Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, April 29, 2025
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56 comments
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
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BlueSky.
Border agent arrested in Gilbert after accusations he sexually exploited a minor (AZ Central)
The accused is neither trans, nor a drag queen. And, yes, he is entitled to the due process of law this lawless Trump regime denies to Andry Hernandez Romero, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and others illegally disappeared into a violent El Savadorian prison camp.
Canada’s conservative leader Pierre Poilievre loses his own seat in election collapse (Politico EU)
From Trudeau’s resignation announcement to Poilievre’s loss was 112 days.
From Biden’s withdrawal announcement to Trump’s election win was 107 days.
@DK:
Well, that’s a nice little bright spot.
So, like, I am intensely depressed right now. I know we’re all shocked by that. Anyway, our flat is right across the street from a fairly large primary school (I think that’s what it’s called). This morning while everything was still kinda calm I had the windows open and got to hear a whole mess of roughly 8 year olds sing happy birthday to one of their classmates along with a “hip hip hooray” at the end. It was really cute.
@DK: Nothing like watching your neighbor set fire to their own house to sober you up, eh?
Bravo Canada! Or as we say in cabinet level GC speak:
Whoops, it seems emojis don’t work here. How are folks like Hegseth supposed to post and communicate on the site without them??
Amazon is going to list how much the tariff’s added to the cost on each item. This is fabulous. Every retailer should do that. Call it the Trump Tax.
@LongtimeListener:
Testing emojis: 😀
Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Michigan, has filed articles of impeachment against Trump.
Apropos of Trump’s expressed admiration for William McKinley, my memory flashed back to a political cartoon from an American History class many years ago. In it, a little boy (McKinley) plays with a scale cartoon of the White House. His father (The Trusts) and his family maid Hanna (Mark Hanna) look on with approval. “If Willie is a good boy and does what Papa and Hanna tell him, they will let him keep the pretty house until he is eight years old.”
Apropos of Trump’s expressed admiration for William McKinley, my memory flashed back to a political cartoon from an American History class many years ago. In it, a little boy (McKinley) plays with a scale model of the White House. His father (The Trusts) and his family maid Hanna (Mark Hanna) look on with approval. “If Willie is a good boy and does what Papa and Hanna tell him, they will let him keep the pretty house until he is eight years old.”
@CSK:
In a district where Harris got 70% of the vote. In short, about as consequential as when Maxine Waters filed articles against Dubya.
I hate to sound flippant about this, but it’s just the reality: while I’m hardly ruling out the possibility Trump will be impeached again at some point, having one congressperson in a noncompetitive district do it unilaterally is pretty much an admission it’s DOA for the moment.
@Kylopod: And it is politically stupid.
@Jax: US trade deficit surges; Amazon accused of ‘hostile and political’ act for displaying tariff costs – business live
This is almost getting fun!
Amazon launches Project Kuiper satellites designed to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX
@Scott:
Looks like Karoline Leavitt is unfamiliar with the term “Streisand syndrome”
This is just data and an interesting resource:
100 Days In, Trump Blocks At Least $430 Billion Dollars in Funding Owed to American People
@Scott:
Typical dictatorship move. You can’t point out the consequences of the felon’s actions. See the Great Leap “Forward” in China, or Lysenkoism in the USSR.
@Kylopod:
Oh, I know. I just thought it was worth mentioning.
@Scott:
That’s such an easy one…inflation was caused by external factors (pandemic) and tariffs are a 100% Trump-manufactured* crisis.
(* This is not the type of manufacturing we should be encouraging, but seems to be a speciality of the president’s.)
@DK: This could be bad for Canada though. Poilievre was the one more Canadians thought would be able to take Trump in a fight, IIRC.
@Scott:
I’ll bet a dollar Bezos caves.
I’m learning something interesting, I wonder if at least some of the oligarchs are starting to see it. Wealth is a vulnerability as much as a strength. Having a lot means you have a lot to lose. You get the yacht but you surrender your freedom. Or as an obscure Hebrew from the first century once said, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Bootlicking Billionaires are a thing. Who knew?
@Scott: I hope this business of Amazon publishing price increases due to tariffs means Bezos has decided his Quisling act isn’t working.
@Scott:
Too soon to laud Amazon, perhaps. Amazon now claims that the plan to show tariff costs was only under consideration for the Amazon Haul portion of the company, and was not being considered for the main Amazon site. Link for this report not yet available.
More Amazon related news:
UPS to cut 20,000 jobs on lower Amazon shipments, profit beats estimates
@Scott: BTW, my Amazon costs show sales taxes. Why not tariff taxes?
@just nutha: Yes, maybe everyone on earth will die because they voted for Trump.
@Michael Reynolds: You win your dollar.
https://politicalwire.com/2025/04/29/amazon-backs-down-after-white-house-attack/
Fun fact: Lex Bezos is not Amazon’s CEO.
It’s this guy
Lex stepped down to play with his rocket company’s toys (I may lose some of the snark when he manages to launch cargoes and people into orbit, and recover and reuse a booster. One successful test flight does not a launch company make),
@just nutha: Perhaps that was true in comparison with Trudeau. However Mark Carney may have orchestrated an international selloff of US bonds that convinced Trump to reverse course on the “reciprocal” tariffs.
I rate this as likely. And man, what a punch.
@Kylopod: I, for one, am proud, PROUD, to participate in this genius economic move by our great leader which will be hailed by future generations of economists. Also, whatever we spend on tariffs will be offset by letting people die of opiate overdoses. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-narcan-overdose-grant-b2739727.html
@Kylopod: I, for one, am proud, PROUD, to participate in this genius economic move by our great leader which will be hailed by future generations of economists. Also, whatever we spend on tariffs will be offset by letting people die of opiate overdoses. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-narcan-overdose-grant-b2739727.html
It was the best of times and it became the worst of times.
I have a question for Steven: I generally accept the notion that party ID is a sociocultural phenomenon, and that loyalties don’t switch easily. That makes the Canadian election a dramatic outlier.
Is there a lesson to be learned about the limits of party identification? I’d really like to hear your take on this.
@Jay L Gischer: I’m interested in hearing Steven’s take on this as well.
The first Gulf War happened when I was in college as a poli sci major. People seem to forget that the reason a Democratic governor from Arkansas ended up with the Dem nomination was attributable in part to the fact that a lot of Democrats saw GHW Bush’s sky-high approval ratings as a sign they shouldn’t bother running. That…faded fast.
I get the feeling that when there are large, dominant external factors (e.g., getting involved in a war, or having the leader of a bordering nation talk about adding your country as the 51st State) people tend to put less emphasis on party ID. But when things level off, they can return to their prior state.
Is OTB undergoing maintenance?
@Michael Reynolds:
Look at how business owners knuckled under to Hitler. They went along with the fascist program and only got richer. This is just history repeating itself.
@CSK:
I’m seeing a wonky format now.
On other things, we had several coworkers travel to Chiapas and Oaxaca a few times, and now I’ve an excess of well above average coffee at the office.
I may even use some of it in the big pot in the morning, rather than exclusively in the small one after the midday meal.
@Jay L Gischer: @Jen: I don’t know a whole lot about the electoral history of other countries, but here in the US we’ve seen wild swings in partisan alignment throughout our history. For instance, the three Republican landslides of the 1920s followed by the four under FDR; Eisenhower in the ’50s followed by LBJ in 1964, then Nixon in 1972, then Carter absolutely crushing it in the South only to lose the region four years later and then another decade of Republican landslides followed by the Clinton era and the mostly close elections we’ve seen in the 21st century so far.
Granted, I’ve been focusing on the presidential elections, when the congressional ones might seem a more appropriate comparison with a parliamentary system like Canada’s, but even there it’s been characterized by periods of relative stability followed by wild swings–e.g. Democratic dominance between the 1930s and 1990s, followed by a series of alternating wave elections for each party in the ensuing decades.
We’re currently in a period of high polarization and nailbiter elections where power is determined around the margins, but this is historically anomalous.
@Jay L Gischer:
My initial response to the question is that multi-party democracy makes switching easier, as I have attempted to argue over the years. What I have especially tried to highlight is the way in which partisan loyalty in a highly polarized two-party system makes switching all the harder.
But I may not be answering what you are asking.
@Jay L Gischer: I took the poll question as a question related to a physical altercation rather than which one would be more likely to successfully leverage the resources of statecraft. I brought it up two days ago because it seemed such a snarky question.
Thank you for bringing a new vision of “Which candidate would be more able to beat Trump in a fight?” as a serious polling topic.
@just nutha:
The opposite. Polling showed voters felt Carney was more quipped to stand up Tariff Man, Polievere too Trumplike and more likely to cave to MAGA foolishness.
Would it help to petition Amazon to itemize tariff costs on all their products? How about other big and small retailers?
@DK: The article to which I referred didn’t seem to say that:
Then again, I’m still in snark mode about the quality of the question and the seriousness of the topic. I’m always glad to see conservatives lose, either way.
I guess we’ve moved into Poe’s Law territory. I discarded a comment recently that was misinterpreted as serious. I’ll need to remember that American politics is no laughing matter in the age of Trump and adjust my comments accordingly.
I think what you are saying is that in a multi-party democracy social identification with any particular party tends to be weaker? Which makes it easier to switch votes?
That may be accurate, but it’s not what I expected from my knowledge of psychology, which suggests that the smaller the group is, the more dedicated its adherents. Not that I’ve read any research on this at all…
@Just nutha ignint cracker: The March poll to which I refer tracks with the election results.
Mark Carney’s Liberals Seen as Best Party to Deal with Trump & Tariffs (Ipsos):
The actual questions and responses:
– A tough negotiator who would get the best deal for Canada from Trump
Carney 48%
Poilievere 31%
Singh 8%
Others 12%
– Would roll over and accept whatever Trump demands
Poilievre 43%
Carney 22%
Singh 16%
Others 19%
– Would unite Canadians on the changes and investments required to make us less dependent on the US
Carney 46%
Poilievre 31%
Singh 11%
Others 12%
– Has the skills to put in place the right government programs to deal with the hardships Canadians will face because of tariffs imposed by Trump
Carney 48%
Poilievere 31%
Singh 10%
Others 11%
If these respondents are correct, I wouldn’t view Carney’s win as “bad for Canada.” Unless President Trumpflation responds by invading Canada, which would be bad for everyone.
@Mikey: When the left bullies the wealthy and gets things, they consider it a virtue of the system. You’re making your voices heard or whatever. Large companies will lose billions on DEI programs because it’s safer for them. You can’t act surprised and scream Hitler when the winds change. Good news though, the stripper who just smiled at you when you gave her a $20, she genuinely thinks you’re handsome.
Re the Canadian election:
Polievre is very unlikeable. Very. He got on the wrong side of Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario from the same party. Ford told all Ontario Conservatives to stay out of the Federal Election and did an appearance with the new Liberal leader Mark Carney prior to the election starting.
Polievre based his whole campaign on resentment of Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax. Trudeau stepped down, the tax was eliminated, and Polievre couldn’t switch gears. By the end he wasn’t even in the Conservative ads.
The conservative premier of Alberta, supposedly a Polievre ally, sent an open letter to Donald Trump asking him to hold off tariffs for a while to let Polievre win as he would be very aligned.
In our parliamentary system, although I don’t have data, there seem to be more frequent switches between parties and more strategic voting. This election the support for the minor parties pretty much collapsed as votes moved to the two main parties. Next election when there is hopefully not a existential threat to the south I would expect some movement back.
The “debacle” of the Canadian elections was another one of those rare cases where I was intensely happy to see Trump being Trump. What I was reminded of the most was the 2021 Georgia runoffs when Trump’s election-fraud claims had the effect of dampening enthusiasm among his supporters, because if it’s all rigged, what’s the point of voting? (Later, he came up with the message that people should vote in large enough numbers to overwhelm the rigging.) But the recent stuff is so out there it almost makes the 2020 stuff seem mundane by comparison. What I found most amusing was that his rhetoric about making Canada the 51st state put Canadian conservatives in a bind, because I doubt most Canadians of any political stripe find the notion of joining the US remotely appealing. I’m sure a lot of MAGA-adjacent Canadians find ways to rationalize it, but it put the conservative politicians in an impossible situation, practically forcing them to seem anti-Trump, while giving liberals and swing voters a cause to rally around.
Besides, the country has to serve as a counter-force to Gilead.
@Jay Loren Gischer: What on earth posessed me to include my full middle name on that last comment. What were you doing, JLG?
Side note: My middle name is a pointer to my grandfather’s name, but does not replicate it. Because you see, his name was Lora. Yes, that’s right. He was more or less a Boy Named Sue. It seemed to work out ok for him. He married a woman whom everyone called ‘an angel” and had 6 kids with her.
So if tariffs are paid by the country and not a tax on Americans why do the White House meltdown over Amazons plan to advertise the price increase on their discount site? Doughboy personally bitched out Bezos??? It was hostile and political? Someone please make it make sense to me? And more importantly, why is the free press not hammering them on this? Seriously…WTF?
@Fortune: And over in realityland, what’s actually happening is Costco’s profits and Harvard’s donations are up after reaffirming their commitment to DEI. The company losing money over DEI is Target, having dropped its commitments due to the right’s bullying.
Contrary to rightwing propaganda, diversity is a winner for 21st century organizations, increasing talent. Institutions suffer when they instead bend to the pre-DEI rule of letting implicit bias and white privilege run rampant. Hence why the Pentagon, for example, is in chaos right now — led by an incompetent mediocre white man who otherwise might have been kept out by DEI.
The American economy currently stands to lose trillions for similar reasons.
So Target would benefit financially from targeted executive orders or angry Resolute Desk phone calls demanding more DEI. Of course, over in realityland, Democratic presidents don’t do that.
We all should yell Hitler at an regime that, besides empowering a Nazi-saluting oligarch, also disappears people into foreign prison camps without due process, in defiance of 9-0 rulings from a conservative SCOTUS.
You don’t get to say that Hitler “did some things,” say you need Hitlerian generals, and pick a vice president who compared you to Hitler then play victim when the rest of us agree with y’all.
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When Mr. Lucky bullies commenters here they threaten their souls. Apparently they think that they can speak for God.
My sincere congratulations to everyone who has failed to respond to the inane trollery. Well done.
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