Your next 2020 Democratic presidential primary thread: Now we're serious

I thought Bloomberg’s gambit was dumber than dogshit but it’s going better than Giuliani or DeBlasio so hey wtf do I know

*daddy trump to infant trump in torture-crib* “Donnie you little maggot, remember ‘crisis precipitates change, and you can exploit that.”

is it any wonder his governing style is as it is?

I'm not sure what Bloomberg's base is. He has no policy ideas.

Anyone who thinks businessmen are all admirable individuals / role models who simply know how to run things better than anyone else, this seems to be a lot of people for some reason, it's possibly because they are all fucking idiots.

do we think voters pick candidates based on policy ideas? some do, but I'm not convinced it's a majority

I guess there must be a lot of people who've never worked with or for a businessman, who just gaze upon them in their nifty suits and ties, swingin' that briefcase, and think, 'hey, wow, now there's someone who looks like they could run anything, a company, a country, just anything'.

tall white guys in suits can basically do anything they want. Bloomberg is intent on challenging this conventional wisdom

simply know how to run things better than anyone else

tbf, effectively running an enormous organization like the nyc or us government takes skills that many ppl lack (and that a legislative career doesn't necessarily prepare one for). in contrast to de blasio's flailing, bloomberg had some shit he wanted to do in nyc and set forth to do it. i don't *like* some of the shit he did, but i think competency has a constituency, particularly if one finds bernie/warren too pinko

might be a stronger bet if he weren't a 78-year-old jewish guy tho

might be a stronger bet if he weren't a 78-year-old jewish guy tho

― mookieproof, Tuesday, February 11, 2020 11:44 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

kids love those!

I don't understand why every presidential candidate has to be older than my oldest living relatives.

small family?

bad genes?

the more I think about it, I'm not buying that this Bloomberg thing really has legs. he's doing pretty well in some polls but how much of that is just a function of the fact that a whole lot of respondents haven't heard anything about the other candidates? it's one thing to have someone call you, a Democratic voter who doesn't care for Trump, and ask which candidate you prefer and you remember the name of the guy who's running 10,000 commercials a day. it's another thing to actually get off your ass and stand in line and vote for that person. I'm very skeptical that the former is going to turn into the latter with Mike. I think a lot of the people who say they favor him now are either going to find a new candidate before their primary or just not show up to vote at all.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Tuesday, February 11, 2020 10:08 AM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yup:

Many months too late, we learn that large numbers of loosely attached voters will lodge their support with a candidate who has universal name recognition as a placeholder, creating a false sense of the size and intensity of that candidate's base. pic.twitter.com/iR4ryQIEtr

— subscribe to my newsletter (@brianbeutler) February 11, 2020

Mordy, yr penchant for ad hominem is inching toward shittiness there, just sayin'.

you asked

lol @ Nate Silver discovering placeholder theory

wait till he learns the truth about Santa

there are many santas

Asked in an '88 debate what the election was about, Dukakis replied, "Competence."

That didn't end well.

Oh no i went back and fixed that election yesterday

can YOU win an election? take over a President's consciousness and go back in time and win!

he coulda just stayed outta the tank, and to Bernard Shaw's rape question, said "You're a sick fuck."

Oh no i went back and fixed that election yesterday

can YOU win an election? take over a President's consciousness and go back in time and win!

― sorry for butt rockin (Neanderthal), Tuesday, February 11, 2020 12:26 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

tried to win that one by going hard left with jesse jackson as running mate, lost every state but WV

which is why i'm endorsing amy klobuchar for president

Been saying from the moment he entered that Bloomberg will go nowhere. He is benefitting from the lag between his late entry massive ad buys and the time it will take for his totally unpalatable personage and policy track record to catch up with him. Seriously, he is a big business libertarian who also wants authoritarian control over individual consumer choices. No to living wage, but he is coming for your guns and soda. HE HAS NO CONSTITUENCY. He was semi-popular as mayor because he's a skilled administrator. That's it.

I think decades of being an effective executive gives him something concrete to run on, esp in contrast to someone like Pete who made some PowerPoints and held local office, and having basically infinite money has real value in a campaign. His ‘constituency’ is - in theory - moderate dems who give up on Biden and Buttigieg and have nowhere else to go.

I think he would be a pretty good president (who would have a much better chance at achieving left wing policy outcomes than sanders) but I also think that his candidacy would be a huge gamble on moderates loving him and the raw power of $$. Surely would be a shitshow w/ the sanders suicide cult, but I’m beginning to think that no matter who wins at this point it’s gonna be ugly.

The bloomberglars lead a convention walk out

Outside of thinking he would be an effective president and does have at least a theoretical path to victory I think it is ‘a bad thing’ for America to only elect billionaires, and if we have two billionaire presidents in a row suddenly the presidency is the new super yacht.

Xps

in what universe is bloomberg delivering left wing policy outcomes? his NYC tenure was textbook developer-oriented neoliberalism plus stop-and-frisk.

environmental policy

Bloomberg's ads on climate policy are very progressive.

(keep in mind I hate him and resent his candidacy)

^^ the one positive of his candidacy is that battling climate change seems to be very very high on his list of priorities.

i miss jay inslee.

if left-wing policy begins and ends with ‘destroying neoliberalism’ then yes he won’t be an effective president, and of course neither will Bernie Sanders.

If the question is who is more likely to successfully win a fight with the health care industry to pass a public option, I think it’s Bloomberg and I don’t think it’s close. (It’s prob nobody though.)

Outside of thinking he would be an effective president and does have at least a theoretical path to victory I think it is ‘a bad thing’ for America to only elect billionaires, and if we have two billionaire presidents in a row suddenly the presidency is the new super yacht.

I feel this, particularly in the context of escalation, but Presidents have on balance been a good bit wealthier than the general population for most of the country's history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_by_net_worth#List_of_presidents_by_peak_net_worth

welp
https://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/In-2015-audio-Bloomberg-advocates-targeting-15047272.php

Bloomberg being a racist shitbag ought to be enough to tank him once more stuff like this starts circulating. Up to this point he's just been flooding the airwaves with his money, but now that he's risen in the polls there will be pushback (just like there was against Harris, against Warren, against Mayor Pete, etc.)

Perhaps, but at the current moment he has pretty strong support among blacks and some high profile endorsements, so that’s a projection.

Mellencamp endorsement surely worth a few delegates

authority always wins iirc

But Bloomberg has a point! Heavy-handed, brutal, fascist-terrorist police tactics actually do bring results. In the places where these tactics are applied they can reduce crime, if you are willing to overlook and excuse the enormous increase in criminality among the police force.

It will be interesting to see if Bloomberg’s non-white support weathers this audio. I guess anything’s possible.

authority always wins iirc

I predict it will not, esp because there is probably more that is worse still to come out

xps

yeh I probably should have included sarcasm font

but fuck, maybe. who knows anything any more.

Expect more of these baity horseshoe theory handwringing articles in the coming weeks. Very Serious People Are Very Upset a US President may actually seek authorization from Congress before launching wars https://t.co/0E1lfK1pHB

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) February 11, 2020

My more paranoid and cynical side wonders if "national security" is actually the real number one reason for establishment opposition to Sanders. Medicare for All can be stymied in congress, but the national security state needs a president who will go along with them.

dwight_d_einsenhower_military_industrial_complex_speech(chopped&screwed).flac

we just had a "national security" impeachment that underperformed

re: national security

I have some thoughts about the declines and falls of imperial ruling classes, which may or may not be relevant to our current state of affairs.

— Patrick Wyman (@Patrick_Wyman) January 5, 2020

the only good tweet thread, dips into the crisis of American elites and bipartisan consensus

we just had a "national security" impeachment that underperformed

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, February 11, 2020 3

Right? Why couldn't the Democratically-controlled Senate convict him already?!

oh Christ c'mon

betcha no one is thinking about it in 6 months is what i meant