Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, September 14, 2025
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17 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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BlueSky.
Democrat: Trump could show he’s ‘serious about stopping political violence’ by ‘rescinding’ Jan. 6 pardons (The Hill)
Seth Moulton for president.
@JohnSF:..Canned Heat…
On the Road Again was my anthem in early January 1971 when I hitchhiked from California to Saint Louis along what was left of US Route 66. I took the silver bird to San Francisco in December ’70 to visit friends in Berkeley. It was my first west coast trip. Spent New Year’s Eve at a party in a bar on Monterey Bay. I had the return plane fare in my pocket, I wanted to see how far my thumb would take me. I figured if I got hung up I could find a bus station. Got two good rides and made it back to Saint Louis in three days.
Fox News’ host Brian Kilmeade says ‘just kill ‘em’ during discussion about mentally ill homeless people.
If this is such a good idea what’s stopping Badass Brian Killmeade from carrying out these executions himself?
A) The Rule of Law?
B) He is waiting for orders from Jesus?
C) He is a coward?
A good NYT piece on Democrats and the Working Class:
There follows a history lesson going back to Vietnam and the hard hat riots. I keep bringing up 1968 here because, as the piece suggests, that was a turning point. Civil Rights had started the partisan migration ball rolling and by bad timing Vietnam and Civil Rights overlapped. Long story short we had blue-collar workers who were patriotic and maybe a little racist, vs. college kids who were not conventionally patriotic and at least pretending to be anti-racist.
The college crowd were also tone deaf. When I started seeing Vietcong flags at protests, and when Jane Fonda draped herself across a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, I had the same sinking feeling as I’ve had for the last decade.
At the root of the current madness is privilege. Not White privilege, smart privilege. and of course, class. ie: a college degree. The leaders of the anti-war movement were almost to a man – and they were men – from well off families which had managed to afford college. Some, like Rennie Davis and David Dellinger came from real money. And these bright college kids with their Vietnam war student deferments, decided the best way to proceed was to attack and politically cripple Hubert Humphrey who was a hero of Civil Rights and well-known to want an end to the war. We had college kids with deferments raging against blue collar guys who’d been to war themselves, and had sons in Da Nang. So we got Nixon, and the war went on, and indeed expanded and became one of the major factors in the Killing Fields genocide.
People here at OTB get angry at me for harping on mistakes we’ve made. Why don’t I drop it? Because I have seen this movie before. After the catastrophic defeat in 1968, the young and privileged embraced George McGovern. McGovern was not a child of privilege. His degree came via the GI Bill after he flew 35 missions* over Nazi Germany in a B-24. And during his campaign against Nixon, we heard nothing about that. Because brave warrior from the midwest was not the brand the college kids could embrace.
So, straight out of getting narrowly beat in 1968, Democrats learned nothing, and four years later, pushing the same worn-out rhetoric, were annihilated. Democrats did not get back in the White House until Jimmy Carter, who was a deeply religious, politically moderate peanut farmer, Annapolis graduate and Naval officer involved in nuclear submarine development. And finally Democrats figured out that maybe, just maybe, having been Navy might be something we could talk about. We could even mention religion.
We are three years out from what we hope will be the next presidential election. I want Democrats to look at our history and learn, before it is too damn late. I see people here scoffing at the idea that pronouns and toxic masculinity etc. were important in Trump’s victories. Well, they’re wrong. How you talk to people matters. People don’t forget their bruised egos. Grown-up people don’t like being talked down to**, instructed by children of privilege who will shame them if they fail to learn the ‘lesson’ instantly.
We should not back down on a single core issue, but we should learn to reframe them, adjust some of the frills, and de-emphasize everything that a graduate of an elite university thinks is important. People are rattled by major social change, by their own worsening economic outlook, and by Covid. If, when we talk to those people we say, “I hear what you’re saying, but the preferred term is LatinX,” we will lose again. And this time may be the final loss.
It doesn’t matter that pronouns and wokeness and DEI shouldn’t bother people, it does. We cannot be listening while we are instructing. We need to stop trying to educate, and start trying to serve.
*There will be readers who see this and shrug, but the readers who know anything about the air war may have a sharp intake of breath, because surviving 35 missions is pretty close to a miracle.
** Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I was a dismissive, smart-ass atheist provocateur before it was cool. Along came social media and suddenly everyone sounded like me. That was not a good thing.
@Michael Reynolds:
Thirty five is incredible.
George H.W. Bush flew 58 combat missions…I remember reading that in “What it Takes – The Way to the White House” and was stunned. IIRC, at the time, he was also the youngest Naval aviator to receive his wings.
@Michael Reynolds:
Historically, Upper Middle Class intelligentsia capture is a syndrome many parties on the left seem prone to fall prey to, unfortunately.
The British Labour Party avoided that for a long time, largely because it was actually created, funded, and in large part run, by the trade unions.
Who were generally most interested in pragmatic outcomes in terms of votes and policies.
The combination of decline of union membership, and related the unions becoming increasingly prone to left-capture, and the change in Labour Party rules set the stage for first Benn, then Corbyn.
Both were nearly fatal for the Labour Party.
But then, activist capture can be dangerous for other parties as well: see the current problems of the UK Conservatives.
While the US Republicans are currently combining activist capture with electoral success, but at the expense of governmental incompetence.
@Michael Reynolds:
My father got to over 30 bomber missions, iirc, but that was in the somewhat less hellish circumstances of the Burma theatre.
Of his friends who served in Bomber Command in Europe, he reckoned only about half of them survived.
@Michael Reynolds:
Who is we? Which Democratic candidate ran on stuff like this? Not Kamala Harris.
What people? Not the 92% of black women, 85% of LGBT voters, and 78% of black men who voted for Harris over the Epstein-bestie pedo. And without whose loyalty “we” cannot come close to even sniffing election wins.
Wokeness and DEI are good things. "Woke" is a word invented by black youth for our own empowerment, before racists tried to steal it and turn it into a pejorative. We will not allow it. And fake allies who want to throw in the towel and wave the white flag rather than push back on bigots and say, "No, we won't let you do this" are pathetic cowards.
Their strategy is also wrong. Because American voters respect strength, not the lily-livered retreat and weakness that has Democrats' brand in the toilet.
Good luck to any Dem expecting to win by projecting that he/she lacks the guts and toughness to stand their ground and defend diversity and inclusion as good. One who can’t do that bare minimum does not have what it takes to lead democracy to victory over Putinism.
“My enemies are united in hatred of me. And I welcome their hatred.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Where’s our FDR? Time will tell. But it’s not some lame, limp-wristed Vichy Dem who would go to S. Carolina and tell our most loyal bloc “bUt pEoPLe aRe bOtHeReD bY dEi aNd wOkEneSs” while a pedophile is crashing the economy with tarriffs and gulaging migrant workers without due process.
Just turned up a little detail most commentary has missed, but I doubt Moscow did.
The French aircraft deployed to Poland on Friday were FAS assets: that is, nuclear strike mission capable.
Notes from rehab:
I’ve been having the most bizarre dreams. Last night’s involved a group consisting of me, Michael Reynolds, Brooke Shields, and my physical therapist traveling around the country making miniature white toilets to sell as ornaments. (We did pretty well.) When we got to San Francisco, we got in kind of trouble. I don’t know what, because the dream ended there.
@CSK: Wish I had had a seat to watch that dream.
@CSK:
“If your’re going to San Francisco, don’t try to sell a mini-toilet there …”
That Reynolds guy is just a trouble magnet; I’ve always said so.
I do hope Brooke Shields and the therapist made a sucessful getaway from the scene of the crime.
🙂
@DAllenABQ:
The late Martin Mull once said he wished he could sell tickets to his dreams.
Meanwhile, in Russia: from a fifth to a quarter of Russian refinery capacity is now inoperative due to UAF strikes.
Which have likely done serious damage to catalytic cracking units that are rather hard to repair.
Russia continues to assume “psychological warfare” by random civilian bombardment will somehow lead to Ukrainain capitulation.
While the UAF seem more inclined to work against actual military and economic targets.
Call me naive, but I suspect the Ukrainian methodolgy is more likely to have effective outcomes.
@CSK: What do they have you on? I took oxycodone for my broken arm one time and for about half an hour Rush Limbaugh made sense. Scared me straight, or at least down to the industrial strength Tylenol.
Does anyone else remember the good ol’ days when a governor would have said things like “let’s allow the professional investigators to do their jobs,” rather than going on the Sunday shows and spitballing motives, to include “the shooter’s transitioning partner” (who may well have just been a landlord/roommate) and other assorted nonsense?
@gVOR10:
Super-strength Tylenol every four hours and Oxy whenever I want it.
Jeebus, I hope I don’t start sounding like Sarah Palin or MTG.