’re adults making decisions, they’re lying to your face. Call it what it is.
@ptfe: I was surprised Reverend Mike backed off the FBI thing. Surely they could count on Kash Patel at the Bureau to back up a story exonerating Trump, no matter how absurd.
I learned a valuable lesson on project management, and life, from a boss I had years ago. If you have a goal, but haven’t been able to put together a plan you have confidence in, start moving in the right direction anyway and maybe things will come together. Beats hell out of doing nothing.
Ezra Klein had a piece in yesterday’s NYT advising Dems to let the government shut down. It seems to be getting a lot of attention. Atrios approves and links to it, he also links to Jamelle Bouie saying basically the same thing in December. Atrios has de-paywalled links to both pieces.
The goal for the Democratic Party is clear. God never promised you there’d be a zero risk solution. Start moving in the right direction.
@Jen:
@ptfe:
@gVOR10:
They probably think an informant is someone who, at great personal risk, goes undercover to infiltrate a criminal organization to find evidence of criminal activity that will stand up in court.
Today I begin using my past teaching experience to volunteer tutoring adult students to bring up their math skills so they can pass their GED exam. Can’t solve the big problems but it’s something of value.
Because I lived in Florence for most of a year and never went to see David*, I am trying to hit some Vegas must-dos while my wife is out on the road peddling books. Yesterday I went to see The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere. I see the exterior of the sphere all the time and boy has it become less interesting. Those light shows must not be cheap because it’s been all re-runs.
It’s a vertiginous place, but not so that anyone would panic. The movie is still the movie, although knowing what was being done to Judy Garland scuffs it up a bit. They overdid the catchlights to a distracting degree, and more detail was distinctly unhelpful is many cases. Did you ever notice that the Tin Man is wearing a sort of brownish diaper before he’s polished up at Emerald City? Somehow the Flying Monkeys seemed less frightening, rather than more. And when you blow things up to yuuuuge you start to notice how one of the Lollypop League had to watch the feet of his fellow Munchkins when he danced, and how many of the Munchkins are basically just chatting to each other.
The tornado was definitely impressive. They did a good job obscuring the point where the matte paintings began. They did a lot of work filling in detail of the Kansas countryside, for example. All the extra effects – the seat haptics, the blowing leaves and the ‘snow’ were unnecessary and just took me out of the movie as I wondered how they cleaned it up. They fly some mannequins dressed as flying monkeys around, but let’s just say this was not Cirque de Soleil.
I left before it was over – I know how it comes out and I didn’t want to fight the crowds. Apparently there was a wizard show afterward to justify the $268 price, and at least a dozen Sphere employees told me about it as I walked off into the Nevada sunshine and realized I wasn’t quite sure where I parked and if I didn’t figure it out pretty quick, the Nevada sunshine was gonna kill me.
In all, worth it? No, of course not. In that way it is quintessentially Vegas – flashy, loud, shiny and a waste of money. Everyone should do Vegas once. But if you keep coming back, there may be something wrong with you. I live here. So, make of that what you will.
*Went back as tourists and saw David. Good-looking guy, excellent hands, very nice ass, tiny uncircumcised penis – not at all the cut BDE one might expect of a king.
Should anyone need it, here’s yet another argument for vaccines:
The vaccines do what the innate and adaptive immune system attempt to do upon infection. develop long-term memory B and T cells that can fight off the pathogen.
The difference is vaccines use an agent that does not cause disease*, but only activates the parts of the immune system that will make the long term memory cells in question. They do this by means of dead pathogens, attenuated pathogens**, parts of pathogens, or, in the more advanced vaccine technologies, mRNA that makes your cells create the pathogen parts in sufficient quantities.
Whereas an active pathogen will attack cells, grow inside you, secrete toxins, and even rewrite the genetic code of infected cells (in the case of retroviruses).
A vaccine sets all the immune system in motion, but then stops. Pathogens don’t stop. They keep on wreaking havoc, while massive body resources are dedicated to fight them off.
*The first vaccine, against smallpox, was an actual mild disease, cowpox. This is not used any longer.
** An issue with attenuated pathogens, like the ones used in the Sabin polio oral vaccine, is that they can still reproduce, albeit at a slower rate. Usually they won’t cause disease in the person vaccinated, but they can change into a more active form that can infect other people. Look up vaccine derived poliovirus. Of course, one strategy to deal with this is to vaccinate everyone. Still, the use of attenuated pathogens has largely fallen out of favor, even before the mRNA and virus vector vaccines came along.
@gVOR10:
I agree, assuming we know what direction we’re moving in. Trump’s affinity for billionaires gives us an opening to start to link the eat-the-rich populism of the Left with the tear-it-all-down populism of the Right. That feels like the right direction to me.
I think David Brooks’ criticism that we on the Left have created an educational gated community that walls us in as much as it locks them out has some merit. The one-size-fits-all Democratic fixation on education as a cure-all treats a whole lot of people as irrelevant. Now, with the advent of AI, it’s not just the muscle workers being replaced. ‘We’ should be as unhappy with the system as they are. It’s one thing to care about ‘the plight’ of some other group, that’s basic liberalism, but when it’s your own plight there’s a lot more energy behind it.
We should shine a light on corruption. On Trump and his billionaire buddies lining their pockets while, say, what does a dozen eggs cost? Left and Right can share a ‘they’. They are the corrupt billionaires and their lackeys.
@Michael Reynolds: We’re going to go see that in early October. My sister twisted my arm to do it. I calculated that it would be pretty much as you describe: flashy, loud, shiny and a waste of money.
AND I adore the movie. So yeah, I’ll go see the spectacle. I don’t think I will see any detail like you mentioned for the first time.
Did you know that Salman Rushdie wrote a small book on the subject of “The Wizard of Oz”? I have it, I have read it.
The movie is a miracle that it is any good at all. Victor Fleming is probably the greatest fixer in all of Hollywood history.
It has a very vital narrative directness. The pacing is wonderful, there’s nothing there that doesn’t need to be there.
@Michael Reynolds: The first time I saw Wizard of Oz in the theater was as a young adult at Baltimore’s Senator Theatre in 1997. I’d watched the VHS recording of a TV airing over and over again as a kid, but on the big screen I noticed more than a few things I hadn’t noticed before.
One was Billie Burke’s age. She was 54 at the time, nearly two decades older than the supposedly “old and ugly” Margaret Hamilton. (Auntie Em’s line, “For 23 years I’ve been dying to tell you what I thought of you,” would suggest she’d hated Miss Gulch since Gulch was 13, if you go by Hamilton’s actual age at the time of filming.) And it wasn’t like today where aging actresses get a ton of plastic surgery; all they had to conceal Burke’s age was makeup, and in closeup shots with her face enlarged on the big screen, it was pretty obvious what they tried to hide.
The production history of the film is a topic I’ve found endlessly fascinating. Some of it is shrouded in urban legend (no, the munchkin actors weren’t having orgies; no, there wasn’t a guy who hanged himself who you can see in the background in one scene), but it was definitely a mess, even putting aside the abuse of Garland (which was a problem plaguing the treatment of many child stars at the time). It went through around four directors, and the credited one Victor Fleming only filmed the Kansas and Munchkinland scenes before walking away to do Gone with the Wind. Then there’s the business with the original Tin Man actor Buddy Ebsen going ill from the face-paint, and his replacement Jack Haley not being told why Ebsen left (I guess Ebsen had the last laugh given that he went on to outlive the entire main cast). Then there’s Margaret Hamilton getting seriously burnt on set; the first Toto needing to be replaced after an actor stepped on him; and on and on.
Whenever a big-budget movie proves a spectacular failure, you almost always find that it had a troubled production. But what about the troubled productions for films that went on to great success? That may be part of the reason why studios are reluctant to pull the plug even when things appear to be going downhill.
@gVOR10:
The right direction is for the Democratic Party to rebrand itself as the shutdown party? I’m not so sure.
Has Ezra Klein ever even been elected dog catcher?
Police Unions — the only union with guns, and from which the anti-labor crowd receives unwaivering political support — despite being organized labor.
Trump administration’s cancelation of protection for Kamala Harris was political. The police union gives away its own political motive with its snark. Biden’s original extension of protection was not political given the violent actions and rhetoric coming out of the Right. And California extending protection is perhaps 50/50, political to practical. After all it was in California that Pelosi’s husband was beaten with a hammer. So sure, give Harris a rotating shift of a couple officers for six extra months until the national attention span is on to the next big thing.
But the LA Police Protective League (union), hasn’t been voicing concerns over the misapplied resources of the Marines and the National Guard units pointlessly deployed to the area as Trumpian theater.
Maybe the LA police union could sponsor a go-fund-me for themselves, to boost their ranks given the strain a small temporary detail of officers for the VP would put on their operations.
@Rob1:
Yeah, it’s no coincidence that as Guv of WI Scott Walker wanted to get rid of all the public sector unions except the cops.
The appeals court has overruled Trump’s contention that he can do whatever he wants because he’s prez.
That being the case, he STILL owes E. Jean Carroll 83 million bucks.
The Miami Dolphins lost to Indianapolis 33-8 yesterday. Frankly the score doesn’t do justice to how Miami played yesterday.
They had a penalty called on them for having 12 people in the huddle
Tua, Miami’s quarterback, called a time out before the team attempted a two point conversion.
Tua passed for 104 yards plus threw two interceptions. One INT was a 5-10 yard overthrow and the other a pass thrown right at a Colts player. You can’t thread a needle when the hole in the needle is blocked.
Oh and Indianapolis had possession of the football seven times and came away with points on every occasion. Miami did make the Colts punt once but a Dolphin player ran into the kicker giving Indy a first down.
I expected Miami to go 7-10 this year and head coach Mike McDaniel to be fired either during the season or at the end of that. Right now my prognostication is looking way too optimistic.
Look on the bright side- The Florida Panthers hockey team’s regular season is less than 5 weeks away.
The Guardian says Supreme Court has ruled in favor of racial profiling by ICE officers. 6-3, as you would expect.
Specifically, the Court granted the administrations request for a hold on a federal judge’s order barring it. I’m not sure whether this is a ruling on the merits or a “you can violate constitutional rights for a little while, as a treat, while we take forever to rule on the merits”
The next Democrat in the White House is going to have to deal with this court.
@Michael Reynolds: “I think David Brooks’ criticism that we on the Left have created an educational gated community that walls us in as much as it locks them out has some merit. ”
First, when you are agreeing with Brook, check again.
Second, Brooks has been a NYT pundit posting from NYT parties forever. I’ve never seen a reason to trust him.
@Gustopher: seems to me that if the court has so much work that it has to rule like this repeatedly, not to mention taking a long break every summer, not to mention needing to pick and choose cases rather than hearing every one with merit, that we should give them some relief by expanding the court
@Barry_D:
I take ideas as they come. Someone says something interesting to me, I look at it, think about it, and decide whether the idea qua idea has validity. I have read the Bible cover to cover – it’s the single biggest reason I’m an atheist – but there were still some pretty good ideas in there.
@Erik:
It would be a kindness. 12 justices seems like a good number.
ETA 13 if we can get past the triskaidekaphobia.
@Michael Reynolds: “I agree, assuming we know what direction we’re moving in.”
I think different people can choose their own direction and see who reaches the goal first. Zoran Mamdani and Abigail Spanberger are taking different paths to the same destination. It may be that there are many good ways of getting there, and that the one taken by a candidate for mayor of New York should be different than that taken by, say, a Democrat running for Joni Ernst’s seat…
@Bill Jempty:
The Dolphins have never quite recovered from the loss of Don Shula. There was the one season when they tried out the wildcat offense. It was loads of fun, and they even flummoxed Bellichick. But eventually the other teams adapted and copied it, and then the jig was up.
Maybe they should do as the Browns did: move the team elsewhere, change the name, and let the successor team have the old name and history and curse. No one would think of the Baltimore Ravens as the Browns. I hear Oakland lost their team again. The Oakland Orcas sounds good.
The Steelers, meantime, disappointed me by beating the Jets (big whoop!), and then just barely. I’ll keep my ill-wishing on the team I’ve followed since the 70s, until the antivaxxer quits, gets benched, or dies.
@Michael Reynolds: if we are really going to do some serious renovation, how about 3 from each circuit court of appeals randomly selected so one is replaced every couple of years and returns to the circuit bench. Maybe every 4 years so each one serves 12 years on USSC? Someone dies or retires, everyone with a rotation date later than the vacancy moves up and rotates earlier and the new one starts the longest remaining term. I’m not wedded to those ideas, especially since I’m not an expert, but seems like something along those lines would work
@gVOR10:
Dem leaders–and a fair amount of dem voters–have decided that the best way to regain power is to show our soft lil’ white tummies for the next few years to avoid any attacks, and hope that all the voters whose children are being put in danger from hospital closures or vaccine bans, and whose livelihoods are being shattered by Trump’s economy, decide the party with the oh so soft lil unblemished tummies would be better to hold the reins of power for a bit. A not insubstantial number of dem supporters really crave the pain that these voters will go through. Sure, statistically, tens of millions of people who voted against Trump will also be hurt, but that’s just tough for them. What’s important is a lot of Trump voters’ will also see their newborn die because their rural hospital closed, and won’t that shadenfreude be delicious.
And it might work. We live in a binary system after all. The issue with empowering that type of leadership is they’re going to go right on turning over and showing off their chubby lil bellies even when they are in power. When rewarded, the cowardly and lazy tend to stay that way.
More articles from the likes of Klein are needed, but also what’s needed are everyday voters to call those Dems in office and give them hell until they give Trump hell. And if they aren’t up for the fight at hand, election season starts in 8 weeks. Make it clear you’ll support someone in the primary who is up for the fi
@Michael Reynolds: What you’re describing at the Sphere seems a common modern phenomenon. It can be described as Late Stage Capitalism, Two-Tier Economy, or, more commonly, the Enshitification of everything.
I was reminded that I planned to reply by coming across a commenter, Richard_thunderbay, at Eschaton,
Your comment also called to mind a couple of recent stories. NYT (de-paywalled) on Disney’s proliferation of extra cost line-skipping and other luxury options making it difficult for the average family to enjoy the parks. The other from the Guardian on the tennis U.S. open becoming Coachella.
I recall seeing reference to econ papers on whether it’s possible to run an economy largely on luxury items. They hated the idea, but said it’s possible to run a wealthy/serf economy.
@gVOR10: “Ezra Klein had a piece in yesterday’s NYT advising Dems to let the government shut down.”
@DK: “The right direction is for the Democratic Party to rebrand itself as the shutdown party? I’m not so sure.”
There’s plenty for congressional Democrats to talk about, but they shouldn’t suggest shutting down the government or respond to anything in a way that can be interpreted as favoring a government shutdown. Ezra Klein may be right, but I’d hope that agreement with his advice among Democrats will remain unspoken. Let them just show a little discipline for the next 22 days, so when the government does shut down, the party in power can be properly branded as the shutdown party.
@gVOR10:
I favor one week continuing resolutions, over and over. I don’t trust this administration to live up to their end of any deal without an imminent stick/carrot, and I’d like the Senate to be completely bogged down. At a minimum the cost for Republicans has to be takin the troops out of American cities, and the masked thugs on the streets identifying themselves.
Failing that, shut it all down.
Republicans have a trifecta — they can pass a budget on their own, if they stick together, and are willing to kill the filibuster.
@Michael Reynolds:
A undercover agent in a book of mine
A question posed to the agent- Do you know the way to San Jose?
The agent- Just follow the yellow brick road
Reply back- We could end up wasting away in Margaritaville.
Before that recognition code, they were asked if they ever picked their feet in Poughkeepsie.
@wr:
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on.
I’m up to go Hunger Games on candidate selection, even if it did mean more royalties for Suzanne Collins. I’d be more interested in contributing if it meant I could gift my candidate a bayonet.
@gVOR10:
It makes perfect logical sense that if money has been moving from the bottom to the top for the past 45+ years, the people with more money to spend once they’ve covered necessities will spend more money. Especially when many down below can just about cover necessities.
All Money to the Oligarchs!
I’ve been really enjoying the show Alien: Earth. It’s in the Alien franchise, and there is at least one of the traditional xenomorphs that we know and love, and a capitalist dystopia, but the breakout character has to be the eyeball monster — an eyeball with multiple irises and pupils, on tentacles like a little octopus. I think her name needs to be Iris. She’s adorable.
Her lifestyle borrows a bit from the tongue replacing isopod, a real animal which is exactly as terrifying as you think.
Also, I think she might be a Disney Princess, as it’s on Hulu, which is owned by Disney.
@Eusebio:
Might be right. Might be wrong. Elected Dems shouldn’t ignore thoughtful advice. But why should they privilege the vibes of folks who’ve never run/won campaigns over their own instincts? The unearned confidence from these pundits is perplexing.
Per usual, the talking heads have lockstep conventional wisdom: Dems don’t have a spine, must deploy shut down blackmail to show how hard they’re fighting and force Trump into concessions. Naturally these marching orders are swallowed whole by those who posit themselves “independent thinkers” yet never meet a Substack bro narrative they won’t parrot.
There are problems in this overconfident groupthink.
One, Republicans have a brand problem too likely would’ve have won bigger in 2016 and 2024 — while consistently underperforming in midterms — if not so nutty. Part of that crazy is conservatives’ affinity for shutdowns, which the public hates. Dems have enough brand issues; being the party that opposes shutdowns isn’t one of them. The argument for giving up that advantage should be more compelling than “dO sOmEtHinG!!11!!”
Relatedly, Two, Republicans love shutdowns because they hate government. The public hates shutdowns because we need government. Previously, Republicans backed down thanks to public anger directed at them. A shuttered government blamed on Democrats? This is Christmas for MAGA. In such a scenario why would a more-nilihistic-than-ever right make concessions to reopen government?
Relatedly, Three, shutdowns are immoral and hurt the poor. Lost in all the recent din about Democratic elite walls or whatever is this factoid: the very poorest households, those under $30k yearly, supported Hillary, Biden, and Harris over Trump per exit polling. Republicans may be the party the working class now, but Democrats are still the party of the poor.
It’s easy for affluent libs like Klein to push for shutdowns for the same reason it’s easy for purity politics leftists to “punish Dems” by withholding votes: they’re not the ones most harmed by this stuff. Nor are Democrat or Republican officials. It’s folks under the poverty line, blacks, Alphabet People, single women etc. who get punished — and who noncoincodently put aside reservations to consistently vote blue while others play games.
A government shutdown in the Project 2025 era is not just a game to feed media desire for horserace drama. With MAGA in charge, it’s serious business with potential consequences more castrophic than an already intolerable status quo. Given that, Dems’ strategy here will be a suboptimal Sophie’s Choice. So it should be carefully considered. Not crafted for the peanut gallery’s love of glib, performative action. Or to put on a “see how hard we’re fighting” show for us small-donor class liberals who can afford healthcare and housing either way.
@Rob1:
Does anyone think that these Police Union Reps would projectile vomit the same rhetoric if they were assigned to protect a failed MAGA presidential candidate?
Yeah, no. I guarantee you that most police and fire departments across the country – in both blue and red states – run very conservative.
@Barry_D: As a guy who grew up in a small town, and has lots of relatives in “flyover” states, I would submit that David Brooks, along with many of my fellow traveling liberals don’t really understand these people at all. There is a significant tone of “othering” I hear all the time.
Of course, Trump has magnified that, turned it into “they hate you”. Well, we are very angry that they supported Trump, that’s for sure. And yeah, they do it too. I can’t tell you how often I hear things like, “there’s so much crime in cities” and “Oh, I’m so sorry for you having to live in California”. I just smile and say I’m not sorry I like it, and I like them and where they live, too.
This plays well. It also shuts them up.
The affinity for “othering” is a human characteristic that is easy to exploit. I have that tendency, I observe myself going that way all the time. And yet, it usually isn’t a good road to take.
@al Ameda: The performative part of this is far more objectionable than the policy decision. Everybody makes budget decisions. This kind of “in your face” rhetoric is what counts as “authentic” these days.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yeah. No thanks.
@Bill Jempty: The Phins looked awful.
I would not be shocked if McDaniel is fired during the season.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m all in for this.
It happened again. The parking attendant left the gear in reverse, and now the car won’t start.
Of course it had to happen after everyone left. I’m waiting for the insurance roadside assistance. They said 45 minutes…
@Jay L. Gischer:
There’s no doubt.
As far I’m concerned the ‘budget decision’ here is too-small fig leaf, and barely so.
@Kathy:
The good news is it wasn’t 45 minutes.
@Michael Reynolds:
Do you really want Trump to ram 3-4 more lackeys onto HIS greatest supreme court evah?
I mean, c’mon, you know the GQP would rubberstamp the hacks he’d insist on having in about four cocaine heartbeats.
H/t to Cracker in absentia.