I can't watch the debates. They make me nervous about the future.
Everyone I read on twitter seemed to think that Warren destroyed him. But then, everyone I read on twitter is supporting either Warren or Sanders so.
This is the first debate that I watched end-to-end. Warren crushed Bloomberg. It was spectacular. I'm a bit of a Warren stan, but I can't think of a more dominant debate performance in a debate with more than two candidates.
These debates really shouldn't change the opinions of an informed voter, but Bloomberg has gone, in my estimation, from being by far the worst Democratic candidate to being, by a small margin, the best Republican candidate. He really is a disgrace.
Anyway it's not clear what effect a bad debate performance will have on a candidate who's popularity is 100 percent based on TV ads. There could be an early indicator when South Carolina comes in - where Tom Steyer actually finishes. (He apparently has pulled a mini-Bloomberg by advertising heavily in SC for months now.)
Who, Steyer? He's the other billionaire in the race, has basically nothing going for him, but has spent a lot on TV ads in SC, so I figure he will be a decent test of how big the "oh yeah I saw this guy on TV" vote is.
Steyer is an extremely liberal billionaire, unlike Bloomberg. He spent the last debate trying to be Bernie's friend. He usually spends a lot of his money on vague messaging campaigns, this time with the additional detail that he is running for president.
Like Moby, I can't actually watch the debates, but just about everyone I read seems to agree that Warren destroyed Bloomberg. The exception is Kevin Drum, who since 2016 has gotten more and more out of sync with everyone.
Anyway, the press loves these debates, and acts like they are a really big deal, but it's not clear to me that they make any difference at all most of the time.
I'm hoping that the press is making a big deal out of Bloomberg's surge, but that it's actually not amounting to much.
Drum:
So who won and who lost? I'd say Bloomberg clearly won, simply by seeming credible and not taking so much fire that he melted down.
Wow. There is simply no conceivable universe where this is correct.
Do we live in a conceivable universe?
Nobody knows how seriously to take Bloomberg's chances because no one has run a campaign like this before.
14: We're in new political territory, but it doesn't seem to me as though Bloomberg ever had a shot as a Democrat. We've seen his high-water mark, and it was completely predictable that he would crumble as soon as he got any scrutiny that he didn't completely control.
It's true that he can now retreat into his money cocoon, but all he was able to buy was an ephemeral and distant second place in national polls, plus an appearance on the debate stage, where he chose to talk about how his non-disclosure agreements with women were consensual and where he literally called Bernie Sanders a communist. The guy is nearly as arrogant and clueless as Trump, but he's not running as a Republican. He's done for.
Gutted him like a fish. And she was't the only one. Biden piling on in the NDA issue was just right. Bloomberg was objectively awful on this issue. And they each scored solid hits on him on most everything else. He's not really in our coalition. Anyone who thinks that Bloomberg is the right guy to bring the party together for the general is on drugs. Which, I guess, does include a significant portion of the population of several Super Tuesday states.
I should either type faster or use preview more. Or both.
That's a better argument against drugs than the fried-egg thing.
I am enjoying the left column on the main page today (Bloomberg Bloomberg the worst the worst Bloomberg)
Anyone who thinks that Bloomberg is the right guy to bring the party together for the general is on drugs. Which, I guess, does include a significant portion of the population of several Super Tuesday states.
I don't believe they "think" anything in particular about Bloomberg. He's just the only one running ads and he is running tons of ads so to many people he seems like the default.
The Democratic nominee has never won if they were named "Michael." That's just science.
The headlines are largely about how badly Bloomberg did, but the first 3.5 minutes of this video will give you a feel for how brutally effective Warren was.
but it doesn't seem to me as though Bloomberg ever had a shot as a Democrat. We've seen his high-water mark, and it was completely predictable that he would crumble as soon as he got any scrutiny that he didn't completely control.
But what is giving you the impression that he doesn't still have a shot? I'm worried that the timeline is in his favor and he won't crumble until after he wrecks everything.
Time is not on his side (no it isn't). He needed to gain ground, not just stay even. And this will cost him ground, and rightly so.
25: Someone edited Bloomberg's Wikipedia page to say that he died last night and the cause of death was Elizabeth Warren.
The timeline isn't really in his favor. Not contesting the first four states doesn't necessarily mean forgoing a lot of delegates, but the Super Tuesday states have a huge proportion of the overall delegates and even with his massive advertising and recent good polling he's not on track to get enough of them to have a serious shot at a delegate majority. Nate Silver has been making this point repeatedly as Bloomberg has gotten more attention lately, and it's why the 538 model shows him with a very small chance at a delegate majority.
Now, could he get enough delegates to be a factor at a brokered convention? Yes, that's definitely a possibility, but there's no real reason to think he would emerge from that scenario as a plausible nominee, especially since the other candidates would have to play ball and they all hate him for a variety of good reasons.
25: Stop worrying about Bloomberg. His presence in the race only bolsters Bernie and Warren.
He's the absolute perfect foil for them. Almost literally the only argument for him is that America has descended into oligarchy, and he represents a more congenial branch of the oligarchy than the alternative. This is not a frivolous argument. It may even be correct. But it's not an argument that can persuade a plurality of Democrats, who are not yet that hopeless. (Older African Americans, especially, have a certain well-informed despair, and some might vote for him, but not enough.)
As it is, he splits the "pragmatist" vote with Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar (and even Steyer, somehow, in South Carolina) -- each of whom (except Steyer) has significant attributes that Bloomberg can't match. None of them (again, except Steyer) possesses Bloomberg's utter charmlessness, and none of them has Bloomberg's history of anti-Democratic politics.
Bernie could not have asked for a better foil than Bloomberg, who is a living caricature of every gripe he has about US politics and the Democratic Party. And while Bernie may not have Bloomberg's money, he has enough money to avoid being silenced or out-shouted.
Bloomberg has emerged in the polls because nobody was talking about him besides him. He is a problem that is self-solving: The more progress he makes, the more attention he gets from others, and he can't withstand any kind of scrutiny at all.
First off, I'm going to worry about what I want to worry about. Second off, 30.last was exactly what people said about the orange fuck in 2016.
Damn it Moby, I was starting to feel better.
Trump was leading national polls and actually won a bunch of primaries, though. Bloomberg hasn't done either and may never win anything. Also the Republican primary system is structurally different in ways that advantaged Trump and prevented a brokered convention.
The candidate this year whose performance so far is most like Trump in 2016 is actually Bernie, though again the process is different so he's not as strong a frontrunner.
The thing that just pushed me back over into "not actually worried about Bloomberg" is that he released a hilariously badly edited video showing himself to have been awesomely dominant in the debate.
Like, blowing straight through it and not acknowledging the debate would have been a bit scary. Trying to pretend you won is flop-sweat.
31: Even before the 2016 Republican primaries, anyone really paying attention could have seen what was developing with Trump if only they had heeded astute political commentary.
Bloomberg got absolutely gutted. There is still an issue of whether his commercials will carry him, but this is way different than Trump who was bolstered by the Republican debates.
38: Agreed. It is going to be an interesting data point on the "real world" impact of debates, if he can shake it off somehow.
I'd fucking vote for Trump before I'd vote for Bloomberg
I suppose you could just write ABAB across the ballot .
yeah, sorry Barry, but 40 is unhinged.
I completely sympathize with the feeling of 40. In practice, I'd hold my nose and do it, but I'd really really hate it.
Between the last thread and this one, I'm reminded of a high school game where you're given two names, and you have to pick who you'd give oral sex to. The rule was you weren't allowed to not answer.
But you all are allowed not to answer. Let's not play that game with the choice in 40.
Would four more years of Trump be worse than 8 years of Bloomberg and an inevitable Democratic schism? The math is not straightforward.
To me an eventual Bloomberg vs. Trump showdown would seem to be an existential crisis in a way that Trump presidency alone can't quite reach. Notwithstanding how hard he is trying.
Boy, that was a quick and specific bat signal.
I'm reminded of a high school game where you're given two names, and you have to pick who you'd give oral sex to.
Boy, did I not hang out with the right people in high school. We only ever played drinking games.
Before Bill Clinton publicised it, high school students never heard of it.
you have to admit, "Bill or Newt" wasn't a very difficult one.
50: If you play drinking games hard enough in high school, eventually you'll invent a variant of this.
We used to play Fargo Quarters with a coffee mug. If it went through the handle, you had to road trip to Fargo.
That's a tough game to play in California.
I guess that stuff must of happened at those "rainbow parties" I always read about but was never invited to.
Someday you'll find it. The rainbow connection. The lovers, the dreamers, and you.
44 Bloomberg is an authoritarian Republican and a competent one to boot. If he's the nominee it'll mean he destruction of the Democratic party and the Republic. Burn it all down.
Watched the whole thing and knew from Warren's first turn she was going to kick his ass. She may not be able to win but if she can't she's going to make sure Bloomberg can't either. She also went after all the other candidates and was generally very aggressive in a way she hasn't been before.
Question about delegate rules- you need 15% per district to be allocated any from that district (not sure exactly what defines a district.) In primarys where there isn't ranked choice and you can't realign like caucuses, with so many candidates what happens if no one gets 15%? Are the delegates uncommitted, kind of like superdelegates? And who would be the actual people chosen to go to the convention?
If those are my choices, fuck, marry, kill.
59: According to this page, if nobody gets 15%, the threshold is reset at 1/2 the vote share of the top candidate, so if the top candidate gets 10%, the threshold is 5%.
In the case that only one candidate gets 15% with others slightly below the threshold, there is the risk that that candidate gets 100% of the district's delegates, but that seems likely to be rare even in a crowded field.
The thing that makes Trump so dangerous and despicable is his absolute lack of shame.
In last night's debate, I was gobsmacked at Bloomberg's own lack of a sense of personal accountability. Here he is on his history of creating a hostile workplace environment for women:
None of them accuse me of doing anything other than maybe they didn't like a joke I told.
That's pretty bad, as was his apology for stop-and-frisk while noting that the murder rate went down. But this is still a long way from Trump, who defended himself against a rape accusation by saying "She's not my type," and who wasn't sorry about defaming the Central Park Five even after their innocence had been demonstrated. I bet Bloomberg is telling the truth that he will eventually release his tax returns (if he is in the race long enough).
Bloomberg has limits. Trump's limits have not yet been discovered. Here are some vital issues where I think Bloomberg is unambiguously and dramatically superior:
-Climate change
-Emoluments associated with his business interests
-Various forms of bigotry
-Supreme Court nominees (most obviously regarding abortion rights)
-Immigration
-Iran
-Nepotism
-Guns
-Election security and vote suppression
-NATO
-General competence in governance
Those are places that are stone-cold certainties to be treated better by Bloomberg. There are lots of other areas where it would be reasonable to guess that he would be better -- particularly compared to a second-term Trump, who will be completely unconstrained. I would have zero trouble pulling the lever for Bloomberg if it came to that, and I have no sympathy for anyone who thinks otherwise. (But I still like Barry.)
But there is no way Bloomberg can be nominated, and if he is, it's difficult to imagine him beating Trump.
Bloomberg as a president is measurably better than Trump in a myriad of ways I'm sure, although I'm not everything on your list is solid.
But if he wins the race he has no place being competitive in then not only can Trump not be viewed as an anomaly, the systemic rot is proven very deep indeed.
Is it just me or is having so many debates not productive?
63: One more advantage, if it came to that, which it almost certainly won't, is that if Bloomberg did wind up abusing power to the extent Trump has, there is a fighting chance that there are enough Democratic senators who would join their Republican colleagues in a successful vote to impeach and remove him from office. We already know what the Republican senators would do in a second term if Trump continues to abuse power.
All the agencies would also be headed by Bloomberg appointees instead of Trump appointees. Federal judges would not be nominated by Trump anymore.
Nobody would send death threats to federal officials to protect Bloomberg.
It does seem, for now at least, that Bloomberg has shame, which should slow him down, but I don't know if we can rule out that he's watching and learning what Trump can do with the office and would become a much smarter practitioner - an Orban.
At least it now seems like a better decision from the DNC in retrospect to let him onstage, no?
60 and 61 deserve so much love. I was stuck in an emergency room waiting before the debate and was afraid I'd have to watch it silently with audio from Disney Channel being piped in, but we got moved to a room just in time. All's okay-ish (stupid hypermobility strikes again) and no one can make me watch the debate, so huge win there.
Apparently I clicked the box to become forgettable. Oops.
I had a great time at the debate watch party with the Bernie people around here. It was a good debate I think the best so far. I'm very happy about the how things are going right now.
It's nice to see Google giving some recognition to Jamie Farr.
M.A.S.H. probably hasn't aged well, but I was glad to see Alda is still working. I heard his voice while my wife was watching a movie about Darth Emo's divorce.
Reputedly, Bloomberg sucks PRC.
The PRC's intervention is why MASH lasted for 11 years.
I'm going to act as if 78 is 100% sincere so that I can use it as a cue to mention that after Alda did some work in the aughts as a nature doc narrator, he got on a crusade to help scientists be better science communicators and worked up this whole program of day-long training seminars to help the likes of me stop being such drips in front of a camera, one of which I attended at Cold Spring Harbour. He was quite earnest and of course funny about everything, and in all was so charming that I will now happily watch him in anything, secretly wishing I could give Uncle Alan a little hug, whereas before I'd always found his MASH character grating.
78 was sincere. 77 was the one you needed to watch for.
81: Alan Alda was my favorite part of Marriage Story (other than Adam Driver singing "Being Alive", but that's just because I'm so ignorant of musical theatre).
Isn't the point about 12 that everyone's expectations have been lowered by Trump? I mean since he's been around, the standard of a bad debate performance includes visibly soiling yourself, molesting a flag, or forgetting your wife's name.
I just learned that Alan Alda's father originated the role of Sky Masterson. Which is almost as good as originating Nathan Detroit.
I know Nathan Detroit is the better role because it's the one Mark Hamill played in the dinner theater when he was on The Simpsons.
81 makes me happy. I have a soft spot for Alan Alda because Hawkeye is basically my dad.
Your mom was a nurse who just didn't have any better options in 1951.
Yeah, well, your mom dresses you funny.
I just got a surprise package in the mail - a book by Mike Bloomberg - that was ordered for me by my wife's racist uncle.
I wasn't sure how to respond, so I just went on Amazon and ordered a copy of Elizabeth Warren's book to be delivered to his place.
91: Well played! And a real boom to the publishing industry, if people just keep sending each other hate-reads like that.
I have a thought about Bloomberg vs Trump. The electorally significant difference between them is that Bloomberg earned his money; and this is a *huge* disadvantage. Trump is so transparently a lottery winner acting out a lottery winner's fantasies of wealth and power and sexual success. In a world whose chief characteristic is resented unfairness (older conservatives simple accepted unfairness) he appear as a shining example of the way in which unfairness can work to the advantage of ordinary schmucks.
Bloomberg, on the other hand, is a genuine meritocrat. He made (at least the bulk) of his fortune by being smarter, perhaps more ruthless, and having better judgement than his peers. So his success carried the unconscious message that, since he deserves his position, you, loser, deserve yours too. That's not a vote-winning message for these times. I don't know where Warren fits in on this scale of off-putting meritocracy. She seems to me, a bit like HRC, to have had to work damn hard for well-deserved success -- and the thing to remember is that this fact alone makes her hateful to a significant portion of the electorate, because it makes less credible the idea that the game is entirely rigged and none of their troubles are their fault.
This analysis of course ignores the fact that EW's policy prescriptions would to some extent unrig the game, and perhaps some of Bloomberg's too. That doesn't matter. The wider electorate does not vote for policies. Nor do I mean to suggest that the game isn't rigged. Of course it is, and more so with every year that passes. But we have not yet reached ancien regime levels of social stratification and immobility.
91: I'm getting lots of stuff from Bloomberg - texts and mail addressed to me and some other guy I've never heard of. Maybe it was someone who lived here - but it would have been 3 tenants back.
95 is probably true and profoundly depressing.
/love/live/
Ever since I sliced off a bit of the top of my index finger on a mandoline I type worse even then before on the phone
You need to be careful with string instruments.
Unpleasant slicing on a mandoline.
Fucking mandolines. They are the worst.
They don't like you either.
I don't know why nobody seems to give much attention to what seems to me an obvious endgame that Bloomberg might well have been working for years. As a Democratic candidate, he clears out the moderates & becomes a punching bag for the left; once Sanders claims the nomination, he gets to drop another billion or two & run as an independent. A three-way race of Trump, Sanders, & Bloomberg might well be the only scenario in which any of the three could believably win a fair vote.
Well, he said he wouldn't run as a third party and the DNC called "no take-backsies" so we are probably in the clear....
Then the "Mandoline Rain" is bits of you.
I like that Rep. Omar's Republican challenger is running for the popo for shoplifting charges. In a way, shoplifting $2,000 for Target is impressive. They have most of the valuable electronics under lock.
Let they who have not shoplifted $2000 in goods from Target cast the first stone.
Bloomberg wasn't even on the ballot in Nevada?
No, he's not on in SC either, he doesn't appear til Super Tuesday, which looks like a bad bet if Bernie runs all four early states which seems likely.
That's not as cheering as if he were on the ballot and got 0 votes.
Elizabeth Warren just spoke to supporters in Washington, and she was on fire. I want to echo Megan: why can't they all love Warren as much as I do? Klobuchar is toast, thank goodness.
I think she's great, but I'm well aware that my idea of what is charisma doesn't really mesh with what most voters think.
My mom, who lives in Reno, just texted me: "If I like everything Bernie says, does that mean I'm a socialist?"
She could be a Trotskyist if she wants.
Bloomberg apparently entered the race to stop Bernie, but at this point is only helping Bernie.
The American political scene makes me feel very, very grateful indeed for that accident of birth that gave me Canadian citizenship. Also: the rhetorical manoeuvre of dismissing Democratic voters as "corporate" and "compromised" just doesn't seem like a good idea to me in the lead-up to a general election, but what do I know?
Oh don't worry, they'll all bend the knee.
113: Because the human race is garbage, it will be a relief when the sun expands to engulf the Earth. The only tragedy is that it happens in 5 billion years, and not tomorrow.
115: It does not.
I think Bloomberg entered the race to stop Warren, it's just that by the time he ramped up Warren's support had cratered. It's pretty ironic he threw the race to Sanders, though.
||
A Journalist is an Historian, not indeed of the highest Class, nor of the number of those whose works bestow immortality upon others or themselves; yet, like other Historians, he distributes for a time Reputation or Infamy, regulates the opinion of the week, raises hopes and terrors, inflames or allays the violence of the people. He ought therefore to consider himself as subject at least to the first law of History, the Obligation to tell Truth. The Journalist, indeed, however honest, will frequently deceive, because he will frequently be deceived himself. He is obliged to transmit the earliest intelligence before he knows how far it may be credited; he relates transactions yet fluctuating in uncertainty; he delivers reports of which he knows not the Authors. It cannot be expected that he should know more than he is told, or that he should not sometimes be hurried down the current of a popular clamour. All that he can do is to consider attentively, and determine impartially, to admit no falsehoods by design, and to retract those which he shall have adopted by mistake.
This is not much to be required, and yet this is more than the Writers of News seem to exact from themselves. It must surely sometimes raise indignation to observe with what serenity of confidence they relate on one day, what they know not to be true, because they hope that it will please; and with what shameless tranquillity they contradict it on the next day, when they find that it will please no longer. How readily they receive any report that will disgrace our enemies, and how eagerly they accumulate praises upon a name which caprice or accident has made a Favourite. They know, by experience, however destitute of reason, that what is desired will be credited without nice examination
...
A Journalist, above most other men, ought to be acquainted with the lower orders of mankind, that he may be able to judge, what will be plain, and what will be obscure; what will require a Comment, and what will be apprehended without Explanation. He is to consider himself not as writing to Students or Statesmen alone, but to Women, Shopkeepers, and Artisans, who have little time to bestow upon mental attainments, but desire, upon easy terms, to know how the world goes; who rises, and who falls; who triumphs, and who is defeated.
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118: The hostility toward party-faithful, rank-and-file, willing-to-do-yeoman's-work-to-elect-more-Democratic-representatives Democrats (when, as heebie recently pointed out, it's the GOP who are the relentlessly greedy and immoral and destructive shitheads who unleashed the Orange Menace upon the world) is just baffling to me.
I'm kind of boggling by what seems to be a Bernie candidacy. Hang on, I actually have a post I'll throw up real quick on this topic.
True. There is a another post.
OT:
Ooooooo. All I need now is a canal.
Or a street, with reasonable precautions. Or without, in keeping with the pioneering spirit.
No, the canal is palindromically vital.
Bolsheviks can storm all palindromes.
All we want is wordplay beyond the palindrome!
Dude. They've literally cured Ebola.
I only suffer from metaphorical Ebola.
On topic because capitalism: Somebody, the same person, called both my house phone and my cell phone to ask me to call them back if I wanted to see what he would offer me, in all cash, for my house. I have several questions:
How did he figure out what address was associated with my cell phone?
Can I assume the number in the caller ID is accurate?
If yes, who should I give the number to get him the worst calls?
Can I drop a dime on him? I think I'm on the Do Not Call list and he's a telemarketer.
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