Welcome to July Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, July 1, 2021
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71 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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July marks the beginning my 7th year cancer free. Diagnosed stage IV colon cancer 10.2011.
AND I got HL92 to laugh and listen to Zappa yesterday.
All in all, life’s pretty darned good.
Congrats, definitely worth celebrating.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Great!
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Definitely worth celebrating. Congrats!
Well, he will. Or he won’t. Or, most likely, he’s lying about having made up his mind:
http://www.nypost.com/2021/06/30/trump-has-made-a-decision-on-whether-to-run-in-2024/
Whatever his decision is, he won’t reveal it till the absolute last possible minute.
Gov. Parson unsure if Kevin Strickland is innocent. Here’s why prosecutors say he is
But Parson is unsure.
@CSK: The only reason I can think of for his reticence is that the announcement would mean the end of his relevance.
@OzarkHillbilly:
But don’t forget that one of his great pleasures in life is jerking people around. And his fans love being jerked around by him.
Happy Trump Org Indictment Day, everyone.
Good article on the long-term effect of the condo collapse: The Dream of Florida Is Dead
The Miami condo collapse is a crisis for the entire state.
Word of the day:
From a review of the “film” Sex/Life on Netflix.
@sam: That was my first thought a couple of days ago. The financial risk of being a Condo owner. I think I read that the 2019 engineer’s report indicated that about $15M in repairs needed to be done. That is a big assessment to be placed on the owners, especially if they are retirees. Plus it would hurt resale, assuming disclosure.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Great news!!!
@CSK:
If he announces a run, then most of his fund raising activities and expenses from those funds becomes subject to a stricter set of campaign finance regs, therefore limiting the opportunity for graft.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well it is the “Show Me” state
@Scott:
The simpering that you hear from Florida, isn’t just the family and friends of the missing and deceased, but the thousands of other condo owners who just realized that their condo values have cratered.
Half the building still stands, but is uninhabitable, watching to see if the property insurance companies payoff in those units will be interesting. It is not hard to imagine some insurer denying a claim because the collective property owners didn’t maintain the building.
@Sleeping Dog: Not any more, now it’s the “I’ll show you!” state.
My dad owned a small business and knew he wouldn’t get much of anything from social security once he had to retire so his big idea was to buy two condos in Ft. Meyers and rent them out to snowbirds. Now I’m wondering, when my mom passes and I inherit one of them, if it’ll be worth a dollar.
@Flat Earth Luddite: congrats!
@Sleeping Dog:
Bingo.
I don’t think he really wants to win another election any more than he did the first*. You can’t win an election you don’t run in, therefore he may spend three years fundraising for a run and never run. He’ll get the adulation and the money, and none of the oversight or scrutiny.
* his one big reason to run is to prove he can win a second term, rather than stay a one-term loser. he may also get it in his head that he can direct the executive branch to uncover all the fictitious fraud he claims took place. So i won’t discount a real run.
If he does run again and loses, that would be sweet.
@sam: I’m feeling very sympathetic towards the condo board, who are probably looking towards tons of lawsuits. It doesn’t look like they did anything unreasonable; they were working towards fixing the building, had done the cat-herding necessary to get the funding approved, etc.
I was on our condo board for several years and it’s always the same: everyone is always whining about the cost of the assessments and also always whining about the level of services/maintenance of the building. Too many Americans want champagne accommodations on a crappy-beer budget. And everyone is indignant as hell when they discover that BUILDINGS need to be maintained and will otherwise disintegrate. (Our “high monthly assessments” are because we’re determined to not have to have any “special assessments” at any point and we know that our less-than-50-units condo is looking towards a $100K outlay to replace the roof in about 15 years. Gotta put the cash aside, guys….)
@OzarkHillbilly:
It always comes down to the projection of racists absolutely terrified they’ll be on the other end of the hate stick soon. All the misery, suffering and injustice they spread around would be heaped on their heads and they’ll be treated as subhuman like they view others. In their minds it’s not “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”; it’s “do to others what you fear they’ll do to you if they got they chance”. If someone were beating them down with a stick, they fantasize they’d rise up and strike back at their oppressors at any slip-up so why wouldn’t the folks they know they’re mistreat?
@Kathy: He’s doing exactly what Sarah Palin did in the run-up to 2012, and what Trump himself did in several election cycles prior to 2016. Teasing a run to line his pockets, then never following through. It’s why so many people didn’t take his 2016 run seriously; they weren’t just thinking he didn’t have a chance if he did run, they didn’t think he was actually running except as part of a grift, and if Michael Cohen’s testimony is accurate, then that’s how he himself viewed it at first.
@Kylopod:
If he doesn’t run, he’ll finally prove himself irrelevant. I wonder if he understands that.
On a related note, I’m rewatching Discovery, just about done with season 1.
If you recall the original Mirror Universe episode back in the 60s, “Mirror, Mirror,” Spock observed near the end that it’s easier for a civilized person to pass as a savage, than for a savage to pass off as civilized*.
I had this in mind while closely observing the Lorca character through the season, knowing who he actually is. I was very impressed. We don’t see much of his unrestrained mirror universe self, but I’d say he passed Spock’s Challenge with flying colors (he even came close to killing an enemy within Starfleet, without looking unreasonable in the process).
*I said the note was related.
Pelosi taps Cheney for Jan. 6 select committee
@Scott:
I assume Kinzinger will be on it, too.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Excellent!
@Kathy: My previous comment may not have been clear, but I was not making a prediction that Trump won’t run in 2024. I certainly think, if things stay on the same track they currently are, that he’ll be formidable if he does run. I’m just saying he hasn’t decided, and he’s going to milk it for what it’s worth up until the moment he has to decide.
In fact that’s probably his best shot at staying relevant. If he says definitively he’s not running, that would risk pushing him into irrelevance, but if he says he definitely is, it’ll risk boxing him in. Let’s say 2023 rolls around and he still hasn’t announced a run. This would ordinarily be the point when several Republicans consider whether to run. It’s inevitable no matter what that there’ll be at least one candidate claiming the anti-Trump mantle, but I’m talking about the ones who are trying to groom themselves as Trump successors, like DeSantis. Even if they decide to run, Trump’s possible entry into the race will hover over everything, and I bet a lot of these candidates will try to suggest they’ll bow out the moment Trump decides to enter, and imply what they’re really running for is Trump vp. Even if 2024 rolls around and the primaries begin in earnest and Trump still has not entered the race, the possibility of a sudden late entry by him will be constantly rumored.
In other words, Trump is the living embodiment of Hitchcock’s principle of the bomb under the table.
@Kylopod:
As I said, Trump will wait until the last possible moment to announce whether he’s running.
Apart from the pleasure he’ll take in jerking the other candidates around, it’ll keep him in the forefront of the news. He inhales attention the way the rest of us breathe air. Will he or won’t he…
@CSK:
Define “last possible moment.”
@Kylopod:
Oh, about a day or so before the deadline to get his name on the ballot in the first state to require it, which would (I think) be Alabama in early November, 2023.
I’m so glad pride month is over. I honestly don’t have a full month’s worth of pride about my sexuality — two weeks or so, tops, and then I’m just faking it.
@CSK: That’s fair. My point is that even after that deadline passes, he’ll still be teasing a run. After the primaries begin, rumors of a late entry by Trump will still be floating around. After the primaries end, the rumors will be that he’ll be anointed the nominee at the convention. After the convention officially nominates Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, the rumors will be that DeSantis will be replaced on the ticket by Trump, much like similar rumors about Trump being replaced after the Access Hollywood fiasco in Oct. 2016. After Election Day, regardless of who wins, the rumors will be that the electors will vote for Trump. And so on. And Trump himself will be doing everything he can to keep these rumors alive, every step of the way.
@sam: It isn’t just Florida, nor is it the coast between Palm Beach and Miami. The Panhandle, where I grew up, was once dominated by low-rise motels and small family-owned cottages. Guess what’s happened there over the last forty years? And parts of South Carolina are just as bad. Lots of folks are in for a rude awakening.
@grumpy realist:
One big problem with condo boards is that when a vote of the residents is called for, the majority of the owners just don’t respond at all, and the law currently treats a non-response as a “no” vote. This often combines with supermajority requirements to making it nearly impossible to do certain things.
Perhaps the laws governing condo associations need to be changed to resolve this problem.
@sam:
From the linked article:
One big problem that needs to be looked into: the way construction is done in a lot of places is a builder sets up a corporation for a particular building project, builds the project, and then liquidates the corporation. This creates an issue where is 10 years later it becomes obvious the builder didn’t do their job properly, the builder can rely on the corporate liability shield to never be held responsible for it.
@Kylopod:
That’s a depressing speculation on your part (will no one rid us of this turbulent churl?), but it has validity. The rumors of a Trump coronation (that’s what it will amount to, after all) will persist and be circulated among the hardest-core Trumpkins, and of course Trump will encourage them.
Of course those same very hardcore Trumpkins believe, or purport to believe, that Trump will be reinstated in August. Maggie Habermann claims Trump himself believes it, though this could be an attention-getting device. I do know that the Dept. of Homeland Security is very concerned about the possibility of violence if Trump isn’t reinstated, which of course isn’t going to happen.
@SC_Birdflyte:
I immediately thought of Myrtle Beach.
@CSK:
Prediction: Trump will announce he’s not running and will be choosing a successor, so he gets the endorphin rush of everyone coming to court to bend the knee. He will eventually name a chosen successor. When that named successor starts getting more attention than Trump, he’ll petulantly announce he’s changed his mind and try to get back into the race again.
@Stormy Dragon:
Why does he need to rule out running to produce the same effect? They’re all going to be bending the knee anyway, and (as I said earlier) just keeping the rumors of entering the race later on alive will be enough to reinforce their subservience. Eventually it’ll reach the point where the candidates themselves are privately taking it less seriously, but he can keep the charade going on for quite a while into the cycle.
@Kylopod:
Because no one is going to get into the race until they know he’s not, so there’s no need to come grovel.
@Kylopod:
After Biden wins a second term, or Harris her first, by defeating DeSantis or whomever, Trump will again cry the election was stolen.
If DeSantis or whomever wins, perish the thought, trump will claim he’ll abdicate in trump’s favor.
@Stormy Dragon:
Well, the successor would start siphoning off attention from Trump immediately, so he’d have to jump back in almost immediately.
If Trump weren’t so openly contemptuous of his eldest spawn, I’d think he’d want to appoint Donny Junior as his successor. Then all the MAGAs would assume he (meaning Lardass) was the real president.
@Stormy Dragon:
Sure they will–they’ll just make it clear (explicitly or otherwise) that they’ll drop out the moment Trump drops in, and he’ll give (explicit or tacit) approval to this strategy.
@Kylopod:
But what would be the point of saying “I’m running–but I’ll bow out the second Trump says he’s in”? No one would take whoever it was seriously, even the people who hate Trump.
Very slightly OT: As you probably know, DeSantis’s office has urgently requested that, in view of the condo collapse tragedy, Trump cancel his Sarasota rally this weekend. Trump has refused to do so. Is this Trump’s way of testing DeSantis’s loyalty, or, rather, the lengths DeSantis will go to to demonstrate that keeping Trump happy is more important to him than shepherding the state he governs through a disaster?
@CSK:
Of course they’d take them seriously–because they’d know that if Trump doesn’t run, one of those people will be the GOP nominee in 2024.
If your argument is that no one will respect such candidates because they’ve turned into a bunch of pathetic grovel-heads–well that ship sailed long ago. If everyone knows Trump definitively isn’t running, it’ll all be a contest on who’s the Trumpiest, and who Trump himself (assuming he’s still alive and alert) will ultimately choose. If Trump officially announces a candidacy early on, none of them will run (except maybe a couple of token anti-Trumpers who inevitably will get no traction) and the contest will then be over who will be Trump’s vp. By keeping the question open for as long as he can, he gets the best of both–and he keeps the Republicans on their feet because they’ll live in constant fear of what he might do next.
@Kylopod:
No, I was never arguing that people–at least the MAGAs–wouldn’t respect candidates for being pathetic grovelers.
What I was saying was that no one–particularly the MAGAs–will take DeSantis et al. seriously as candidates because they’ll be anticipating that Trump will announce that he’s running. DeSantis may be all well and good, and an acceptable substitute if Trump decides NOT to run…but he’s no Trump.
If the REAL THING continues to dangle the possibility of running before them, they’ll wait for the REAL THING. Accept no substitutes.
@CSK:
Of course. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The candidate who finally wins the nomination in this scenario will be a hollow shell in a party still devoted to Trump. If that candidate manages to win in the general, Trump will claim credit; if the candidate loses, Trump will say it was because voters wanted the real thing. Either way, it works in Trump’s favor–he gets to keep himself center stage without actually running.
And that’s exactly how the cult of Sarah Palin worked in the 2012 cycle, which helped cripple not just Romney, but the right-wing challengers who were in their varied ways trying to take up her mantle.
Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox
The essay that made Lina Khan famous.
@Kylopod:
Yeah, I keep having Palin flashbacks. I wonder how much Trump learned from her–not just about teasing a candidacy, but about how effective word salad, i.e. gibberish, can be. Not only can you deny saying something if that proves necessary, but your auditors can interpret your babble any way they choose.
And of course the Trumpkins are just Palinistas on steroids. I recall her fan club (Conservatives4Palin, now defunct) happily making hotel reservations in D.C. in October 2011 for her triumphal inauguration in January 2013.
@CSK:
So, the Orange ass cares not one bit if he damages “his” party while grifting large?
Must be one of those days than end in Y that were so popular last year.
@CSK:
It’s a good question, and one I’d actually be curious to investigate further. I do know from looking at old interviews that Trump wasn’t always quite as word-salady as he is now. It’s really in 2011 that you begin to see the Modern Trump emerge–the far-right, racist loon who “goes there” in a way no one else does. It’s true he had a racist past going back decades–a lot of us just weren’t paying attention–but for much of his career the persona he projected was just a variant on the standard Asshole Billionaire, if a good deal crasser than usual. Whether he was Republican, Democrat, independent, or Reform, that much was pretty consistent. (In fact when he ran for the Reform Party in 2000 he attacked Buchanan as a nativist bigot.) But in 2011 when he came out guns blazing as the leader of the birther movement–even though that movement predated him by years and he had previously praised Obama early into his presidency–that was the beginning, as the 2016 campaign was just a continuation of those same themes.
In terms of racism, Palin never went that far. She was still in old-fashioned dogwhistle territory–“real America.” She never overtly embraced birtherism (though she was among those crying “Release the birth certificate!” in the years before Obama released his long-form one, and in one interview she suggested the reason he was keeping it from public view was that it identified him as a Muslim). But her word salad and her habit of lying about easily verifiable things were very proto-Trumpian. And even though it may not have been explicitly racial, in an important way she established herself in 2008 as part of the white backlash against Obama, something which Trump from 2011 forward took control of. Other right-wingers in the 2012 cycle tried to capture some of that. You had Gingrich’s “food stamp president” comments which helped him win the SC primary, you had Michelle Bachmann who sometimes seemed like a direct Palin avatar. But Trump was not just able to take up Palin’s mantle successfully, but supersede it.
This is very good:
http://www.salon.com/2021/07/01/another-trump-henchman-takes-a-fall-why-trump-fans-still-wont-admit-that-loyalty-to-him-is-foolish/
Great observation: “Trump never explicitly asked them to avoid the shot, but that doesn’t matter. He made it clear that loyalty to him means pretending the virus is no big deal, so they refuse to take even this precaution against the deal.”
@Kylopod:
Quite so. Palin on steroids, as I say. The fact that he’s supposedly an alpha male, whereas Palin was a mere woman (albeit youngish and allegedly hot), probably helped bring a few more sheep into Trump’s fold.
@CSK: The weird thing, there is kind of a trope in conservative American culture of an alpha-female–I doubt they’d phrase it that way, but they seem to love their tough-talking, often firearm-wielding ladies. Actual strong, independent women like Hillary Clinton are demonized as butch lesbian man-haters, but they still engage in a sort of female machismo with their own female stars.
@Kathy:
Oh, really, Kathy. When did Trump ever give a shit about anyone but himself ever getting hurt. (I do realize you were bring faux-ingenuous.)
@Kylopod:
Yes, that is interesting, and it occurred to me as I was typing my response. Sure, conservative men purport to admire gun-totin’, tough-talkin’ ladies. But only if they can feel protective of them, and thus superior to them. Part of Palin’s appeal was that she was viewed by a lot of conservative men as a physically small woman. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, a true harridan, is 5’3″.
Over on Twitter Stephanie Ruhle is asking, what are the odds that this guy was getting money under the table and none of Trump’s kids were? Probably slim to none, and slim just left town.
Kurt Eichenwald is saying he’s read the indictments and if any of it is true the Trump organization could be unable to refinance any of their loans next year and have to declare bankruptcy.
@Teve:
Forbes says any bank that has lent the Trump Org. money will immediately call in its loans now that the organization has been indicted.
@CSK:
Palin was objectively hot, not allegedly hot. And had a common, attractive style.
However, she was such a vile person that pretty much everyone who was hot in the same way (the same basic physical type) lost a lot of hotness points because of that.
A lot of women on the left changed their hair, clothes, etc. anything to not look like her.
The personality that launched a million makeovers.
@Gustopher:
Pretty much boils down to the same thing.
Oh, boy. DeSantis is going to be in very deep shit with the Trumpkins. He praised Biden for his supportiveness.
This on top of DeSantis pleading with Trump to cancel his Sarasota rally, and Trump refusing to do so.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Yo zeeb. Great news! We’ll have to figure out a suitable celebration.
One other news, after meager orders for comercial aircraft last year (I wonder why), United has placed orders with Boeing and Airbus for a lot of narrowbody aircraft. I think 200 737 Max 8 and 9, and somewhere between 60-80 A321.
Moreover, United seems to be going premium heavy on these, with more first class seats, more extra legroom seats, seat-back screens and power on all seats, and they claim fast satellite WiFi as well.
Delta offers similar amenities, albeit with fewer premium seats. This leaves American as the downmarket legacy airline, with less legroom and no seat-back screens in economy.
@Kathy:
It is interesting that Delta & United see the domestic travel market moving in that direction.
In Trump’s defense, if he were to announce he was running for POTUS in 2024 now he’d be admitting he doesn’t actually believe he’s going to be reinstated in August. Three dimensional tangled-web is a tough game to play, we should cut him some slack.
@Gustopher:
Bit of a tangent, but–
(1) Sexual attractiveness is inherently subjective.
(2) I do find Palin physically attractive (as I do her doppelganger Tina Fey).
(3) I would have used the phrase “conventionally hot.”
@CSK:
And on top of what you said (and I am not sure this has already been mentioned), the cherry on top that will cause Trump to be especially unhappy with DeSantis is that a judge blocked the FL deplatforming law from going into effect (I saw this news on engadget). The judge just pointed out what everyone who has some common sense rattling around in their head was thinking, that you cannot force companies like FB and Twitter to host Trump and fine them 25,000-250,000 a day(!) for any politician like Trump that they did not let back on their platform and would likely lose the fight when FB and Twitter sued DeSantis and Trump over the law so to get ahead of that outcome the law does not go into effect.
DeSantis created this dumb law and got it through the FL Legislature as far as he could before this Judge blocked it, such a waste of what DeSantis could do as a politician but no he wanted to show Trump he was trying to do him a solid and try to force FB and Twitter to put him back-online. The adoration that Trump gets from his acolytes is just something to behold (and eventually studied in classrooms across the U.S.).
I now subscribe to the Post on-line so I saw the stories where Biden met with families and agreed with them that he will help them do everything possible to give them true closure by recovering the bodies. It feels telling to me that Trump did not try to one-up Biden by claiming he would meet with the families because Biden’s connecting with grieving family members is just not something Trump could pull off and he knows it. If Trump wanted to meet with families to claim to offer them support and comfort and then started off on a rant about The Big Lie then even DeSantis would have had to use a big hook to yank Trump off the stage because that would be beyond embarrassing and would hurt DeSantis’s chances to become the 2024 GOP candidate.
I honestly wonder if someone got to Trump earlier this week and told him not to bother trying to stage a photo-op at the site of the collapsed condo because it would hurt the GOP in ways that Trump cannot comprehend.
@inhumans99:
I don’t think Trump gives a damn about hurting the GOP, and anyone who told him so would be yelling into a void.
I also don’t think it would occur to Trump to show up at the site, and maybe provide water and food to the rescue crews. Even if it did occur to him, he wouldn’t do it. Part of the reason for that is that he’s absolutely terrified of death. Only losers die. That’s why he had such a hard time visiting disaster areas when he was president.
@Sleeping Dog:
One guess is that travelers who pay more for a fare, as compared to low cost and ultra-low cost airlines, expect better amenities.
I’m on vacation next week, so I’m going to spend a big part of it recording my stories from China for YouTube vids.
I’m going to call the series “The Sino-Cheddar Wars: A Cheesehead’s battles with Chinese Culture”.
I have the splash-screen all figured out, I just need the (royalty-free) images to make it…..
Dear world:
CHEDDAR CHEESE DOES NOT HAVE HOLES! ONLY SWISS HAS HOLES!
I now return you to your regularly-scheduled politics.
@Mu Yixiao: You’ve got me so, so hungry for real, fresh cheese curds right now. I have to drive 3 hours to find them.