If Mike Bloomberg is the Democratic nominee, will you vote for him in November?

thank u

longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)
Posted: February 19, 2020 at 1:11:36 PM
After being gaslit about the lack of coverage of Bernie for roughly 1.5 election cycles, I have less than zero sympathy for people claiming "erasure" of Warren. She consistently got OVERPLAYED compared to Bernie until his lead on her and consistent lead in overall national polls became so clear that they couldn't ignore it anymore. She's losing, tough shit.

I think is pretty demonstrably untrue! A quick glance at the big papers shows Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Bernie hogging the headlines daily since December. Even Klobuchar’s ‘momentum’ is a bigger story.

Bernie hogging the headlines daily since December

citation needed

I know no one agrees with me but Warren is temperamentally a moderate and ideologically a progressive and SHE is who all the people dissatisfied with the choice of Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomberg should coalesce around, because for most Dem voters ideology doesn't mean much and they are trying to choose the KIND of person who they want to be President. I'm not saying it's likely to happen but all I'm saying is it's immensely frustrating to see the entire political class wringing itself dripping over "WHY isn't there a candidate who's NOT BERNIE and DOESN'T HAVE ALL THESE NEGATIVES" -- she's *right there*!

yeah, but she would try to implement a big tax on people with more than $50 million! she can't do that! because that would...i mean she just can't do that, it's too extreme!

The thing is that the media funnily enough wants to write stories about exciting things. Bernie being mostly steady was never a good story, Warren falling, but not crashing like Biden, isn't really a good story either.

Fun fact: It took until four days ago for Bernie to beat Warrens peak back in mid-October in the 538 polling average. She ran a good campaign, imo, it just didn't work. I read a review of Pikettys new book that he dubs 'Brahmins' those liberals who are okay with most leftist policy, just not higher taxes. I think what happened with Warren kinda proves him right on that.

I think is pretty demonstrably untrue! A quick glance at the big papers shows Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Bernie hogging the headlines daily since December. Even Klobuchar’s ‘momentum’ is a bigger story.

think he might have meant 'warren was all over the news that I consume'

I really, really don't think Warren's campaign failing was down to policy.

Me neither

(sorry if using the past tense there upsets anyone but I really don't see a comeback in her future)

if it was about policy it was about having to defend sanders’ policy positions on stage, again and again

Her wealth tax meant she was never acceptable as a compromise candidate. But that's as much a failure of strategy as it's policy, I guess.

imo her failure is down to a) being an older woman, b) some foolish campaign gambles (noted above), c) lingering bad blood in DNC/Obama circles, and d) having a more entertainingly uncompromising champion of many of her policies already running to her left

i think we should see how she does the next few weeks (through super tuesday) before pronouncing her campaign dead

warren's campaign was not very savvy and she was starting from a disadvantage as a good chunk of the progressive base was already attached to bernie from 2016

taxing rich people is popular, easy to explain and defend. implementation strategies for universal health care are not easy to explain or defend, which is why sanders (smartly) just does the magic hand wave. warren got mired in the details when the details never actually mattered.

i think her lack of success largely comes from the fact that she's the only candidate that's a serious alternative to sanders for those on the left. and when it comes down to just sanders and warren, there's a lot of people who would vote for either of them, but would lean toward sanders if they had to choose between them. a lot of his supporters are the same people who were on the bernie train back in 2016, which makes sense. given a choice between sanders/warren, they'll go with sanders. (no judgment - that pretty much describes me)

in other words, in an alternative universe with no sanders, i think most of his supporters would be with warren, and she'd be the one with 30%+ support right now as the favored option over all these moderate dipshits.

The implementation strategies discussed for Obamacare in his campaign bore little resemblance to what came out of the sausage factory.

lol @ the transparent presumption and bitchiness here:

Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg's campaign warned in a memo released on Wednesday that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will be "all but impossible to defeat" after Super Tuesday if he wins with their projected delegate lead.

The campaign's state of the race memo said that if the race's moderate candidates remain in the race despite not having a path to victory, they will end up taking votes away from the former New York City mayor.

"If Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar remain in the race despite having no path to appreciably collecting delegates on Super Tuesday (and beyond), they will propel Sanders to a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead by siphoning votes away from [Bloomberg]," the memo read.

The campaign's current Super Tuesday projection shows Sanders moving past Super Tuesday with a 404 delegate lead, which they said would make it "all but impossible" to stop the progressive senator from garnering a plurality of the pledged delegates.

It's amazing how that's actually a very good argument for Bloomberg to have never entered the race at all

yeah morbs I look forward to your newfound dedication to the future compromises president sanders will make w/ moderate dems

you moderates, lay the rose petals on Bloombito's path to victory

in an alternative universe with no sanders

Um I hesitate to say this but he's a 78-year-old man with heart trouble; it doesn't really require alternate-universe theory for him not to exist (I hasten to note that no person of good will wants this)

fwiw every even vaguely committed american leftist I know is committed to 1. getting bernie in and then 2. relentlessly attacking him from the left should he fall short / when he falls short

you're lucky actually, the fact that we won't win the senate means you won't even have to suffer watching any major bill get passed

"moderate" "electability"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYP1OBZfFK0

Bloomberg memo writer knows what's up.

it's funny how much it gives the game away

also file "we" "our" = Democrats under Slowly I Turn

I think Sean McElwee is depressingly OTM re Warren:

"The problem that Warren has is all of the Bernie people think she's a neoliberal shill and all of the centrists think she's a raging Maoist," said Sean McElwee, a left-wing organizer and analyst at Data For Progress whose work has been cited by the Warren campaign. "The people who want 'Medicare for All' don't believe she wants it, and the people who don’t want Medicare for All do believe she wants it."

Yeah, I mean I think that's hyperbole but somewhat right. For Bernie people, she's, at best, watered-down Bernie. But for people who truly fear "the left" she's nearly as scary as Bernie.

Harris was in a similar bind - leftists didn't believe she was a leftist, centrists were pissed at her for making overtures to leftists

well, Harris wasn't a leftist at all

I mean, even Bloomberg's current platform/website make some concessions toward the left compared to where he used to stand. It's just the way the wind is blowing.

he's letting us keep our memes, i think that's all though.

The moral of the story is that running in a crowded field of candidates is very difficult and it helps immensely if you ran a fairly successful one-on-one campaign in the previous election cycle, so that you enter the race with a large ready-made base of loyal voters, plus better name recognition than all but one other candidate (who, lucky for you, happens to be a lousy campaigner).

^^^

Yeah, in all honesty, even saying her campaign is a failure is quite weird. Most people running for president fail, she has had one of the 2-3 best campaigns this cycle. She is well situated to run again in four years.

for a bad campaigner she sure does bring a lot of people out to her rallies

but still, again, compared to bernie, not as much.

i'm not sure if there are stats on average crowd sizes at primary events, but my wild ass guess is that it would be something like

bernie
warren
pete?
biden
klobuchar
...
bloomberg (does he even hold events?)

bloomberg does hold events yes

cannot attest whether or not all attendees were bribed formally or informally

to be clear in case anyone misunderstood me, biden was the highest name recognition candidate in this field.

plus there's the vibe of each candidate's base:

bernie(youth, earnest, left)
warren (family game night, earnest, cautiously optimistic)
pete? (people who look forward to going to work)
biden (old, don't follow politics)
klobuchar (say "dooncha" on a daily basis)
...
bloomberg (people who are actively swayed by advertisements)

biden (old, don't follow politics)

let me revise this to old, and follow politics but haven't updated views in 10-20 years

(people who are actively swayed by advertisementsfree food)

I don't think Bloomberg has yet fed ~17% of the US voting population. Maybe the unfed ones are just anticipating the nice, big catered buffet to come.

What it comes down to for me is reluctance to vote for a 78-yr-old white man with a heart condition, no matter whom he picks for veep. And I tend to think his WH staff would suck.

if jesus could feed 5000 with a couple fish and some bread, than bloomberg can easily feed 17% of america by peeling off $600M of his fortune to give them a $10 coupon to taco bell