Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, March 25, 2026
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38 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).
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I watched Malcolm Nance yesterday, although I find it hard to make the time, yesterday’s was 90 minutes. But there is a button just below the picture that brings up a very nice transcript complete with times. (I just noticed the transcript button this morning). There is a lot of information presented, significant enough to be worth some time. (The time references in the transcript are nice, because there is a lot of pointing at maps).
“Malcolm Nance”
So there are a lot of forces moving into theatre which Nance expects to be used to occupy islands in the Persian Gulf and the Strait. Nance is pretty sure they will be used with the operations beginning this coming weekend, likely late Friday or on Saturday. (I.e., they will be used, not just for show or threats).
ETA: The markets disagree with Nance, we will see who is right, Nance or the stock market.
To me, it looks like a lot of stock traders are really really gullible.
@charontwo:
Oh, and by the way, Nance thinks Russian Intelligence sees the same things he sees and reaches the same conclusions – meaning the Iranians share his expectations, so they are prepared.
How about those Florida dems?
Et tu, Palm Beach county?
@becca: It’s significant, no matter what Republicans are saying. Flipping a district *that* red, not to mention the actual home of the sitting president, is, uh, unlikely. But Emily Gregory, a first-time candidate, did it.
The NYT article on this included this paragraph:
More than two dozen have flipped R to D, with no D to R comparables. That’s…highly unusual.
https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-usaid-humanitarian-funding-e798b818617a1297e107495ef407fe3f
I’m sure that if residents of the Middle East are entertained by watching things get blowed up real good as much as our current Secretary of Violence is, more than they value fripperies like having a safe place to sleep, eating, and not dying of a preventable disease, we won’t see more hatred of the United States.
We all knew Trump 2.0 was gonna be bad. I, myself, did not imagine that it would be THIS bad. Constant firehose of bullshit, making it hard to keep up with which of alllllll the bad things are worse.
It’s bad enough that I can’t imagine the things that are going to happen over the next 3 years that will be worse. Most of which we may not ever find out about until well after the fact, and nobody responsible will ever be held accountable.
Sorry if my thoughts are a little disjointed this morning. I just can’t believe how fucking dumb this timeline is.
The thing that bothers me is that if Donald Trump were just the tiniest bit less abrasive and listened to experts just a tiny bit more, instead of his cabinet of imbeciles, he would still be pulling in decent poll numbers. I think he is now pretty ensconced in the idea that he can still shoot someone on 5th avenue or something close to it without consequences. While the Teflon is gone when it comes to Latinos and young people, the base is still with him despite the right wing influencers who are jockeying to get ahead of the curve. I remember in the wake of 1/6 there are more then a few pols and influencers that came out against Trump but quickly pulled an about face when they realized that the base was still 100% behind him.
It seems the base has not left Trump in any meaningful way, but it does seem to me that the non-MAGA voters (for lack of a better term) are the ones getting peeled off.
@Rick DeMent:
Trump is at a new low on Nate. 16.6% underwater. He may be dropping to a new plateau. Coming off the election he dropped far and fast from net positive to roughly 7% underwater. That held for a while, then he fell to a plateau of about 13% under. His positives have held firm at ~42%. That number is now 40% even. So, are we at last going to 20% under with maybe ~35% support?
He’s lost all the Trump-curious indies and is down to his core 40%. Zero growth. He has not added a single voter. Nothing but loss since day one. But it’s a slow, stubborn decline. We need to see that 40% crack, but what we’re seeing in special elections simultaneously with the top line numbers is what appears to be a collapse in enthusiasm – turnout. Most MAGAts will go to their graves claiming everything was great, no mistakes, Donald Jesus Trump. But that stubbornness is not the same thing as enthusiasm.
@Michael Reynolds:
The most recent yougov had him at 36%, down from 40% the previous reading. That is a pretty abrupt 4% drop.
@Jen:
It sure didn’t happen in the 2017-18 period. Back then the debate was whether Dem overperformance in seats they didn’t flip meant anything. We’re not having that debate anymore.
@Rick DeMent: @Michael Reynolds: It’s often forgotten the original context of his “shooting someone on 5th Avenue” remark. He said it during the 2016 primaries, at which point he he held the support of only about a third of the Republican primary electorate. In a large and divided field with winner-take-all primaries, that was enough to propel him to the nomination. It wasn’t until nearly three months in that he won an absolute majority in a state (his home state of NY), and that was the exact point when his remaining rivals (Cruz and Kasich) became mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination on the first ballot.
The remark has since taken on a life of its own (it’s honestly one of the more clever things he has ever said, assuming he came up with the line himself, which I do not assume), and it has never been perfectly accurate. What most people seem to mean when they reference the quote is the idea that his core base (who have never made up a majority or even plurality of voters) never abandons him no matter what happens, no matter what new scandal arises that supposedly would have destroyed any previous candidate. He also seems to have a relatively high floor when measured by historical standards. He’s never hit the 20s in approval. Several past presidents have.
What is new about his approval during his second term is that he never before has had bad numbers on the economy, not even during Covid, which in a certain sense was a blessing for him because it provided him with an excuse for the tanking economy in 2020. He no longer has that excuse, and he’s done just about everything to let the public connect the bad economic numbers in their mind with his concrete policies, notably the tariffs and the Iran invasion. He thinks he can Jedi-mind-trick the public into thinking the economy is thriving, which was never likely to work, he just has never needed to resort to this tactic before when it came to the economy. We may come to see that his high floor was always an illusion, more a result of circumstance than anything inherent to his coalition.
The current “coalition” is:
1. People who don’t go anywhere. They’re immune to gas prices and airport security problems. Mostly olds, but also just very insular people.
2. The extremely rich. They’re immune to gas prices and have ways around airport security problems.
3. Straight-up bigots. They will find a way to blame everything on Those People before they’ll blame a rich white guy who’s obviously causing them harm.
Once Trump was elected and saw that he could get insanely rich with impunity, the rest of his “coalition” didn’t matter. Heck, he doesn’t even need his MAGA base anymore. There’s more cash to squeeze and he’s unlikely to ever face consequences.
Even if Republicans get mopped in the midterms, the strength of party politics over public service means he’s never being removed. The only danger is that he’ll have to find a patsy to break the law when he signs bills that say “the president can’t steal money from orphanages.”
@ptfe:
If the Democrats take both the House and Senate, El Taco will be impeached every other week.
Surprisingly he’s been aware of this from he start. So he’s doing all he can to steal the midterms.
Perhaps I am trying to solve a problem that no one is really interested in solving, but rather than send untrained ICE agents to “assist” TSA, why don’t they deputize the TSA force into ICE and then pay them with ICE money (of which there is way too much).
On lighter matters, I finished re-reading the Technomage Trilogy for maybe the fifth time.
I highly recommend it for Babylon 5 fans. But it’s hard to even describe the story without the massive spoiler. So I’ll skip the story.
It shows a lot of what Technomages can do and how, although their abilities kind of follow the most powerful force in the universe: the plot. We do learn why they are “subtle and quick to anger.”
In the series we saw the Technomages only once, in the episode The Geometry of Shadows in season 2. And only one of them, Elric, even has any lines. In Crusade, for those who remember it existed, a Technomage, Galen, is part of the main cast. The books center on him, and we learn Elric is his teacher. And there are Several other mages. One can try and decipher their names now and then. one who appears only briefly is named Maskelyne, which I assume is in reference to Jasper Maskelyne, who had a most unusual career for a professional stage magician.
BTW, there are two other B5 trilogies. One about the Psi Corps (which I never re-read), and one about Londo and Vir in between the end of the fifth season and the glimpse of Londo’s future Sheridan caught in War Without End (this one I’ve re-read).
@Kathy: He doesn’t care about impeachment, he cares about wealth, and he’s not going to removed. The GOP Congress is giving tacit approval to the ongoing corruption, and most of the House and Senate Republicans are trying to wet their beaks too. Trump is giving them access to wealth they never thought they’d have – they will not risk moving to Vance.
I think his effort with the election is all about maintaining the money streams, because he knows an oppositional Congress will turn off a lot of them.
@charontwo:
It was actually Reuters/Ipso poll, here:
“JPEG“
@ptfe:
Of course he cares about it. It’s got nothing to do with whether they’ll ever have the votes to remove him (they won’t, and he knows it). Have you not yet noticed he’s got the largest ego ever recorded in the history of our planet?
There are too many individuals to count who only care about amassing and retaining wealth, and could not care less about how the public sees them. Trump is not in that category, not by a long shot.
@Joe: Good thought, sound reasoning, which is of course why it will never be considered. Instead TFI (That F**king Idiot) is talking about sending the National Guard to the airports. That would mean stressed, shorthanded TSA agents will get to watch both ICE and Guardsman get paid to stand around and do nothing because they are not trained to do anything that would speed up or shorten the lines.
@Joe:
And give up their assault weapons? ( pry from my cold dead hands)
just a idle observation after having to stand in TSA line at Fort Lauderdale Sunday morning from 5:30 to 7:30 am.
It would seem that the airlines know exactly how many tickets have been sold for departures. But if they don’t coordinate with TSA to attempt to staff the ID check podiums for the period of 2 hours before scheduled departures, TSA ID checks will be bottlenecked and then take hours to get back to a reasonable queue time.
The same applies to the airlines themselves, they know how many passengers will be arriving at the Allegiant baggage counter for a 6:30 flight, and yet only have one person staffing the counter before 7:00 am. So the baggage checkin causes an initial bottleneck, that then gets passed on to overwhelm TSA, who are trying to contend with surge setup by the airline counter.
(BTW, I timed maybe a dozen of so passengers going through TSA ID podiums, average time was 25 seconds. Sometimes it took longer for the passenger to get released from the cattle chutes get to the agent then it took the agent to approve the ID. Meanwhile the “x-ray” and personal screening was fast and easy. There were no ICE/ERO agents, only sheriffs deputies trying to keep passengers on the sidewalks and not spilling into the street and/or blocking vehicular traffic outside the terminal – which was pretty well blocked up with cars anyways)
California Democrats at Risk of Being Shut Out of Governor’s Race
C’mon. Who wants to tell me I’m still overracting? Primary is June 2, and, as of now, all 8 Dems will be on the ballot.
None of these 8 Democratic assholes is going to exit the race, and Steve Hilton, mostly likely, given the current numbers, will be the next Governor of California.
I was told not to worry. Because of course the Dems would see the issue, and enough would drop out to make sure a GOP candidate didn’t win. Right?
Fucking idiots.
@Kylopod:
This. And this Gilded Age economy — along with the Trumpstein Files coverup (which it turns out did matter a lot), deadly anti-immigrant extremism, and warmongering foreign policy incompetence — is behind the increasing lack of enthusiasm among the 37-42% who still (claim to) approve, as Reynolds noted.
It’s a problem for Republicans that Trump disapprovers very strongly disapprove, while approvers just kinda somewhat approve.
When is a stubborn 40% is not really 40%? When the response to “Do you approve?” is more “I guess so” than “Hell yeah.”
This intensity gap is made manifest in the opposition now competing in and flipping R+15 districts. Hence why MAGA is now all in on voter suppression and ballot theft — they see even the Senate slipping away under a Blue Tsunami.
The payment date is rapidly approaching on this Faustian bargain Republicans made reorganizing itself around an unqualified narcissistic pedophile’s cult of personality. What happens when the cult is lukewarm on its leader, a historically unpopular lame duck with rotting skin? Republicans were already at a loss on how to turn out Trump voters without Trump on the ticket. They ain’t showing up in 2026. I have doubts they’ll vote en force for JD Cheney, Ron DeFascist, or Lil Marco.
@EddieInCA: I have spent some time around Tom Steyer and Antonio Villaraigosa, worked briefly for both. I’m mystfied that either is polling above 0%. Neither would be a good governor, and I’m not speaking as a disgruntled former employee. Steyer was a generous boss. But governor? Why?
@DK: Sure, but the next question is how do they feel about Democrats? Anyway, my sense is that even the true believers have occasional bouts of conscience that may affect approval ratings. However, they always revert to form so I dont expect that any deviation from 40% will be more than temporary. Then when you ask if they instead support Democrats you wont get many as they truly believe Dems are out to destroy the country.
Steve
@DK:
I knew Xavier Becerra and Antonio Villaragosa back in the day. Both good public servants. Both have no current constituency looking for them to run. And don’t even get me started on Betty Yee and Matt Mahan. As it stands, I’m fully expecting Hilton to be elected.
It will be the biggest self-own in the history of US politics.
@steve222:
This year at least, it doesn’t appear that question matters very much electorally.
Democrats’ latest victory in deep-red Mar-a-Lago district offers bleak midterm forecast (The Blaze)
MAGA media is alarmed.
@EddieInCA:
On that score, nothing will top what the American middle class did to itself in the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections, apologies to 2000 and 1980. But point taken with the caveat that California would survive.
A Republican governor of California would be a lame duck on day one and quickly forced into compromise, due to the ultra liberal California assembly — which itself is often comically out-of-touch, hubristically misfocused, and could use a reality check, quite frankly. See Schwarzenegger, Arnold, and Hogan, Larry and Romney, Mitt for applicable antecedents. Hilton wouldn’t be taking California to war with Iran, or having a masked police force murder San Diegans.
@EddieInCA:
When’s the deadline for most of them to see reason and drop out?
As I’ve said before, they probably all agree 6 or 7 of them should drop out of the race. They also all agree it should be the others and not them.
The curse of the weak parties continues…
For the most part what you said DK. An I the only lower middle class Californian that is not overly stressed that our next Governor will probably be a Republican?
My understanding is that one of the primary reasons folks like DeSantis gets his way most of the time is that most of the politicians in FL provide little to no pushback.
Hilton will definitely get pushback from the many liberals in Sacramento. Honestly, I wish these same liberals displayed a bit more pushback towards Newsom, as I think CA would be in a better place if that were the case
Pliant liberal or GOP politicians that let the Governor of their respective states enact what laws they want to put into action really is a problem that bedevils both liberal and GOP leaning citizens.
It might even turn out to be a real benefit to the U.S. to show everyone that CA is a state that does not reflexively crush any and all dreams of Californians who are not liberal or progressive.
I know that some folks here might call me hopelessly naive and surprised by this post based on past views of mine expressed on this great site, or maybe not. I suspect I am far from the only long term Californian who feels this way. Let’s shake things up a bit in Sacramento, but also let’s not go too crazy.
@inhumans99:
I just thought to ask how fast a recall can be organized if the worst happens.
On other things, it seems I got really far ahead of my work. On Monday I thought there wouldn’t be enough time to finish three technical and economic proposals by the 25th. I finished them yesterday. It looks like I might leave at quitting time today, and maybe not have to come in on the weekend.
@EddieInCA: This seems like an appropriate time to start worrying.
Jungle primaries are amazingly dumb, and if this all leads to a fiasco with two Republicans on the ballot in the general, and that makes everyone else get rid of their jungle primaries, I think it will be a small price to pay (as someone who doesn’t live in California, and just gets to point and laugh)
As Star Trek Academy is now cancelled, and the anti-hate industry* is crowing, I think it’s a fine time to add my thoughts on how Star Trek has been handling diversity.
The next shows need to have a few straight white men in major roles. Discovery had none from Season 3 on, and Academy has a supporting character (the Doctor from Voyager, who is a hologram).
The amazing, utopian future that Star Trek shows shouldn’t just be that a black woman can be a Captain, or a Klingon can be gay, but also that a straight white man can work happily alongside them and consider them equals and not even think about it. I know that seems unrealistic, but it is a utopian fantasy showing a world to aspire to.
It’s also the exact vision of the future that the anti-woke hate industry really fears most.
(Strange New Worlds has had to struggle from the opposite direction, as it’s a lot of white legacy characters — I think they did a fine job in the circumstances, although it gets less diverse as they introduce more characters like Scotty)
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*: it really is an industry, stoking hate for clicks before even seeing the various shows and movies. They don’t even pretend to have any real criticisms. Apparently, the upcoming Supergirl movie will be a failure since it has the same exact runtime as Captain Marvel did.
@inhumans99:
My take is Sacramento pushes back on Slick Gavin, but on the wrong things. Por ejemplo, the assembly did nothing when Newsom canceled a chunk of the high-speed rail project, with the absurd excuse there’s too great a distance between San Fran and L.A.
Sacramento and Newsom are simpatico on lefty messaging crap that doesn’t improve Californians’ daily lives: like Newsom’s attempt to punish Chick-fil-A for the owner’s homophobic donations, or the assembly wasting time passing bills forcing corporate boards meet diversity quotas and defending such laws in courts (they lost).
Neither Newsom nor our legislators have been laser-focused on what Cali actually needs: a rollback of its bureaucratic regulatory abyss, sprung of well-meaning ideals but ultimately counterproductive. The regulatory nightmare they’ve created has catered to niche socialist-green lobbyists, made building and innovative entrepreneurship a nightmare for all but rich kids, and hampered the state’s ability to respond deftly to acute emergencies — like empty reservoirs due to drought, or the sudden surge in post-COVID homelessness, or Trumpist electoral shenanigans.
California’s jungle primary itself, and its (now-neutered) nonpartisan redistricting, are two other examples of how well-meaning bleeding-heart liberalism backfires when battling the cutthroat capitalist-fascist alliance.
To his credit, Newsom has spent the past 3-4 years trying to correct this, though I suspect that’s more about 2028 ambition than good governance on behalf of Californians. Unfortunately, this where he receives pushback from the assembly, because there’s too many limousine-liberal performatively fake-woke bureaucrats and Berniecrats in Sacramento.
I don’t want to see a Republican governor in California; the pedo Nazi party should not be rewarded with such a prize. I’m supporting Swallwell because the candidate who would make the best governor (Mahan) cannot win.
But since a Republican governor’s hands would be tied here, I wouldn’t mind to the extent it would rebuke and constrain Sacramento’s selfishness and clueleness. They need to cut the progressiver-than-thou grandstanding and pass laws to help build housing, charger stations, housing, mass transit, housing, shelter beds, and housing.
Fatso’s DOJ has gifted Mike Flynn, an admitted felon, $1.2M.
When Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which he was defeated, Flynn shared a statement calling on Trump to suspend the Constitution and hold a new election under military authority. Now he’s been rewarded for that crap.
The new season of Daredevil wonderfully evokes Trump, with Wilton Fisk, but smarter.
ETA: The Kingpin. If you know, you know.
Afroman had his door kicked in by cops looking for drugs. He made a funny video about it using his security camera footage. The sheriffs sued. They just lost. And because I saw that story I have now also seen, Lemon Poundcake.
Paging Ms. Streisand.
Good News, Everyone! Meta (aka Fakebook) and Youtube were found liable “for deliberately designing addictive products that hooked a young user and led to her being harmed”
And this is the second adverse ruling for Meta (aka Fakebook) There was another one in New Mexico a few days ago, with a more substantial penalty.
@Gustopher:
I’ll ask again: Saru?
I doubt a token straight white guy will appease the haters. after all, he will treat all others as equals.
Captain Marvel was pretty good. The Marvels on the other hand….