Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, January 8, 2026
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36 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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The TL;DR on the Trump administration is this: Liberals were right about everything.
Trump is putting his dementia on display every day. Where’s Jake Tapper? Why isn’t the “legacy media” asking mental health professionals to weigh in? If you only get your information over in Wingnuttia, there is an ICE agent in the hospital after being “viciously run over” by a “domestic terrorist.” If you live in the real world you know that the Secretary of Homeland Security and the President of the United States lied their asses off about a murder committed by a masked asshole acting under the color of federal authority. If I’m the police commissioner in Minneapolis, said masked asshole would already be under arrest. Let some DOJ stooge tell a Minneapolis judge about immunity. And oh yeah….pass the bourbon.
“We’re Too Close to the Debris”
@Michael Reynolds: If you were a non-racist Republican/Conservative* supporter during the Reagan administration, you were turning a blind eye to the deal Reagan was promising: Republicans/Conservatives would throw blacks and other minorities under the bus in return for the votes of Southern bigots. If you truly believed that Republicans/Conservatives supported fiscal responsibility by the time Gingrich rolled around, you were a fool. If you ever believed that Republicans/Conservatives were the party of small government, then you were simply performing a see-no-evil ritual as every time they gained governmental power they used it to crush the weak and put the fix in for big business. And I knew in 1978 that when Republicans/Conservatives were lecturing the “No Nukes” protestors that “if you lived in the Soviet Union you would be in jail or worse for questioning the government”, there was more envy in their words than warning.
*By “Conservative” I mean people who label themselves as such. Aside from a few words they blather, they are indistinguishable from Republicans. I definitely don’t mean people who tend towards small “c” conservative policies as a matter of nature, as I put myself into that category.
@Charley in Cleveland:
Can’t recall where I read it, but there is some quirky legislation that immunizes CBP/ICE from accountability.
@Charley in Cleveland: I argue with my friends about this almost every day, but I think dementia accusations about trump are wishful thinking. He does not seem any different to me today then he did 10 years ago.
@HelloWorld: It may not be dementia, but if accusations of dementia get the supposedly liberal MSM to finally pay attention to his behavior, I’ll take it.
@Michael Reynolds:
The anger I feel for the “Let’s wait to see what happens” and “How bad can can it be? We survived the first term” crowds is bordering on rage.
The anger I feel towards those STILL supporting him after all that’s happened is even beyond that.
And the sad reality is that it keeps getting worse. There is no bottom. And I have zero belief that enough people will turn against him to make a difference in time to save this country.
The problem for Europe given America’s current foreign policy trajectory, is not that the continent will be left alone to fend off Russia. Europe’s quite capable of doing that. The problem is the continent will be left alone to fend of America and Russia.
What struck me in Krugman’s substack yesterday, which @charontwo linked to, is that the 300+ billion barrel Venezuelan oil reserves were determined by a Hugo Chavez decree.
Here’s the relevant part:
Ok. I can understand a dictator doing this. I don’t get why the press goes along with it, and keep citing a Chavez generated number that’s far from reality.
The oil is there. But about two thirds, if Krugman’s figures are right, cannot be recovered with present technology in any way that makes economic sense. It might be so in the future, either with new technologies or much, much higher oil prices. But right now it may as well not be there.
@Kathy:
Here is the analysis of our local Houston business columnist, Chris Tomlinson.
Trump has overpromised on Venezuela. Why U.S. oil companies will likely underdeliver.
Regardless of how much producible oil there is, there is the impact on the US:
@Kathy:
Here is the analysis of our local Houston business columnist, Chris Tomlinson.
Trump has overpromised on Venezuela. Why U.S. oil companies will likely underdeliver.
Regardless of how much producible oil there is, there is the impact on the US:
@Kathy:
By the time oil prices get to anywhere near a level to make the higher bounds of Venezuelan tar oil “reserves” recoverable (ditto most North Americn oil shales and tar sands, likely also) I’d be willing to make a small side-bet they’ll meet the costs of renewable derived synfuels coming down.
One of the ways red states stay red:
“Erin”
Trump is, in a way, taking us back to the 16th century, when armed conflicts were about the personal enrichment of aristocrats and leaders.
Consider this excerpt re the legalities of the oil to U.S. ploy:
“Hubbell”
(At the link also discussion of Renee Good and Greenland)
@charontwo:
What the actual f…?
It recalls the end of the Roman Republic, when consuls looted conquered provinces to enrich themselves and fund privatised legions.
If the US Congress permits any such arrangement, it is certifiably nuts.
Even thinking of this should justify impeachment, or nothing does.
@charontwo:
@JohnSF:
L’État, c’est moi!!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!1
The person who first is said to have uttered that phrase, styled himself The Sun King.
The math pretty much works itself out.
@charontwo:
Regarding my comments about the 16th century, Krugman:
“Krugman”
@JohnSF:
I may have posted something here about Trump and Rubio’s benefactor Paul Singer, owner of a bunch of Citgo heavy oil refineries. If not, google Paul Singer or Citgo.
ETA: Citgo was previously owned by Venezuela. Because of Venezuela’s precarious finances, Singer was able to buy it for$5.9B although its estimated value was $13B.
Meanwhile in Iran, things are getting really heated.
The govt seems to be shutting down the internet and othe communications, several Kurdish parties have called for a general strike.
The Lurestan region seems to be on the verge of general revolt.
(The Lurs are a non-Parsa-but-related ethnic group in the south-west of Iran)
There are now reports on Xitter of IRGC and government buildings burning in Tehran.
If I may intrude with a bit of good news amidst what feels like the end times, I got the Hell Week bonus today.
It was more than I thought I’d get, less than I think I should have gotten. If things continue as they are, it may pay for about 46% of my health insurance.
America first! /s
Via Reuters.
@MarkedMan:
I’d not have supported any of the Republicans I can think of against any Democrat, even as far back as Eisenhower.
But imho there was a case for right of centre sorta-conservatives to vote Republican, assuming they saw holding their noses and getting into bed with racists, evangelical nutcases, fiscally incontinent glibertarians, and corporate interest lobbyists, as tolerable to “block liberalism”.
But after Trump 1 and especially after Jan 6 2021 there is no excuse whatsoever.
I’m a sorta-conservative in many ways; and once actually voted Conservative (becuase the local Labour candidate was a Trot, there was no Liberal standing, and John Major was a decent enough leader).
But I find it utterly inexplicable how anyone who self-identifies as “conservative” and therefore, presumably, in favour of the existing constitutional order, can even remotely consider voting for an insurrectionist, seditionary, and utterly corrupt, buffoon.
@JohnSF:
Just remember “conservative” is kissing cousin to “reactionary”. “Conservatives”, per Buckley, are people standing athwart history yelling “STOP!!”. In the US they are people who want things the way they were, like when black people were second-class citizens and effectively unable to vote.
When the Democratic party had a stable majority it embraced this kind of conservatism. Then LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act…and the slow turn-over began. The South when from pure blue to pure red in the course of a few decades. Nixon and Atwater’s “Southern Strategy” worked.
Our youngest and her boyfriend are visiting us while we’re in London. Thanks to Gordon Ramsay’s genius for self-promotion Daughter #2 wanted to go to Petrus. We’d previously eaten at the Ramsay mothership a few years ago. Ramsay is a good chef, not a great chef. He’s not Grant Achatz or Charlie Trotter (RIP) or Alain DuCasse or Thomas Keller or Ferran Adria. He’s a great restaurateur, a great businessman and self-promoter, but he doesn’t change your life. Grant Achatz changes your life.
Nothing tonight was as good as a sautéed softshell on white bread ot a great Texas brisket. But a hell of a lot more expensive.
Y’all, Tehran is on fire. Literally.
@dazedandconfused:
That’s one reason I rather admire Johnson, Vietnam notwithstanding.
He knew he was possibly wrecking the racist-Dem vote in the “solid South”, but did it anyway, when Kennedy had been hesitant.
In the words of an old English pol:
“Maugre the Devil! Let it go forward!”
Another quote I can’t pin down to who said it, from my fuzzy memory (maybe it was me!): “Conservatives desire to preserve an idealised present. Reactionaries to reconstruct an imagined past.”
I alwats like to distinguish the various strands: US Republicanism is (by definition) a rather odd variant of late-18th century liberalism; European 19th century “conservatism” was split between aristocratic/clericalist reactionaries and “right liberals”; later 20th century European conservatism junked reaction for Christian Democracy/modernist welfare capitalism.
The last was a path the US Republicans looked to be on under Eisenhower.
But the dynamics of racial politics, the rise of political evangelicalism, and the legacy of Sumnerist “radical liberalism” morphed into corporatism led via Goldwater and Nixon to being vulnerable to Trump-capture.
Especially because the Republicans, in the US party system of open parties and primary elections, had no way to discipline and exclude nutcases from control of the activist party base in the way European parties could.
(The nutcase takeover of the UK Conservatives despite party discipline seems to be proving this can happen elsewhere, if the party is in a state of decay)
@Michael Reynolds:
How’s the blizzard going in London?
lol
I’ve never eaten at a premier chef type restaurant, though at a few with Michelin stars.
imho some without stars are pretty damn good, if you pick them right.
Spinola’s in Bruges; La Recreation in Arques; il Focolare, Motagnana near Montespertoli (but only if you want bisteeca fiorentina: it has a very limited menu, lol.)
But then again, I’m both easy to please, and a bit of a cheapskate 🙂
Sen Tillis is finally raising a ruckus now that he is retiring. If only these Senators had some courage when it mattered.
Senate unanimously approves installing Jan. 6, 2021 plaque
@JohnSF:
Yes. Both parties here abandoned their nomination process to populism. If there is anything clear about the thoughts of the founders it’s they were explicitly against that. The Executive was supposed to be selected solely by elites, not the “common clay of the American West”, as Mel Brooks phrased it. Funny how all the fine reading done of the Constitution today to preserve the imagined impeccable wisdom of The Holy Founders in areas like guns and taxation is never done with the process of selecting the POTUS, is it not?
The issue of race here has no parallel in Europe, at least as far as I can tell. Think of the Teabaggers (now MAGAs). They honestly believed they cared about fixing healthcare when they were bagging, but they didn’t. They honestly believe they are concerned about deficits and such today, but they aren’t, not really. They are simply against Democrats because they had to suffer a black man as POTUS for eight years and can’t admit it. Not even, perhaps especially, to themselves.
Anything like that in the EU?
@dazedandconfused:
Well, the anti-migrant neo-right are pretty damn racist.
But Europe lacks the long-term structural politics of a racially distinct but large minority who (it seems to me) HAD to be defined as inferior to avoid categorising the Confederate South as a bunch of goons.
The history is simply fundamentally different.
As I’ve said before: Europeans can be racist as the next, if not more so.
But their categories are NOT those of the US.
See French and British astonishment at American military institutional racism in WW1 and WW2.
European class politics could at times be as toxic as US race politics.
But simply because of US (South) racially based slavery, there just was not the same long-standing and almost inherently accepted visually obvious cues for inferior/superior as a basic divide.
Working class Europeans could thus be absorbed into middle class or even upper class society far more easily than Africn-Americans unless other Americans could ignore “race”.
And a good many seem simply unable to have done so.
@JohnSF:
I’ve been watching videos of restaurant chefs cooking restaurant meals. There’s a lot of technique involved. There’s also a lot of complex means for making mixes of flavors, like roasting beef bones for making stock (and making it takes hours). So I’ve a dim notion of the work involved.
But what most recipes have in common is salt and fat, and a great deal of both. Mostly butter, but now and then lard or duck fat.
@JohnSF:
There has not been a non-white leading politician in any country in continental Europe apart from Portugal (Antonio Costa) that I’m aware of.
(I may be wrong).
But in the UK Rishi Sunak was PM, and though receiving plenty of criticism, little of it (apart from some Reform fringe nutters) had to do with race.
Ditto Kemi Bdenoch, Leo Varadkar in Ireland, Humza Yousaf in Scotland, Vaughan Gething in Wales.
@Kathy:
The kitchen brigade system with chefs and sous chefs originating with Escoffier in France seems, amusingly, to have derived from his experience in the French army, and a quite systematic division of labour.
So you get, in traditional French restaurant cuisine, a whole hierarchy of operations, starting with stock production, leading up to the production of finished dishes.
@JohnSF:
The exhaustive list makes it seem more like a kitchen regiment.
@JohnSF:
I said about Lurestan being in on the verge of revolt?
The flag of the Lion and the Sun is raised in Khorramabad
This is not a minor thing.