jollyroger's picture

    Plan B: Bloomberg before Biden

     

     

    I know that there is no need for a fallback position, it's Sanders/Warren 2020 (or, you know, vice versa....)

     

    But just in case--

     

    If it comes to it, as between one scumbag neoliberal and the other, I  like Mike.

     

    At least he comes with cash.

    Comments

    Oh good, can I use it as the "peeps complainin' about the neolibs" thread? Cause I was looking for a place to plop this item of interest as to recent news of Biden being attacked for wanting to cut Social Security. Here's some facts:

    I am sorry new people to politics but wanting to put social security in the shredder has been how Dem politcians of Biden's group and cohort proved they were "tough" and got tim russert to pat them on the head and that includes Biden and it went in for decades

    — Crewman Number Guy (@Atrios) January 19, 2020

     



    Bloomberg has baggage from his time as mayor of NYC 

    He is campaigning in Tulsa to improve his standing.


    The only way that could happen is if the old white vote for Biden collapsed so much that the black vote can't sustain him. Then the black vote would have to go to a different candidate and it's unlikely they would move to Bloomberg.


    Certainly it would be hard to find a  public figure in American politics who is more personally responsible for delivering on a daily basis utter catastrophe to countless families of color, and he should, in a just universe, rot in hell not run for president.

     

    That said, he is showing a commendable readiness to at least pretend to be thinking about groveling, (or at least referring the matter to a committee on grovel).  He might be able to fake enough contrition to get over.


    The problem is that polls like recent Ipsos poll indicate black voters feel that people who supported people like Bloomberg helped put Trump into office.

    If there is no trust in Trump and no trust in Bloomberg, why not just stay home and continue to endure the pain? There is always solace in the church.

    Bernie had multiple years to do real outreach to the black community and apparently failed. Bloomberg has Stop and Frisk.


     years to do real outreach to the black community and apparently failed.

     

    Not entirely, (or at least some stragglers are coming in...  )       

    S. Carolina elected official now backing Sanders over Biden

    By MEG KINNARDtoday

    COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina elected official who endorsed Joe Biden last month is switching her allegiance to Bernie Sanders in the state’s first-in-the-South presidential primary, saying she had viewed the former vice president — whose support in the state is considered deep -- as “a compromise choice.”

    Dalhi Myers told The Associated Press on Wednesday that she was making the change in part because she values what she sees as Sanders’ strength in being able to go toe-to-toe with President Donald Trump in the general election.

    “I looked at that, and I thought, ‘He’s right,’” said Myers, a black woman first elected to the Richland County Council in 2016. “He’s unafraid and he’s unapologetic. ... I like the fact that he is willing to fight for a better America — for the least, the fallen, the left behind.”

     

     

     

     

    I wouldn't characterize it as "outreach", exactly, but there is THIS.  (remind me again--when was Biden arrested for civil disobedience fighting discrimination?)

     

     

     


    Hillary lost the black vote in South Carolina in 2008. She won the S.C. black vote in 2016, beating Sanders. Sanders is not competitive with Biden in SC.

     

     


    I have no trust in Trump or Biden. So if overwhelming black support puts Biden first over the finish line, why shouldn't I "just stay home and continue to endure the pain?" 


    You are free to stay home.  My position is that any Democratic candidate is better than Trump. I have zero problem voting for Sanders even though he is not my first choice. Actually , Sanders isn't even a Democrat. I would. vote for a dead possum over Trump.


    There is a drip, drip, drip with Bernie. Now there is a story of Bernie comparing workers for a mining company to slaves. That story is not playing well in black media 

    https://www.theroot.com/was-bernie-buggin-sanders-reportedly-compared-white-v-1841187465


    There is a drip, drip, drip with Bernie

    A reminder that this could be because, as noted by Zaid Jilani below, and others, his campaign staff lacks basic competence.

    And I for one think after reading that: if he can't hire competent campaign managers, what does that mean about hiring managers as chief executive of the country? Is passionate ideology going to be the qualifier for a cabinet and appts., practical knowledge of how government works be damned? No thanks.

    (There's a very specific reason people used to say senators without management experience are not good presidential contenders and that governors are far better prospects....)


    You  seemed to suggest that if Bloomberg is the nominee blacks might just stay home. You seemed to think that was a rational choice.

    "If there is no trust in Trump and no trust in Bloomberg, why not just stay home and continue to endure the pain?"

    I feel that way about Bloomberg too and I feel the same way about Biden.


    I said that you were free to stay home. I pointed out Stop and Frisk would dampen enthusiasm for Bloomberg.

    Hopefully, there would still be enough people left to get Trump out of office.


    Maggie Haberman just retweeted these points about Biden by another journalist. FWIW I agree that these are well-said points that very much peg a significant part of his appeal. 

    It's related what I was trying to get across in your last post about needed Wisconsinite votes, that a passionate angry Larry David Bernie mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore is not going to do the trick, nor are a bunch of earnest socialist kids knocking on people's doors while they're trying to watch the Packers game. 


    Like it or not, he's our Stuart Smalley.

    https://youtu.be/6ldAQ6Rh5ZI


    Krugman on Bernie's latest:

    This is a really bad look. It illustrates everything that makes many Democrats distrust the Sanders team — and the buck stops with the candidate https://t.co/EY1QL7YbXx

    — Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) January 20, 2020

    Then I also caught this crabby-old jihadi tweet, such a sure sell with swings (NOT!):

    Wall Street hates us.

    Drug companies hate us.

    Insurance companies hate us.

    The fossil fuel industry hates us.

    The military industrial complex hates us.

    The 1% hates us.

    You know why?

    Because we're going to take on their greed and corruption.

    And we're going to win.

    — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 16, 2020

    Edit to add:

     


    There's going to be some negative campaigning by all candidates. The question is how much truth is there in it, how much spin. Is this really so bad? Is it really worse than what other candidates have done? One of the worst things I've seen a democrat do to a democrat in a primary was this below, by the Obama campaign. Imo it was a slimy attack and the news anchor was colluding with Jackson Jr.

     


    But wait, he said "message of hope" - are you insinuating...? Nora picked right up on it - was that rehearsed?


    Well, I see Jilani for one thinks Sanders campaign is especially incompetent at it whatever they are trying to do:

     


    Jilani argues more intriquing points, that it's not a media conspiracy against Sanders, it's incompetence and it makes him a soft target:

     


    Meanwhile,I see the pros on the Biden campaign know what to do with what they got:

    (I only caught this because it was retweeted by Never Trumper and chief White House ethics lawyer under Bush, Richard W. Painter, and I follow him.)


    hmmm interesting and I don 't mean the part about Kellyanne:

    Multiple attendees at the Doral event tonight for RNC members and plus-ones say Trump spoke for nearly 90 minutes. Referred to the impeachment trial a "impeachment lite," brought Kellyanne Conway on stage, where she got a standing ovation.

    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 24, 2020

     


    Funny, I am pretty damn sure Trump doesn't read Zaid Jilani, but here he is doing the same meme two days ago regarding an article he published @ thecorrespondent.com:


    Yeah, you know I've seen articles like this before. They really don't tell us anything important. So maybe we agree more than many think but what of it? I look at the polls on for example gun control. On many of the policy ideas there is agreement. But over and over again these republicans that favor some reasonable gun control vote for the person telling them they won't do it. In fact in many cases they vote for the guy telling them he'll loosen the gun control laws currently in place. 

    Or take the example from the top of the article. Free health care. There's this theoretical agreement. But that community overwhelmingly voted for Trump who promised to take away the small gains from Obamacare and against the candidate who promised to build on those gains. 

    I could go on, issue after issue. I don't care about these polls or articles telling us that we agree more than we think. What ever they think on a policy level they don't vote that way. And that's what I care about.


    well despite what you say here, ocean-kat, I thought his convo on voters/polling between poli-sci guys just might be of interest to you because of things you've said in the past:

    Grossman  is

    Michigan State political scientist @ippsr director; @niskanencenter fellow; @fivethirtyeight contributor; New Book: Red State Blues #SocSciResearch

    Griffin is

    Research Director for @DemocracyFund Voter Study Group. Editorial committee @ps_polisci. Previously at @PRRIpoll and @amprog. Political Science PhD.


    25 or 30 years ago I read a book by Michael Moore or Al Franken and the last chapter was titled something like we've already won. There was paragraph after paragraph with poll results that showed how all the liberal positions I support were supported by a majority of Americans, often by an overwhelming majority. I'm no longer optimistic when I see polls like that or when I read articles like this. When I look back over the last 30 years we've been losing mostly. Except for gay marriage which in the vast scheme of things is a trivial issue. Something else is going on that these polls aren't answering. I'm at the point where they just annoy me. Because however much we theoretically agree, we're losing.


    I remember being annoyed in 2004 that we hung our hats on LGBT advancement & gay marriage, while Bush's conservatives wiped everything else off the table. A token victory to keep us happy, down on the farm. 16 years later? Still keep getting those illusionary wins. Hey! we took the midterms! But they're packing courts left & right and still control state legislatures and the Senate and White House... and are abusing them more and more, entrenching their advantage even if we get back to square 1.


    FiveThirtyEight national average graph including the latest:


    Bernie's got some splainin to do on the 1994 crime bill support?

     


    Ouch.


    the latest in the waxing and waning serial:  Poll: Warren fares better against Biden than Sanders

    Warren allies seize on new survey to argue she’s the progressive candidate most likely to defeat the former veep.

    Politico.com,  01/28/2020 07:06 PM EST


    Then there's this:


    Seth Abramson takes a look at that poll and suggests that Warren is the "unity" candidate for "progressives" who don't like Biden:

    Data for progressives who (a) don't think Biden is the Democrats' best candidate, and (b) know the field is going to slim down in February—and want to figure out who should be left standing.

    BIDEN 4⃣7⃣, WARREN 4⃣5⃣

    BIDEN 5⃣3⃣, SANDERS 4⃣1⃣

    BIDEN 4⃣2⃣, WARREN 3⃣0⃣, SANDERS 2⃣3⃣ https://t.co/x6wXbRtO9g

    — Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 29, 2020

     


    I loathe Bloomberg, but must concede that I cherish the howls of anguish sure to emanate from the orange maw at his quip, offered in response to a question positing the conundrum of two billionaires running for President, "Who's the other one?"


    Hah!

    you made me do a quick check what the little pill is up to with his campaign, and go figure, looks like he's hired some people with a sense of humor or something, (as if he had one, that is) they're retweeting Samantha Bee parodies of themselves:

     


    yup, he's hired hipsters:


    Hmmm, Amy's people said "no deal" to Joe's people:


    things are complicated!


    Apostasy abounds.

     

    I, myself, in a moment of shameful weakness, helped Warren snatch the Working Families Party endorsement from Sanders.

     

    I have since repented, but I am turning myself in nonetheless.


    oh no you did nothing wrong! three cheers for non-ideologues and pragmatists!


    Bless my buttons, I'm startin' to feel prophetic...

     

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-s-former-navy-secre...

     

    (Meanwhile, Biden is on life support, and Big Nurse is stepping on the IV line.)


    Interesting! You gotta admit it's a good option for them "duty, honor, country" types. Don't want to be aligned with "snowflakes" in any way, shape or form. Bolton probably be next?

    Thing is, we got private voting booths, after endorsing Bloomberg, they can still vote for "anyone but Trump", even if a snowflake, without public shame.


    He's also a way to break out of what is clearly a developing divide of  same old same old "Democratic Socialism" vs. "Third Way":

    I've seen speculation that what Bloomberg is doing is basically playing a standby, in case there's a brokered convention. One would get more of a idea if that's true if he ends up participating in one of the debates and plays mediator between the two sides.


    Oh, he'll be in the next debate, count on it.

     

    It is counterintuitive to raise as a barrier to an otherwise poll supported candidate his readiness to drown Trump in a flood of his own money, thereby obviating a metric keyed to taking donations.

     

    As a measure of my panic post prayer breakfast performance, c'mon Mike!

     

    #Trotskyites4Bloomberg...wait, What??


    He's busy working the "influencer army" thing while you old Trotskyites are still doing old traditional political war gaming?


    Well ok then, but if we're going to let Bloomberg buy a spot on the debate stage we can not let him buy a gold plated podium and a velvet throne to sit on. He has to stand behind the same podium as every body else.


    Russians & Saudis paid for that other podium in the Republican non-debates. And they're likely to win. So if rich Mike is much better than corrupt foreign-propped-up Don, screw the "oh, he's buying the elections" worry - yeah, I'll vote Mike. I'd be voting Al Franken right now, but they tricked us into shooting our most likeable, charismatic candidate, one who doesn't exhude Doom at every stop.

    Dems seem to chafe against the rich gy but welcome the obstreperous Independent and followers who want to destroy the party. Values are fungible. And where does thir money come from? We can't be sure because it comes in $27 meth bags prime for snorting, and that's too small to track (as if the FEC hasn't been turned into an arm of the GOP re-election committee anyway)



    We just barely began primary elections to find a democratic nominee. If what you want to talk about is whether any democrat is better than Trump then we're in total agreement. I'll vote for the democrat. But the way it's looking right now I don't think I'm even going to vote in the primary. I'm pretty much an anyone but a B-name voter in the primary and if what we have is a choice between B-names there's no sense me voting.


    No box?  (BTW, I'm  pretty sure I remember a box in someone's past--was it Dukakis?)


    Perot!  I knew I had been reminded about it on Twitter somewhere's recently, so with a judicious keyword search, I found out coincidentally it was Jilani:

    Guy really knows his politically trivia going way back, I been impressed more than once.


    P.S. you made me curious to google. Perot is 5'5"; all these are 5'8": Bloomberg; Dukakis; Buttigieg!!!

    AND, what the heck, for metaphorical purposes, because this particular "handicap" hasn't earned the protection of the righteous cancellers yet: Napoleon Bonaparte: 5'7".


    Brits placed Nap at no more than 5'3". Historical smear campaign. Just like Hitler prolly had both testicles.


    speaking of what he can buy, I got a new take on something he's doing that I already posted about on Wolraich's thread "Everything you thought about politics is wrong." This Guardian headline on the same story made me realize that he may be making the "profession" of campaign war room spinner obsolete

    Mike Bloomberg will pay you $150 to say nice things about him

    I.E. Kellyanne: watch out, there might be a 100,000 out there willing to compete with you for $150 per.


    WTF??  Why only Instagram...if we could bring Dagblog to his attention, both you and I would be in line for a useful stipend....  I DO like that he seems to be unashamed of deploying what used to be called "walking around money" in the halcyon days of frank machine politics.  Trump, per contra, to this day denies hiring most of the cheering crowd assembled for the escalator descent (which apparently was a metaphor for the journey into Hell that was in store for the country.)


    This was supposed to be a secret, but I asked Mr. Bloomberg via some friends (contacts really) for $130 million to revamp the website. Though I forgot about your stipend (actually never really considered it, but pls don't hold that against me). Anyway, if it comes through we might be able to do something, though it'll likely take a while.
    The blog roll should look nice anyway.


    On Bloomberg...


    addendum:  I notice that my snarky remarks about Biden's dentures went nowhere, but am I crazy?  Does he not seem frequently  to struggle with insufficient polident application?


    I had in mind to watch for this in the future as per your mention, but so far all I have noticed is that they beam like headlights.


    He seems tonight to have gone with the liberal (see what  I did there?) application of paste...


    FWIW Frank Luntz has concluded that Joe has the worst debate prep evah


    and Axelrod thinks Biden has improved:


    here's a comment along the same line of thought:

    (the mention of the Scaramouche also made me think of his kind and how they would welcome Bloomberg as if the savior had finally arrived.)


    Given that he could pretty much pull up the ladder on his private spaceship and leave the rest of us Earthlings to stew if he wanted, I'm  prepared to credit him with a pretty large dollop of civic virtue...really, who needs the tsooris ​that without peradventure awaits him.


    I don't know any perfect people. Nor do any of the rest of you.( I'm reminded of Mark Twains "The man who corrupted Hadleyburg".

    When I vote in the primary I'll be voting for someone who is imperfect. You too. 

    I'm  making zero   attempt  to choose the least imperfect candidate. FDR put it succinctly  "He's a son of a bitch but he's  our son of a bitch.". And famously, Churchill : "If the devil comes in our side I'll be sure to  work a few favorable words about  Hades into the next "QuestionTime".

    I'll  be voting for the son of a bitch with   the best chance of beating Trump  . 

    Things I won't consider: who's the best manager; who makes the most thoughtful  assessment of our society's needs;who's done the most  good in their life to this point ;whose position most appeal to me on any, repeat any, issue from Abortion  to  (some issue beginning with Z :Zoroasterism?)

     Face it. There is very little chance of our winning per se .Trump's a monster, everyone knows that and  not only doesn't  that make  him unelectable   it probably adds to his chances. And for us, any attempt to trade up to a less immoral son of a bitch will be rearranging the deck chairs on the  Titanic.

    However imperfect  our most electable candidate is,  she'll  be better than   Trump. 

     


    l--pImage result for stewart granger scaramouchearated at bImage result for scaramucciir

     

     

     

     

    Separated at birth...


    just saw this ad on CNN, which will clearly be read by some as Obama endorsing Bloomberg:

    Googled and found that he did check in with Obama after announcing and has curiously let the media know that just the other day!

    What Obama told Bloomberg

    By Jonathan Swan @ Axios.com, Feb. 9

    Certainly stealing a selling point from Biden!


    On the whole "stop and frisk" thing:

    One of the biggest misconceptions I see among the liberal politico-nonprofit complex is that every black voter has black lives matter type politics https://t.co/77YOlLISmc

    — Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) February 11, 2020




    Bobby Rush just came out for Bloomberg on Al Sharpton's  Show!


    Mayor of DC joined the growing Mayors for Bloomberg crew:


    Apparently I am WAY behind the curve, as Rush is in fact Co-chair of the Bloomberg campaign.

     

     


    I think the "he doesn't get blacks" thing has been way overplayed? I just refreshed my memory on how he got re-elected  NYC mayor in this 2005 NYTimes article:

    Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg forged his historic re-election victory on Tuesday by drawing roughly half of New York's black voters and about 3 in 10 Latinos to the Republican line, even though he faced a Hispanic challenger who sought to capitalize on ethnic pride, an analysis of voting returns shows....

    Also behooves to keep in mind that the idea behind "stop and frisk" was to get guns off the streets, and especially off the streets of bad neighborhoods. Some older victims of bad neighborhoods probably cottoned to the idea at first until they saw the execution. Few actually *like* the idea of young urban black men having easy access to handguns...what to do about it was the question. I recall he did work hard on trying to get the illegal supply shut off, but it wasn't easy (another inconvenient side effect of "state's rights".)


    I see evidence Rush was already on the Bloomberg team earlier in the week. So by having him on his show to say so, Al was helping him out, surely not unaware:

    U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush promotes Michael Bloomberg’s Chicago campaign office as the Democratic presidential candidate faces criticism for 2015 stop-and-frisk remarks

    @ Chicago Tribune Feb. 11

    Yes believe it or not, I believe we're seeing prominent leftie "blacks for Bloomberg", not just paid millennial influencers...


    I had missed the earlier statement from The Minister of Defense.

     

    As to the latter, you cannot buy Bobby Rush any more than Huey P. Newton.

     

    I was just telling this news to my friend, and to illustrate with more granularity than he originally brought to the event, although he was of course familiar with Bobby Rush, I said this was as if Huey were alive and came out for Bloomberg!


    What? Huey and the News died?


    Oh yeah, that's right.  It was Tom Petty...


    Scared me, buddy - my whole world almost came apart, like when Cleaver went. Coulda been Eddie Haskell, but no...


    FWIW, Drudge is pushing Bloomberg/Hillary meme:

     maybe not worth much, he's not much of an "influencer" anymo cheeky


    Straight trollin'.



    res ipsa loquitor hyperbole:

    Mini Mike Bloomberg’s debate performance tonight was perhaps the worst in the history of debates, and there have been some really bad ones. He was stumbling, bumbling and grossly incompetent. If this doesn’t knock him out of the race, nothing will. Not so easy to do what I did!

    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2020

    I think: he's got a new fear fixation, still sees Bloomberg as his real enemy (forget Uncle Joe) and is thrilled when he doesn't do well. The rest of them he could care less, they are no danger to his ego.


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