Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, October 24, 2022
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35 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a 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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Dr. T bait.
How Political Primaries Drive Britain’s Dysfunction
Rishi Sunak has been chosen as the new British prime minister.
Ethan Crumbley, the 16-year-old Oxford, Michigan school shooter, has pled guilty to all 24 counts against him.
Madam Speaker has this to say about the Benito Jan 6 subpoena:
“I don’t think his lawyers will want him to show up because he has to testify under oath. We’ll see if he’s man enough to show up,” Pelosi said.
The second sentence strikes me as sexist, but not wrong. She also calls the Cheeto a liar. Yes, that’s even more self evident than a thunderbolt, but that’s not the point.
@Kathy:
Pelosi was goading Trump on the manliness issue. Didn’t she repeat it twice, just to make sure she got the message across?
@Sleeping Dog:
There are some mistakes in Fisher’s account.
The Labour Party extended leadership votes beyond MP’s from 1981 on; constituency parties were required to ballot rather from 1989; and unions were required to ballot after IIRC 1993; but operated through an electoral college which was complicated.
Shifted to pure one member, one vote in 2015.
Also, I think there are some other parties that elect leaders by internal membership vote.
CDU in Germany (non binding), Socialist Party in France,
And UK Conservative local parties don’t usually hold a primary as such, just a vote of a local party meeting, or even just leave it to the local executive committee.
The big difference between the US and Europe, including the UK, is that the state has no say in how parties select their leaders (except in Germany: for historical reasons, the legal power is assigned to a delegate conference).
Parties are private associations who manage their own internal affairs.
There is also no equivalent to the US tradition of being a publicly registered party supporter; explain that to an average Briton or European and watch their jaws bounce off the floor.
Primaries, if held at all, whether for MPs or leaderships, are strictly for party members, (who generally pay a subscription).
The big difference this makes is that it is much easier for parties to weed out entryists: e.g. the Labour Party purges of communists and trotskyite militants.
From what I can see, it is very difficult to impossible for an American party to exclude and discipline supporters.
One big problem for the Conservatives has been the development of a rather porous boundary between it and UKIP, especially as with the decline in mass memberships, parties can rather over-eager to welcome new members.
So, I got done with What If? 2 sooner than I expected. I’ve moved to “Make Room, Make Room” by Harry Harrison, the novel that Soylent Green is based on. Two chapters in, no mention’s been made of Soylent Green, though someone does eat something called Soylent steaks.
Random notes.
The other day when talking about paper books, I was reminded of two books I read in the 80s, which I was stupid enough to give back to the people who loaned them to me when I was done.
One was an anthology of science fiction stories written by scientists.I forget most of the authors involved, but I think one was by Julian Huxley, a biologist and brother of the author of Brave New World.
The other was a collection of science fiction stories from Soviet writers. Again, I forget the authors, but I recall three of the stories rather well. Two of them can be seen as anti-American propaganda, too, though one fails to identify the country whose defense department is based at a place called The Polygon (wink!)
Meanwhile… Xi Jinping has been crowned Emperor.
Excerpt from Bob Woodward’s audiotapes of Trump:
Trump: I get people. They come up with ideas. But the ideas are mine, Bob. The ideas are mine.
Woodward: And then?
Trump: Want to know something? Everything is mine.
@Mu Yixiao:
This will work out as well for China as Putin and his cabal has for Russia.
A fairly regular topic of discussion here is Dem messaging. Here’s something to chew on from Charlie Sykes, Morning Shots, over at the Bulwark.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-24/california-poised-to-overtake-germany-as-world-s-no-4-economy
Every time I think of leaving permanently, something like this bring me back.
Yes. We have crime.
Yes. We have homelessness.
Yes. We have traffic.
Yes. It’s too hot some months.
Yes. We don’t have any water.
But… somehow our economy, with all those liberals, illegal immigrants, gang-bangers, homeless people in the mix, keeps humming along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ53_yJ7tKw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcADqxnQA_4
@Sleeping Dog: Yep. Which leaves a huge door open for Republicans to drum in the message that: “Biden hasn’t done anything–we understand your challenges.”
Which is why all over rural NH there are signs up that read “Protect your wallet–vote Republican” and “Fight inflation–vote Republican.”
If the number of signs up is any indication, Dems are going to get walloped in NH on Nov. 8. I’m actually becoming a bit alarmed.
@Jen:
Is it possible Don Bolduc could beat Maggie Hassan?
@CSK: I don’t think so. The Republican Senate campaign arm has pulled out of NH. I think (?) Sen. Hassan is okay. I do worry that Chris Pappas has more of a race on his hands than he should, but mostly I am worried about the state rep/state senate races.
We have on the ballot a measure that would allow for a convention to amend the state’s constitution. I’m extremely wary of a situation wherein we end up with overwhelming numbers of Republicans at the state level–many of whom are in reality Libertarians–who would then have an outsized impact on amendments to the state’s constitution.
They seem to be having trouble finding impartial jurors in the Trump Org. tax evasion trial, because everybody in Manhattan freely admits to hating Donald’s guts.
Justice Thomas has thrown Sen. Lindsey Graham a temporary lifeline.
By all appearances the full court will weigh in on this.
@Jen:
One thing I’ve noticed since coming back here, is that Rs always win the lawn sign election. As far as Pappas is concerned, since Porter beat Bradley the district has flipped each election, except in Prez years. After redistricting the 1st is slightly more R than before, but that won’t be the determining factor. That will be turnout and Dems have an issue with that because a large chunk of Dem voters are in Durham, Dover and Portsmouth and that group tends only to vote in Prez years, so yes Chris could be in trouble. I’ve not seen any recent polling, so who knows.
On another note, in the second dist, Cook moved that from leans Dem to likely Dem.
No idea on the state house. Dems should have kept it in 2020, but the dreaded under vote hurt them.
A school shooting in StL 3 dead
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/two-students-injured-shooting-saint-louis-school-rcna53715
@Sleeping Dog: Oh, for sure second district is likely Dem, I think redistricting made it slightly more Democratic, I haven’t been worried about Kuster, just Pappas.
Signs can be a proxy for voter enthusiasm, and we have neighbors who have never bothered to put signs up who now have Republican state rep signs in their yard. It’s stuff like that, that is concerning to me.
I’m wondering if anyone else here posts from an iPad and, if so, have they been getting an error message? I’ve been getting it consistently for a few days, but not on my iPhone, Mac or PC.
I just upgraded to iPad OS 16.1, so we will see if that helps.
@MarkedMan: [Posting from my PC] It looks like that comment made it through but gave me the error message (something about a header being too long) and let me continue editing. I added something, posted again and got the same error. But it looks like that one didn’t come through.
@EddieInCA:
We updated one of those for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNggrPAi5dg
I don’t think there are any House remixes of Randy Newman though… Probably for the best.
Latest on the “European energy crisis” that Russia was hoping would collapse the economies of its opponents.
(And also a focus of many an ultra-MAGA fantasy, should you run across them on social media)
Also the weather continues to be mild in most of Europe.
e.g.So far in English Midlands only one slight frost; temperatures in East Anglia expected to be around 20C later this week.
Continent now has sufficient gas in storage to last three months average winter consumption if there was zero other supply. Not just the Russian overland pipes that are still in use, but also zero North Sea, Romania, LNG from the USA, N. Africa and the Gulf, etc.
Which is probably a good thing, given the suspicious Russians being caught sneaking around the energy infrastructure.
@MarkedMan: I often comment on an iPad. Every year or three I get that “header” message. I’ve only ever seen it when commenting on OTB. I have to go to Settings>Safari> scroll down and tap Clear History and Website Data. That does what it says. It should clear the fault message but it will also wipe some automatic logins. For a few weeks after I have to manually log in to WAPO, NYT, and some other stuff. And remember that my IT advice is always worth what you paid for it.
Speaking of losing elections, Tim Miller at the Bulwark has some advice for Democrats:
http://www.thebulwark.com/democrats-need-to-know-what-time-it-is/
@EddieInCA:..California Dreamin’…
I’m sure they are wanting peace in our times:
Liberal Democrats call on Biden to shift Ukraine strategy
Much as I hate to risk restarting yesterday’s chicken/egg discussion of words v ideas or something, I have to reply to James. I mentioned GOPs substituting “climate change” for “global warming”. James objected,
Per skepticalscience.com
I’ll stand by my point. Republicans paid effing Frank Luntz to tell them to say “climate change” instead of “global warming”. That they did so is testament to how much power they think words have.
@JohnSF: Commenting on my phone so no link – but several off shore French cables have been severed last few days. Add that to the Faroe Island possible sabotage. Far as I can tell, total silence on the German railroad interruption.
Worth paying attention to.
@Kathy: That SF by scientists book really rang a, uh, faint bell. I think I owned it back then. Is this it?
https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fiction-Stories-Greatest-Scientists/dp/0917657675
The paperback cover doesn’t look familiar, but Greenberg being the editor sounds like it could be what I’m thinking of. The hardcover one looks more right.
@reid:
I did a quick search earlier today, and ran across other titles with the same subject matter.
Further search yielded the one I remember.
It’s amazing that reading the titles, I remembered some of the stories.
Found it on Amazon, too.
@Kathy: I saw that one, too. Being from the ’60s, it’s not the one I bought. I imagine they’re both interesting books.
@Kathy: We used the one you read in the SF Literature class I took as an undergrad for physics credit (looooooong story). It was the only work that I read most of the assignments for.
Some years later, I used The Gostak and the Doshes as part of a lesson that I taught several times about background information, reading, and interpretation in both college and pre-college level writing classes I taught.