Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Thursday, August 22, 2024
·
67 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 retired Professor 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.
Ummmmm… Yeah. That’s what I said.
https://x.com/daveweigel/status/1826378398220124231
https://x.com/daveweigel/status/1826378702856618071
@charontwo: While I don’t know about these particular parties, I do recall my days of being active in NY state politics where there were several “parties” that were basically grifts. They had names that appealed to those who wanted to send a message toeither the Republican or Democratic Party by voting for someone else. The “American Conservative Party” or the “National Labor Party” (not the actual names, it’s been too long for me to remember) would give their ballot line to the R or D candidate in exchange for “campaign funds”, which I assume went to the consultants that ran the party.
Can I pat myself on the back for being prescient? The Democrats are campaigning on FREEDOM. Here are two letters to the editor I wrote sent back in 2022:
and
I love it when I’m right. LOL.
Tim Walz is a really damn good speaker.
Looks like RFK is going to throw his support to Trump after all. Does anyone have a theory of the case for him running in the first place? Was this always meant to be a Republican Rat F**k and it turned on them when the figured out he was taking more from Trump then “Biden now Harris”? Or was it some kind of vanity thing for a couple of screws loose guy with a famous name? Maybe something else? Maybe Mariann Williamson will help out by throwing her support, such that it is, to Trump as well?
Are the Libertarians putting up a candidate as well this year? That is typically a spot for disaffected Republicans to run a vanity campaign.
@Rick DeMent: My sense is that RFK is a genuine nutcase, but many of the people who were promoting and funding his campaign were Trumpies who were deliberately hoping he would siphon votes from Biden, and then Harris. After it became clear he was taking more votes from Trump, they pulled back.
The Libertarian nominee this year is Chase Oliver, and the most I will say about him is that you should never trust a man with a first and last name in the wrong place.
@Kylopod:
You should send that bit to John Oliver. I’d love to see what he’d do with it.
I wonder whether the Felon has been privately demanding a convention do over, one that will be better than the Democrats’. Manypeoplesaythat it was unfair he didn’t have a chance to attack Harris in prime time.
as to Junior, I said here before he found out his name is bigger than he is. But that would still impress a small man, like that weirdo with the orange makeup and bad comb over whose name escapes me.
@Kathy: It has occurred to me that Trump might demand a second convention.
When Obama first ran for Senate in 2004, I presume he never complained about the Republicans pushing out their original nominee (who had a sex scandal) and replacing him with Alan Keyes.
@Rick DeMent:
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Several Republican “pundits” (I guess), such as Ann Coulter, Charlie Kirk, and Laura Loomer, are trying to co-opt the Democrats’ “weird” insult. The problem is, they’re labeling things as weird that most people think are perfectly normal or even sweet. They’ve called “weird” things like Jill Biden calling Beau Biden “our son,” Doug Emhoff standing with his arm around his daughter’s shoulder, and Tim Walz’s neurodivergent teenage son Gus crying and proudly shouting, “That’s my dad!” during his father’s speech. As someone said, it’s like they’re telling on themselves. They have no idea what normal love looks like between parents and children. The way they’ve attacked stepfamilies and adoptive families this election cycle has also been a tell, that they’re lying when they say that such families are alternatives to abortion.
@Kathy: I doubt he has the money for a convention do-over.
@Monala: I can’t figure out if Ann Coulter brought up that jibe because she really thinks it will get any traction, or if she’s so desperate for the limelight that she’ll say anything to get it back on her again, no matter how mean-spirited it makes her look.
(Ann, there’s a heck of a lot of neurodivergent people in the U.S. and you just took a dump on all of them.)
@OzarkHillbilly: what an awful story. I hope the family crushes them.
@Monala:
If he really wants it, he can raid the RNC treasury. If that’s not enough, he can promise the Moon, the stars, and the Sun* to his donors. And if that fails, he’ll just stiff all vendors and venues.
It would be such a stupid, self-destructive move, that even the Weirdo in chief should know not to do it. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want it. But we should be able to tell one way or another, as he’ll whine and whine about it if he does.
*Yes, that’s from a John Lennon song. An appropriately titled one, IMO.
@Monala: You know, we like to say that Trump has no shame, but now I suspect he has loads of it waiting in the wings for him.
I just spent last Saturday at a family picnic, catching up with my cousins who live all over the NorthWest now. (ND, SD, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and California. Maybe there’s somebody from Oregon I missed. We had one neurodivergent person there (one other that’s maybe just been harmed by staying home from school for a year). He participated. We talked. I was glad he was there.
Would Trump ever attend such a thing? Would he mock such a person, think my cousin (twice removed) was shameful?
@Monala: @Grumpy Realist: Much of right-wing propaganda over the past half-century or so has centered on depicting the left as flaky. It’s a stereotype they’ve clutched onto for decades even after many of the things they once laughed at (with the laughter barely disguising their contempt and disgust) went on to be fully accepted in the mainstream and are now regarded by the vast majority of people as utterly unremarkable. They’re simply unable to comprehend a world in which they don’t set the terms of the boundaries between normal and weird, so when they hear the Dems calling them weird, it leaves them at a loss for words: isn’t it obvious that Dems are the weirdos?
I am beginning to think that far from seeing the oft-prophesied death of democracy around the world, we may be witnessing the Twilight of the Autocrats.
Putin has managed to do more to unite the West and strengthen the West and re-arm the West than anyone since Stalin. He’s exposed the corruption and incompetence of the Russian military and destroyed their arms export industry in two ways: first by absorbing so much of Russia’s production for his misbegotten war in Ukraine, and second by demonstrating conclusively that Russian arms are shit. He’s paying $20,000 in one-time payments to recruits who, once they’ve paid off their car loans and bar tabs, surrender to drones. He’s lost his biggest export markets, and accelerated the process of subordination to China.
Not that Xi Jinping is doing well. Ten years ago the world was talking about China becoming the dominant superpower. The Belt and Road initiative was going to extend Chinese influence everywhere. His navy was fantasizing about taking on the USN. And now? No one thinks China is on the path to global dominance. Xi jumped the gun, started acting like an obnoxious bully, and convinced Japan to re-arm, Japan and South Korea to reconcile, the Philippines to rush back into Uncle Sam’s arms, and even India to start looking at controlling their eponymous ocean.
And of course there’s our own domestic Vlad wannabe, who has, in less than a month’s time, gone from a likely second term, to sinking in the polls and looking more and more like a loser.
Counterpoints: Bibi has regained his standing in the polls. And Orban remains popular. But they’re pipsqueaks in the grand scheme of things.
@Kylopod: I feel like what’s happening now is the other bookend to what happened in my youth with counterculture, hippies, protest, liberation, feminism, black power, civil rights. All those things have advanced to the point where we recognize them as pretty much normal and everyday, and we have started calling people who still holdout “wierd” just as they called us “freaks” once upon a time.
I have such a cute story about this from my family reunion. One young woman (She was from ND, and paired with a cousin of mine) who came had purple hair (a couple of piercings too, but nothing really out there.) I told her I liked her hair and she said she used to have really nice long blonde hair, and her father really loved it.
When she told him her plans, he was against it until someone at work asked him what he would have done if he had wanted to do something with his hair (apparently he had really nice long blonde hair, too), and he said, “I’d do it anyway with the biggest FU I could manage!” To which said co-worker replied, “What makes you think she’s any different than you?” This ended any father-daughter conflict, apparently.
One thing I love about this is how we have learned to navigate the “generation gap”. Another is how gender doesn’t matter at all in this story. There’s no “girls are different”. And a third is that this story took place in ND. You know, a “flyover” and “deep Red” state.
I’m kind of disappointed that nobody noteworthy at the DNC has purple hair (or blue, or green).
@Grumpy Realist: Just for the record, Ann is another sad childless cat lady. How can any of you be so heartless as to not simply turn away and allow her peace and quiet in this moment of lashing out in bitter regret.
Admit it. You’re all just mean girls in your souls, aren’t you?
This made me laugh: on Threads, CSPAN reported that Tim Walz’s speech lasted 15 and 1/2 minutes, the shortest VP convention speech since they started covering conventions in 1984.* A commenter quipped, “Teachers know that your lesson needs to be five minutes shorter than the attention span of your learners.”
* it’s interesting that all the Democratic VP speeches are much shorter than the Republican speeches, save one. The exception: Joe Biden in 2012.
@Michael Reynolds: Just as is true about the poor, the aristocrats will always be with us. Never mistake a brief glimmer of moral clarity for true revival. It’s the mistake of fundies and evangelicals throughout history.
@just nutha: Edit: replace “aristocrats” with “autocrats.” I always conflate the two. East mistake for a cracker.
@just nutha: I’d hate to be any cat or dog living with Ann Coulter.
(Who was it who said that she had no reason for a husband because she had pets who fulfilled the same duties: a parrot who swore, a dog to make messes she had to clean up, and a cat to not listen to her.)
Trump claims he was Queen Elizabeth’s favorite president.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-makes-bizarre-boast-about-queen-elizabeth-i-was-her-favorite-president?ref=home
@Michael Reynolds:
Autocrats are clustering largely on the right. As that wing gets more radicalized, it tends to face stronger, but fragmented opposition. The latter has attempted to band together in common front coalitions. This worked in Poland and France, but not in Israel or Hungary.
Some are on the left, where in some places the opposition has also coalesced. In Venezuela it looks like they won, and Maduro has been really clumsy in his fraudulent attempt to retain power. In mexico the opposition lost, but His Majesty Manuel Andres will step down (the judicial “reform” is another matter).
China is a whole autocratic system with even less pretend democracy than Russia, more like the USSR in the 1970s. Russia is pretty much Mad Vlad’s property now.
I see a trend in the west and in high income countries for a rejection of the right, especially as it radicalizes to autocracy. I wish it were more forceful and in greater numbers, but it’s something.
@Grumpy realist: So would I. 🙁 (And I don’t know who it was, but it does sound like her, for sure.)
@Kylopod:
He certainly is. Great speech last night.
I also watched Bill Clinton, and I had forgotten how good he is. It’s like he’s sitting in your living room talking directly to you.
@Kylopod:
One can be a straight white macho man without being an asshole and a shameless liar?
Who knew???
@just nutha:
I don’t think it’s morality, I think it’s the corruption that often attends autocracies, and the epistemic closure in the leadership that cuts itself off from dissenting opinion. Paranoia and mistrust are also inevitable, so you get situations like Putin replacing poorly-trained troops with FSB thugs who are only trained to beat up demonstrators.
Autocracies are rigid by their very nature and as the world changes they fail to adapt. Democracies are chaotic but more adaptable. Western-style regulated capitalism also adapts better than the kind of state-managed capitalism of China or Russia. We’re winning Cold War 2 the same way we won Cold War 1: by having a superior system.
@Michael Reynolds: corruption is the poison which, if not fought against, rots and destroys any system.
We also should fight vigorously for a culture which penalizes lies and abusers of the system. Why is it that I, as a lowly government employee, can only invest in certain mutual funds, while members of Congress can do all sorts of insider trading without rebuke? Why is it that Elon Musk can decide to blow off paying the compensation packages for all those people he fired from Twitter, and no one says boo to him?
If a society has no effective legal mechanism by which abuses by the rich and powerful can be corrected, the end result will be blowback at some point.
@Mikey: I also watched Bill Clinton, and I had forgotten how good he is. It’s like he’s sitting in your living room talking directly to you.
I used to work with a woman who had a job as financial administrator in a community college in New Hampshire. Bill Clinton came to the college when he was running and she spoke with him one-on-one for about two minutes. She said he was far and away the single most engaging person she had ever met. In those two minutes she felt like she was the center of his world. She said he had a combination of charm, self-confidence, and sexuality. It didn’t hurt that at that point in her life she was a pretty blond with a great figure, but she said most of her girlfriends seemed to have similar reactions. When another co-worker asked if she would have slept with him, her immediate response was all he would have had to do was ask.
@Michael Reynolds:
I can’t view prosperity as a given with democracy. There’s a bit more to it than that. What happened to democracy when a lot of people started missing the proverbial seventh meal in Germany of the 30s and Russia of the 90s? Are the Saudis not prosperous?
Rumor has it Taylor Swift may be the “Special Guest” at the DNC Convention. Will this finally be the night Trump’s head explodes if she endorses Harris/Walz?!
Stay tuned for a bunch of MAGAt’s being angry and saying shut up and sing.
@Jax:
Last info on her jet(s) is that one landed at Nashville yesterday.
That’s not definitive, as she doesn’t have to fly in her jet to get to Chicago, especially if it’s being kept quiet.
I wouldn’t bet on it.
@Kathy: I wouldn’t bet on it, either, but I am enjoying the mental image of Trump’s ugly face going full exorcist.
@Kylopod:
@Mikey:
@Lucysfootball:
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama reminded us of how, in their different ways, they were both extremely effective speakers.
Walz and Harris may not be in their league, few are (maybe Tony Blair, on a good day?), but they seem good enough.
From across the pond, the DNC seems to have been a lot more effective at speaking to an audience beyond just the attendees than the RNC was.
@dazedandconfused:
Democracies do fail sometimes, just not as surely as autocracies. And both examples, Germany and Russia were ‘democracies’ for about five minutes. But I’m not saying that democracy creates prosperity – India’s still poor AF. But India also rejected western-style capitalism, have not entirely gotten away from caste, and treat women horribly making them less productive. Democracy doesn’t cure culture, but neither does autocracy. Nothing’s automatic, but on balance the capitalist democracies outperform the autocracies. I imagine we’ll find a better system some day, but we don’t seem to have yet.
@Mister Bluster:
I may have mentioned that one of my neighborhood casinos is Westgate, formerly the Hilton where Elvis was in residency. The other day we were there for some reason, and for the first time they had an Elvis impersonator performing. Seemed to us that should be on every night. Viva Las Vegas! Karate chop!
@Michael Reynolds: democracies with elections are like areas of land that have little earthquakes all the time, which releases the stress and make it less likely for a big one to occur. Autocracies try to keep everything frozen with one head honcho ( or family) on top. The stress builds up, then KABOOM.
@Jax:
My guess is it’s far more likely to be Mitt Romney than it is to be Taylor Swift.
Though if it’s a musical star, then the chances that it’s Beyonce singing Harris in with Freedom is far higher than Swift.
@Michael Reynolds:
@Kathy:
Regarding China, a look at the number of Chinese manufacturing companies in serious financial trouble is interesting.
Also, China seems to be stepping back from its overly-ambitious “Belt and Road” related investment overseas, due to the numbers of loans going sour, and the reality that the supposed collateral is often illusory, and frequently unrealisable.
Orban, meanwhile, yaps a lot.
But it’s notable that whenever he gets too irritating, the rest of the EU yank his choke chain, and he caves.
He is also facing an interesting domestic challenger from the centre-right who seems less reliant on the Budapest vote then the old opposition parties.
The EU problem is, there’s no general agreement on how to deal with him, except when he really pushes too far.
Full on confrontation (which Macron and the Nordics tended to favour), or “don’t feed the troll” (Italy and Germany) on the basis that Orban likes to stir up controversy to rev up the idiot nationalist vote.
@dazedandconfused:
Both Weimar Germany and Yeltsin’s Russia were crippled by idiotic policy choices.
Weimar by (effectively) refusal to pay reparations (which were by no means unaffordable) and Russia by “privatisation” that handed the economy over to oligarchs.
And by stupid monetary/currency decisions leading to inflation etc.
Both were also weakened by the role of the “men of violence”, the German freikorps and “streetfighters”, in Russia the mafiya and the siloviki.
And by popular nationalistic resentments of losing a position as a dominant Power, at the same time as their economic screw-ups caused a lot of pain, in different ways.
Thus nationalist and economic resentments became closely coupled, conspiratorial “explanations” proliferated, and “strong leadership” looked like a good idea.
To paraphrase Mel Brooks playing Moses in History of the World Part I: Here are two more, maybe three, vaccines for all of you to ignore.
The good news is vaccines for latter COVID variants keep being made. The bad news is the trump virus is so chaotic, vaccine manufacturers can’t keep up with the latest variants, but remain a few mutations behind.
This is one time when the messiness of biology works in our favor. Proteins and receptors tend to be analogized as keys and locks. That’s not bad for an explanation, but it’s not accurate. They’re more like complementary shapes that fit just well enough, rather than fit exactly as would be the case with a key and a lock.
Therefore, antigen receptors, antibodies, and unfortunately Ace-2 receptors, do fit the newer evolved spike proteins. Not well enough to quickly stop the infection, but well enough to slow it down, keep it under some control, and more important not cause poor nose, throat, and lung cells to produce excess cytokines that get the immune system too riled up. So you get something like a very bad cold, maybe some fever, but most people don’t get hospitalized or dead (unfortunately, some still do).
TL;DR get your updated vaccine along with your flu shot by next fall, or sooner if you didn’t get a COVID booster within the last 12 months.
@Matt Bernius: OK, now I want Taylor Swift, Beyonce, GWB, AND Mitt Romney to all come out and dance to Freedom, right before Kamala comes out for the big speech.
A girl can dream, right?!
@Michael Reynolds:
@just nutha:
@Grumpy realist:
Democracy is perhaps most valuable as a mechanism for whacking governments upside the head about problems that are pissing people off, but they might otherwise be inclined to ignore.
Beginning with things as basic as land rights, housing, and environmental health: its a very good idea to make sure local authorities are not bribed into ignoring sanitation provision, lest you desire typhus and typhoid.
Also, that the legal system is not entirely captured by the social elite, in which case the entire regulatory and law enforcement system a modern society requires gradually collapses.
End results: torches, pitchforks, lamp-posts and ropes.
Interestingly, its possible for non-democratic systems to sometimes realise that self-restraint and regard for the interests of the “lower orders” is actually a sensible self-interested policy.
See the British aristocratic system of the 18th century. Often lavishly corrupt, decidedly non-democratic, and brutal if crossed, but also generally “lawful”, and sensible enough not to exploit to the point of revolt.
And willing to share power with rising classes, rather than rob them, and to respect basic legal rights for the general population
(Ireland being a massive counter-example in this regard)
Another example being the “liberal monarchies” of 19th century Europe. The principle of the “rechtsstaat”, the lawfully governed state, with representative elements, came to be seen as a foundation of a functional economy and workable society.
The contrast being the autocracies of Russia, Turkey, and Spain, that remained backward and politically fragile.
@Matt Bernius:
No chance of Mitt Romney and Beyonce singing a duet?
🙂
@Michael Reynolds: Whatever. I’m looking from the other direction–toward the audience reacting rather than the oligarch oligarching. The audience rejecting the status quo is having a brief moment of moral clarity. Once the abuse is gone (or at least perceived to be) the audience will resume yearning for a person to “really take control.”
@JohnSF:
That would definitely break the internet.
@Matt Bernius:
Is he looking to be excommunicated from the Mormon Church or form the Church of the Orange Felon?
@Kathy:
I vaguely recall somewhere that polling of Republican voting Mormons tended to indicate that they were among the least charmed by the Orange Overlord.
@just nutha:
Well, personally, no. I identify more as “cranky old sociopath” and occasionally as “evil fat bastard.” But I’ll certainly attend the “mean girls in our souls” fundraiser.
@JohnSF:
They don’t like Democrats, either. In 2020, El Felón got 58.13%, Biden took 37.65%, and the various yard sale parties 4.22%
So, the majority of Utah voters may be ok with Romney criticizing the Weirdo, and maybe even with his two votes to convict. But they may balk at support for the other party.
That’s what the current degree of partisanship means. I’ve said it before, that GQP politicos may attack the Felonious Weirdo, but then will decline to vote for the Democratic candidate. So, yes, sure, the Orange Weirdo is immoral, indecent, and a threat to the country, but the Democrats are worse.
Not that I wouldn’t welcome Romney at the convention. Other than the never-weirdos, Lincoln Project, and assorted groups of disillusioned Republicans voting for Biden or Harris, Romney among the least worst of his party.
@Kathy:
Oh, Romney’s been long since cast out of the Church of Trump.
@JohnSF:
Same is happening here. People who feel they are getting poorer are the power behind Trump, an American openly calling for the powers of a dictator so he can “fix everything”, has not only gotten the nomination he’s polling within the margin of error.
Some folks believe that to fix anything, why, all that needs to be done is install democracy and stand back. The neocons, Samantha Powers, supposedly on different sides of the coin actually share the same side. Textbook underpants gnome strategists both. IMO they take all the complex institutions which enable democracy to function totally for granted and pay no mind to how long it took to get them in place and functioning in the place where they do.
I was happy to see Obama making the hand sign for Trump having a small phallus.
Turns out Obama always could run smack, he just chose not to.. earlier.
But if personal insults are the only way to Be Real, game on. And there’s of course just enough plausible deniability for the conservative TV announcers from all the networks who think Republicans should be the only ones doing the insulting.
@JohnSF:
Typically what the “lower orders” look for in a government is a measure of economic well being. But also, about as often I’d say, exclusion of people they don’t like, and an inflated sense of national pride.
As to the latter, while Americans carry their exceptionalism way too far, it’s a common feature in many countries.
In a sense all countries are exceptional, as in they all differ from all others in some ways. But they are also all alike, in that they mostly muddle through, trying to find an elusive right way to do things, and usually don’t quite manage to do so.
As a Gen-X-er I am so happy to see so many of the speakers and performers at the DNC are also Gen X.
And even if Harris and Walz were born a few months too early, they are Gen X in attitude so we’ll spot them those few months and dub them honorary Gen X.
Just jumping in to say it won’t be Mitt Romney because he is an empty shirt coward bereft of both spine and testicle. There is nothing that man won’t debase himself for.
@Beth: As I noted yesterday about Ben Sasse, Romney is held up as one of the good Republicans. There seems to be something wrong with the concept of good Republican.
…good for what?
@Grumpy realist:
You realize I may well appropriate that metaphor?
@Michael Reynolds: please do! No trademark numbers on it as far I could see…
@Kathy: Late to the party here, but Mormons are extremely suspect of anyone who would deny religious freedom to others. Their history is that of being on the outside of the mainstream, and they take the freedom to practice their religion very seriously. Trump, while being an unserious knob, does seem like he’d happily proscribe a state religion if he could get away with it.
@dazedandconfused: The word “macho” has too many bad associations for me to use it positively. Something like “badass” works better for me.