Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Monday, December 22, 2025
·
10 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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.
********************@
Ezra Klein:
When Trump won I had a similar thought: we still own the culture. They can nibble at the edges, but they won’t shape the culture of the near future for one simple reason: they have no talent. Conservatives are incapable of imagination. Paranoia, yes. But creative imagination in literature, TV, movies, music, dance, art, comedy? No. It’s why their only cultural ideas going forward are, ‘more Bible,’ and ‘more Nazis.’
How are the universities that caved to Trump looking now? How about the law firms? How’s cowardly, submissive Target look vis a vis brave and principled Costco? How’s Elon’s business looking? How are sales at the degraded Kennedy Center? Bill Burr, one of the comics who shamefully served Mohammed Bin Salman admits his podcast numbers dried up. Kimmel is still on the air and has 22 million subs on YouTube. The South Park boys are printing money. The Ellisons can use Paramount to take over Warner Discovery, but when they need to create movies and TV who are they coming back to? Taylor Sheridan can only stretch so far.
They can make money, but we still shape the culture. And in 2026 I believe it will be clear to all that MAGA is a dying political and cultural force.
I have to do it, there’s no avoiding it, I have to use the word zeitgeist. The spirit of the age will still be liberal.
Heather Cox Richardson on JD Vance neo-Confederate speech yesterday at Turning Point.
She goes on to give us a more detailed history lesson. Actual history is always good to read and comprehend.
@Scott: BTW, Vance is the type of immigrant trash that moved North from Kentucky and West Virginia bringing their foreign ways and proceeded to ruin Ohio. They are called briars.
Well, this Christmas is the first we will spend alone. Mr becca is home from the hospital, but weak as a kitten and uncomfortable. Our SIL is having his bionic knee replaced today. This will be his third. He lost bone to cancer at 19 and his mother really wanted him to keep the leg, which turns out not to be the best decision. He’s thinking amputation if it breaks again.
So both guys are pretty immobilized. It seems everything that could go wrong did just that. Plus, the temperature is in the seventies and decidedly unChristmassy. I did manage to get a tree up, but that’s about it. Just not feeling it.
Bummer.
On the bright side, maga is imploding and hopefully continues to do so. Fingers crossed!
@becca: I hope you can still have a little Merry in your Christmas. Even more, I hope Santa and the elves bring easier days ahead.
@Michael Reynolds:
Whether MAGA remains a visible political entity, or possibly evolves to something even more vile, the ash of MAGA’s bonfires is smudged all over Americas values and institutions. Guardrails have been removed. Fortunes enhanced. Power redistributed. There is no getting past this with thoughts of restoration. It was a smash and grab operation.
Got lots of takers for the lottery. At 120pesos per person, around $6 USD, it occurs to me the thing to do is collect everyone’s money and not buy any tickets. that way I’m assured a very modest win 🙂
I’m not that kind of person. But I like to imagine what it would take to fool everyone. it’s not easy. they’ll want to see the ticket(s) and the number(s). they may check the results and see either a prize or a refund*. I figure I could do it, but it would be too much trouble for the payoff. and it’s still not something I’d do.
*The lottery is complicated. I can get into details if I find some time. TL;DR: there are like hundreds of different prizes. And any number ending with the last number of the winning ticket can be exchanged for another ticket in the next drawing. Refund is not a good translation, but it’s close enough. it means you didn’t win but also didn’t lose.
And he thinks he’s Presidential material???
Vance tries to weather the MAGA storm at Turning Point
Vance, you Orwellian gasbag, that is precisely how Trump & Co built his political coalition, with endless purity tests and cancelling — straining and distilling the once Republican party down to the pure excrement of angry anti-social bigots it has become today.
–
Again Vance, with the baldfaced lies: the people who support lax gun control, reject mental health care spending, and generated a firestorm of antipathy toward transgenderism and LGBTQ, are directly responsible for engendering the conditions that led to Charlie Kirk’s killing. And in that sense Kirk’s bigotry and distortion of theology contributed to the zeitgeist. Kirk culture warriors can paper over the reality in their tirades to incite more violence, but the facts remain; Kirk’s death is in no small part on them. Unintended consequences, that they will now employ for effect.
Vance has no shame or conscience. He is a bought-for candidate, who without Thiel’s money rescue, would be nowhere. Another big American embarrassment. Just like Trump.
@Rob1:
If (and I’ll admit an implausible if) the R’s rally around Reaganism, JD will be the first to claim that he’s the true heir of St. Ronny and all those things he said as the felon’s VP, fake news. I really hope a couple of challengers go after the R nomination in 28, the attack ads coming from w/in the tent will be devastating.
Which raises a theoretical question. Granted we’d like to see the R’s shrivel and die, but we know that won’t happen. Which current R politician, as the R candidate, drag the party back to some semblance of what it was under Reagan and the Bushes. Yes I know they were all horrible, but all are preferable to what is there now.
This is scary, but off the top of my head, it might be Ted Cruz.
This is strange and concerning.
Acting CISA director failed a polygraph. Career staff are now under investigation.