Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, May 13, 2024
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29 comments
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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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@OzarkHillbilly:
I think it important nothing interferes with him giving an acceptance speech at the RNC convention, which I assume (or hope) will get broadcast unfiltered.
There appears to be an unwritten rule of political discussions: Voters are never at fault. I’m not quite sure how this came about, but instead of simply stating what is obvious (at least, obvious to me), that MTG’s reelection says something about the character and morals of of the voters in her Congressional district, there must always be other reasons. The most common is that in this partisan era her district is a safe Republican one. But all that means is that the Primary becomes the de facto election, and there are choices in the primary, as everyone there is a Republican. So it speaks volumes about her district that the most politically engaged people truly want her over any other Republican candidate*. People who are thinking to move there and businesses who are thinking to invest there should take that into account.
*I don’t actually know if she was primaried, but if she wasn’t, all it means is that potential opponents took the measure of the primary electorate and decided she was unbeatable with them.
Six years ago I posted this comment on FB on a Rotten Tomatoes list noting Chinatown as #47 of 200 Essential Movies to Watch Now.
Today someone named Robert Towne gave my remark a “Like”.
@OzarkHillbilly: @charontwo:
I suppose it’s considerably easier to escape if you’re on a beach rather than trapped in a convention hall. I’m surprised Trump hasn’t deployed guards to keep people in the fold.
Michael Cohen has taken the stand in the hush money trial.
@MarkedMan:
Of course it’s about the character of the people. That’s what’s so depressing. The American people are failing their own country.
@MarkedMan:
Speaking for myself, I would say the problem isn’t that voters are not at fault, it is that assessing collective action is complicated.
I do stand by the notion that an R voter in MTG’s district (even one who finds her personally problematic) is still not irrational in voting for her because they are voting for an R majority in the House. Voting for a D, even one they may find less crazy is reasonably seen as against their interests.
And while maybe somebody should pony up the time and treasure to unseat her in the primary, the incentive for the party as an organization is to use its limited resources elsewhere.
The notion that voters get what they deserve only truly works under a different set of conditions.
@MarkedMan: And to be clear, the primary electorate does have serious responsibility for a lot of these outcomes. Moreso, in my view, than the general electorate.
But the primaries themselves become a collective action problem.
The reality is that MTG won a contested primary to first gain her seat because that’s who the Republican voters wanted. She continues to win or avoid primaries because they are satisfied with her being their representative
@Michael Reynolds:
Having said the above, let me say that I agree with this sentiment to a degree.
I agree that it should be far more obvious than it appears to be to millions of my fellow citizens that Trump is unfit for office.
But I continue to refuse to blame “the American people” because when given the chance, the majority of them keep voting against him. This is why I continually rail against our institutions. And I think that blaming all of us gives the institutions a break and continues to make it all the harder (and yes, it is very hard) to change them.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Like paying for someone’s legal bills.
Primary challenges are heavily discouraged. Even in a safe D or R seat, party officials fear a challenging primary will weaken the winner when the general election comes up.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I agree. But “Some, nearly half, of the American People” is legitimate.
FWIW my original point is about what can be judged of individual Congressional districts, not the entire nation. So that “some” in their case is “70%”
@MarkedMan and Steven L. Taylor: There is another article up at the Bulwark talking about whether the Republicans will hold Congress. Whenever I see these articles, my thought is no one is voting for what party holds Congress or the Senate. People are voting for their Congress member or their Senator. I don’t think about what Mike Johnson or Hakeem Jeffries does when I vote for my Congress member. I just think do I want her or do I want a Democrat/Republican.
@Joe: FWIW, I definitely think about control of the senate or house when I’m deciding who to vote for. The presumed Maryland Republican Senate Candidate checks a lot of boxes for me but he won’t be getting my vote, and that is a big part of the reason.
@MarkedMan: @Steven L. Taylor:
I don’t just blame the Nazis, I also blame the French for lack of unity and outdated tactics. Or to put it in football terms, it isn’t just the offense, it’s also the defense. Want to tell me why campuses explode over Gaza and remain silent on abortion, voter rights and trans rights?
I think you can make the pragmatic case that there isn’t much use in holding the voters responsible since there isn’t much you can do about it, but they still bear a lot of responsibility. Changing the institution, stuff like gerrymandering, electoral college would certainly help but you would still have almost half the country supporting a clearly unfit candidate.
The one institution that probably does bear undue responsibility would be media, using that term broadly. It is possible to live in a bubble where you hear only what you want to hear, so the fanatics become even more radicalized. But even if you are not overly interested in politics like most people but you have a life long preference for one party you are probably getting your news info from biased sources which tilt you further to the right or left then you might be inclined to do if you had better, more accurate info. At this point in time the media on the right is much more out of whack and is really oriented towards the low brow/conspiracy spreading type of news and political info sources. In that sense maybe the voters arent so much responsible, but there are neutral sources of info and they clearly dont seek those out so the voters arent totally innocent.
Steve
I read a great new name for Trump yesterday:
The Cantaloupe Caligula
Trump told Michael Cohen that it would be easy to replace Melania:
http://www.rawstory.com/trump-women-will-hate-me/
@Michael Reynolds:
Columbia already divested from wire coat hanger manufacturers?
@Steven L. Taylor:
Not reasonably seen if they’re voting against Demoncrats because they’re communofascist pedophiles who want to destroy the country by making everyone wear masks.
Seems to me voter/institution is very much chicken/egg. GOP voters believe nonsense because FOX tells them nonsense, so it’s FOX’s fault. But FOX’s business model is to tell people what they want to hear, so it’s the voters’ fault. Same with FTFNYT. They did more to elect Trump than even James Comey by endlessly pushing emailBenghaziFoun-dation, so it’s their fault. But they did it for the clicks, so it’s the readers’ fault.
As you said somewhere above, the goal of root cause analysis should be to identify solutions, not to lay blame. There are incremental changes like smaller House districts and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. My pet reform is to cut out some of the money. But the electorate isn’t going to get any smarter, or more engaged, and the press doesn’t look to be getting much more interested in courageous truth telling.
Lead poisoning apparently caused Beethoven’s deafness and gastrointestinal problems, an analysis has revealed.
@Gustopher:
Don’t know but I hear Joan Crawford did.
@CSK: I just call him “Spanky” these days, with a nod to Ms. Daniels.
@gVOR10: The need for there to be one and only one person/group at fault is a human trait, but it’s non productive. As is the need to define every action or mechanism as entirely good or entirely bad.
@Tony W: With the full diapers, that’s gotta make a squishy sound.
@MarkedMan:
With a nod to today’s two polling OPs, if a pollster asks if you’ll vote for or against Representative Overstreet, people who never heard of Rep. Overstreet suddenly have a firm opinion as to whether she’s good or bad. And this impulse to take a binary position is of a piece with the widespread inability to grok probability. “What do you mean 28% chance Trump will win? He will or he won’t”
Via Balloon Juice, Dahlia Lithwick has a piece at Slate, How Originalism Ate the Law
Lithwick recounts how in Trump v. Anderson, the case on whether CO could keep Trump off the ballot, liberals piled history on top of history, and lost.
The Koch Bros. set out to decades ago to buy the courts and they’ve been tremendously successful.
@Steven L. Taylor:
There are not enough upvotes for this!
And even when it comes to “people who vote for the candidate we think is a danger to democracy” (and let’s face it, whether or not you agree with the framing, both parties are framing their opponent that way) it really comes down to a subset of a subset–i.e. 51% of the supporters in solid states and in a few key competitive swing states. And ultimately, that is not a healthy system for running a democracy.
If you lose an election by 74 electoral votes and by 7 million+ popular votes the problem is you Private Citizen Donald Trump.