DNC: We're for sale - what did you have in mind, Mike?

Mike: How about a a couple hundred million?

DNC: Ok - you qualify for the debates.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/31/dnc-shifts-debate-requirements-opening-door-for-bloomberg-110017

The Democratic National Committee is drastically revising its criteria to participate in primary debates after New Hampshire, doubling the polling threshold and eliminating the individual donor requirement, which could pave the way for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg to make the stage beginning in mid-February.

Candidates will need to earn at least 10 percent in four polls released from Jan. 15 to Feb. 18, or 12 percent in two polls conducted in Nevada or South Carolina, in order to participate in the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas. Any candidate who earns at least one delegate to the national convention in either the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primary will also qualify for the Nevada debate.

The new criteria eliminate the individual-donor threshold, which was used for the first eight debates, including next week's debate in New Hampshire. Bloomberg, the self-funding billionaire, has refused to take donations from other individuals, which has thus far precluded his participation in any of the debates since he joined the race late last year.


“Now that the grassroots support is actually captured in real voting, the criteria will no longer require a donor threshold,” said Adrienne Watson, a DNC spokeswoman. “The donor threshold was appropriate for the opening stages of the race, when candidates were building their organizations, and there were no metrics available outside of polling to distinguish those making progress from those who weren’t.”

As of Friday, the three candidates who have met the Nevada polling thresholds are Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, according to POLITICO's tracking of public polling. The other candidates, including Bloomberg, have not yet cleared the polling threshold.

Four candidates who are slated to participate in next week’s debate — Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer — have also not yet hit the new polling threshold.

The new rules do, however, open the door for Bloomberg to participate after New Hampshire. Previously, the donor threshold had proved an insurmountable barrier for Bloomberg, who did not want to alter his promise to never accept campaign contributions — which he touts in promoting what he says is his independence from special interests.

But Warren and other liberal supporters argued Bloomberg needs a proper vetting, particularly since his media company has been instructed not cover the Democratic primary. Some have urged the DNC to reconsider its rules to allow him to participate, and Warren has also been critical of a nondisclosure agreement women at his company signed that bar them from discussing legal claims they filed. She believes they should be released from the gag order.

“We are thrilled that voters could soon have the chance to see Mike Bloomberg on the debate stage, hear his vision for the country and see why he is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump and bring our country together,” Bloomberg’s campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said in a statement following the announcement.

The now-eliminated donor threshold was controversial when it was rolled out last year. Campaigns charged that the threshold forced them to divert resources into collecting donors instead of investing in field work.

But the donor threshold was rarely what determined whether candidates made the stage. The only candidate to hit a polling threshold for a debate but not qualify, due to not hitting the donor threshold, has been Bloomberg. In every other case, excluded candidates have either hit neither or just the donor threshold by the time qualification closes.

And some argue that requiring a donor threshold in the early stages of the primary was valuable. “I think it was really important for campaigns — but also for donors — for getting people active early on … and making sure they were involved earlier than in previous elections,” Erin Hill, the executive director of ActBlue, told POLITICO. “It made sure all sorts of candidates were building grassroots programs.”

Not everyone is thrilled that Bloomberg — who has hit 10 percent in only one of the requisite four polls released so far — could be on stage after the donor threshold was eliminated.

“To now change the rules in the middle of the game to accommodate Mike Bloomberg, who is trying to buy his way into the Democratic nomination, is wrong,” Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders, told POLITICO as the rules were being announced.

Weaver pointed to other current and past candidates like Cory Booker, Yang and Julián Castro, who dropped off the stage because they couldn’t meet the minimum polling threshold.

“Now, suddenly because Mr. Bloomberg couldn’t satisfy one of the prongs, we see it get changed?” Weaver said. “That’s the definition of a rigged system where the rich can buy their way in.”

Steyer — like Bloomberg, a billionaire — has also been accused of buying his spot on the debate stage, having spent well over $150 million of his own money to fuel his bid, including spending eight figures to solicit donations from enough individuals to qualify. But Steyer and Bloomberg are taking two very different paths to trying to secure the nomination: Steyer is competing extensively in the four early states, while Bloomberg is skipping them entirely to focus on Super Tuesday and beyond.

Steyer, like Weaver, the Sanders' adviser, accused the DNC of changing the criteria to benefit Bloomberg. "Back in December, I called on the DNC to open up the debate requirements so that more candidates, including candidates of color, would be able to participate, he said. “Instead, they are changing the rules for a candidate who is ignoring early states voters and grassroots donors.”

Steyer was also critical of the polling window for the Nevada debate, noting it started later than previous debates.

Candidates past and present had, at times, lobbied the DNC to change debate requirement rules, which would have functionally expanded the stage even as the early voting states rapidly approached.

But the Feb. 19 debate will almost assuredly be smaller than next week’s debate, however, even without the donor threshold (and the much higher polling threshold). Some candidates are likely to drop out after Iowa and New Hampshire, and the high polling mark could keep candidates with minimal support off the stage.


-->

n/m

once votes started getting casted.

the donor requirement was to gauge voter/grassroots support (sanders folks pushed for it) before folks could actually vote.

you think bloomberg couldnt just spend millions on facebook and youtube getting donations like steyer to meet the donor threshold if he wanted to?

who do you think he would peel more support from? biden or bernie?

exactly.

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which ignites an immediate pavlovian response among the revolutionaries.

you see a headline nowadays and you already know exactly what person x is gonna come around ranting about. actual facts be damned.

If Bernie (or Liz or Pete or whoever) can’t beat
a billionaire with a questionable (at best)
record in the Dem primary....? uh we are in
serious trouble.

I’ve always wondered why he didn’t just ask for a
dollar from x amount of people via ads like you
said.

I think Bloomberg is good practice for whoever
the nominee ends up being *shrugs*

in a way that might help him defeat biden and warren...the 2 other people they previously told me were the dnc handpicked candidates!

why does the dnc keep rigging the primary for different handpicked candidates?!!!

lol.

aint it kinda weird how every top candidate is considered unfairly favored by the dnc except the one candidate who actually had a completely unprecedented new donor threshold rule imposed on the primary for them?

what is more unfair than blocking candidates who dont raise enough money (advocated by the same people who claim there is too much money in politics)?

I’m sure that this decision being made immediately after Bloomberg cut a $300k check to the DNC was purely coincidental. This had nothing to do with getting Bloomberg on the debate stage, of course.

-->

3 separate payments on the same day.

maybe we have different definitions of 'immediately after'.
https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00010603&contributor_name=bloomberg%2C+michael&two_year_transaction_period=2020&min_date=01%2F01%2F2019&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020

this information is easily available for anyone who wants to know the facts instead of just pushing a narrative/agenda.

so that pretty much kills your whole conspiracy theory right there.

he also entered the race in november after that.

if they really wanted to bend the rules for him after receiving a payoff...why did they continue increasing the donor/polling threshold for multiple debates after that...virtually locking him out? why not just remove the donor barrier and let him run wild?

the dnc announced these new rules a few weeks before the next debate just like they did for every other debate.

you could continue to dwell in the make-believe or you could ask yourself one simple logical question. whats the point of still continuing a donor threshold to measure grassroots support after those people start voting? if bloomberg has the 3rd or 4th place most votes...youre really gonna keep him off the debate stage because he doesnt have enough donations (a threshold sanders supporters pushed for to tilt the playing field towards sanders)?

sometimes the simplest answer is the right one.

thats a lil inconvenient to the 'rigged election' narrative tho huh?

sometimes it feels like people on our side are becoming just as mindlessly aggrieved as the trump voters we make fun of.

Damn that’s ancient history, you’re right.

But you’re perfectly entitled to believe that this is all above board and not suspicious in the slightest. You’re also entitled to believe that spending hundreds of millions on campaign ads (as Bloomberg has done) does nothing to enhance your polling numbers - but the facts would indicate otherwise.


-->

you dont have to deflect and redirect to peripheral details to save face and try to even the score.

i wont judge you.

we still gonna be family. *hugs*

As if Bloomberg donated this money a long time ago, with zero pay-to-play implications at play for his campaign.

Fam, all this posturing and caping for the DNC is cool and all - but it doesn’t mean you get to ignore facts.

The fact here is clear: Bloomberg recently gave $300k to the DNC as part of his late entry into the primary. He never intended to abide by the rules that other candidates have had to abide by - because he can pay his way to the head of the line. Shortly after - the DNC announces that they will remove the individual donor requirement - just at the time when Bloomberg has met the polling threshold to qualify him for the debates. The timing of course is purely coincidental for you - just a formality.

This new rule clearly is to the particular benefit of one candidate: Bloomberg. Further, you deem the hundreds of millions that he’s spent on ads as benign and also inconsequential.

You probably also feel there’s nothing wrong with allowing Patrick to appear on the CNN/NHDP town hall when candidates who are far more qualified and in better standing have been denied access.

It’s ok to just admit your bias. Hate to see you flail around and stunt as an objective observer when you’re just blatantly ignoring and skewing facts.
-->

first the move was made 'immediately' after he made the donations...but it was made over 2 months after. then the move was made as he started clearing the polling threshold...when they doubled the polling threshold and actually made it harder for him (he has only cleared the new threshold in *one* outlier foxnews poll).

cmon.

you are searching for (factually iffy) details to confirm your pre-existing bias.

we are supposed to be the fact based side in our political battle. lets not start throwing around disinformation to reinforce our perceptions/grievances like the youknowwhos.

i have a lot of issues with the bloomberg candidacy and the influence of big money on our political systems. but your specific original claim (which you are working hard to blur/muddy by flooding the zone with a bunch of other details) is bullshit.

the donor threshold itself was something intentionally placed in the debate requirements (1st time in history) by sanders allies to give him an advantage. his folks (konst, zogby, etc) were pretty blatant/transparent about this back during the rules debate.

you still didnt answer one basic question...if people are already voting (which they will be by the time of the debate)...whats the point of having a donor threshold to 'measure' support?

particularly in the context of this money coming just as Bloomberg entered the race. Btw - it wasn't just the $300k payment to the DNC. He's spent millions in other avenues to leverage his influence into this primary process - and if you don't think that there was some assurance by Perez and the DNC that Bloomberg would be permitted to debate in exchange for his vast investment into the Democratic primary (funds that the DNC quite frankly needs because of its lackluster fundraising) - then it's hard to really even have the discussion.

But we both know you're not that naive.

>if people are
>already voting (which they will be by the time of the
>debate)...whats the point of having a donor threshold to
>'measure' support?

The point is to be consistent throughout with debate rules/qualifications - and in particular - not to change the rules to accommodate a billionaire and allow him to cut the line in order to get on the debate stage.

That is - if you're actually concerned with oligarchical influence and big money in politics.


-->

I've seen a couple Trumps too but it's been like 90% Bloomberg.

Are you sick of Trump? How about a real billionaire with no personality?

>Are you sick of Trump? How about a real billionaire with no
>personality?

Lol right. Nothing like a W. Bush Independent billionaire to save the day.

-->

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/9/20956153/mike-bloomberg-president-2020-jeff-bezos-phone-call-amazon-hq2

Jeff Bezos asked Michael Bloomberg months ago if he’d consider running for president

Billionaires make calls just like us.

Sometime after Amazon pulled the plug on plans for a New York City headquarters in February of this year, the city’s former Mayor Michael Bloomberg received a call from a top company executive.

It wasn’t just any Amazon executive — it was Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder and CEO and the world’s richest man.

Bezos was calling with a question for his fellow billionaire and media mogul: Would Bloomberg consider entering the 2020 presidential race?

Bloomberg told Bezos no at the time, according to a person briefed on the phone conversation.

But he had a question of his own for Amazon’s CEO: Would Bezos reconsider his decision to cancel plans for an Amazon headquarters — dubbed HQ2 — in New York City?

Bezos’s response matched Bloomberg’s — he wouldn’t.

A spokesperson for Bloomberg confirmed the conversation. An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Now, months later, Bloomberg is in fact on the cusp of entering the race for the Democratic nomination as he’s watched the party’s leading moderate, former Vice President Joe Biden, struggle. On Friday, Bloomberg filed paperwork to qualify for the presidential primary in Alabama, which has the earliest deadline of any state. He has still not announced his candidacy.

It’s unclear what prompted Bezos’s call earlier this year or what he thinks of Bloomberg’s recent inching toward the race. It’s also not known whether the discussion took place before or after Bloomberg’s March 5 announcement that he wouldn’t run for president.

Bezos, who’s been described as a libertarian, has largely stayed out of the world of big-money political donations, other than a $10 million gift with his then-wife MacKenzie to a super PAC that aims to elect military veterans to congressional office.

But it’s easy to imagine that a man worth more than $100 billion wouldn’t mind a new business-minded presidential opponent to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Both of those contenders for the Democratic nomination have made economic inequality centerpieces of their campaigns.

Warren has proposed a wealth tax for the uber wealthy like Bill Gates and Leon Cooperman, who each recently publicly expressed concerns about the plan. Sanders simply doesn’t think billionaires should exist and has his own wealth tax proposal.

Each of the senators are also vocal critics of Amazon on topics ranging from its treatment of warehouse workers to its growing power in retail and other industries. Warren, of course, has outlined a plan to break up Amazon, along with other tech giants.

Some believe a Bloomberg candidacy could actually boost Warren’s chances of landing the nomination by weakening Biden (who top Amazon spokesman Jay Carney once worked for when he was vice president). Others are cheering the former New York City mayor on.

As for Bezos, we still don’t know exactly what he thinks. But he was interested enough in the idea of a Bloomberg presidency to make a call.

and actually cited Bush's decision to invade Iraq into his reasoning as to why he was supporting Bush:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4577522/michael-bloomberg-remarks-2004-republican-national-convention-nyc

Never has been a Democrat his entire life - yet we don't hear the "he's not a real DeMoCrAt!" crying about his candidacy. Not a negative remark about him from party power wielders.

To the contrary: we see the DNC changing its rules - ad hoc - to accommodate Bloomberg's candidacy and gift-wrap a platform to him.

-->

His tenure as mayor seems in retrospect a workshop how to sell fascism to upper class liberals as data-driven policy solutions.

This isn't the sort of campaign that the party should be indulging.

>His tenure as mayor seems in retrospect a workshop how to
>sell fascism to upper class liberals as data-driven policy
>solutions.
>
>This isn't the sort of campaign that the party should be
>indulging.

again, if the GOP figures out how to do this nationwide (in Maryland, they have, with Hogan)... we are doomed.

if anything...biden/warren/p booty supporters should be up in arms and throwing tantrums...as bloombergs rise in the polls has consistently eaten into their support bases.

but for some reason...their supporters arent crying about a rigged election. weird...

He welcomed Bush to New York for the 2004 GOP convention, had thousands of protesters arrested by his militarized police force, made racial profiling an official policy of that police force, and used them to stomp Occupy Wall Street. Now he's trying to use his billions to exercise veto power over an election that threatens to treat him like a regular citizen and not a feudal lord. He's a fascist and a functional political party that is even marginally left of center should tell him to fuck all the way off.

The question seems to be why Sanders supporters aren't more cynical about Bloomberg's presence in the race but it's put in a way that refuses to consider as an answer what has often been assumed about Sanders fans in criticisms of them: that they aren't actually cynical about politics.

Bloomberg is worth opposing because he sucks and is trying to hijack the political process. Everybody should be mad.

i know you know the predominant elements at play in the reaction to the rule change though.

Jesus hell. Good liberals are supposed to love term limits.

Any viability that Bloomberg has as a candidate is evidence that Democrats' biggest issue with Trump is his manners. Not fascist cruelty to immigrants and poor people, not exploiting bigotry to encourage extrajudicial violence against minorities. It's that he's tacky and dumb. Bloomberg isn't, so problem solved as far as they're concerned.

at the time, Christine Quinn, bid a back door deal where the City Council voted to give extend the max terms from two to three for both Mayor and City Council Speaker.

The funny thing is that when Doomberg's third term ran out, he pretty much kicked Quinn to the curb when she ran for mayor. I don't think she's been politically vocal in NYC since her third term as City Council Speaker ran out.

....it could hurt the other candidates ...because Bloomberg is running non stop ads in the tri state area, it's the only ad's i'm seeing and its non stop.

This blatant pay-for-play stunt should be concerning enough on its face.

-->

and dude is going to suck up time that could be used by these other candidates.

were (rightfully) calling out when they respectively exited the race.

This hasn't just hurt Bernie - this damages the integrity of our process and the trust/faith the people have in our institutions.

>and dude is going to suck up time that could be used by these
>other candidates.

Yea - the notion that Bloomberg is going to get a platform right now is absolutely ridiculous. Oddly enough, you haven't heard a single bad word about him from party officials. He's basically their "break open in an emergency" contingency plan.


-->

But hey, it's not bernie and not trump, so you should be fine

it starts off with Bloom Dogg saying "where's my ice cream?"

someone off screen hands him a pint.

Bloomberg eats it, awkwardly, turns to the camera and says "Big Gay Ice Cream (the brand) is the best."

And that's it.

I was cookin

with the awkward handshake he did with that dog's mouth

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/01/30/michael-bloomberg-shakes-dog-snout-moos-pkg-ebof-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/wacky-world-of-jeanne-moos/

whose dogs are those?

https://www.axios.com/bloomberg-meme-political-ads-2020-presidential-campaign-92a23a33-f676-4d70-8c65-6f3e0d5d1c23.html

Details: Bloomberg's campaign is working with Meme 2020, a company created by Mick Purzycki, the chief executive of the meme media and marketing company Jerry Media.

Bloomberg had sponsored posts on multiple accounts with more than a million followers, including Jerry Media’s account, with more than 13.3 million followers.

The posts fake direct messages of the candidate asking Instagram influencers to help make him "the cool candidate."

Some users were unsure if the posts were legitimate or a coordinated joke from the meme accounts.
-->

He sunk SO much money into initiatives targeting Black folks that Black elected officials are up here endorsing him.

This motherfucker has GOT to go. He is a problem.

Because I (and millions of others) in key states ain't voting for him.

Bloomberg runs and that map is gonna look like Reagan 84. Except New York won't be Blue.

Smh.. wtf.

I don't know why people are so shook of the right calling bernie a socialist.

when it gets to the debates he can explain how moderate he actually is.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-socialism.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

"Republicans have a long, disreputable history of conflating any attempt to improve American lives with the evils of “socialism.” When Medicare was first proposed, Ronald Reagan called it “socialized medicine,” and he declared that it would destroy our freedom. These days, if you call for something like universal child care, conservatives accuse you of wanting to turn America into the Soviet Union.

It’s a smarmy, dishonest political strategy, but it’s hard to deny that it has sometimes been effective. And now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination — not an overwhelming front-runner, but clearly the person most likely at the moment to come out on top — is someone who plays right into that strategy, by declaring that he is indeed a socialist.

The thing is, Bernie Sanders isn’t actually a socialist in any normal sense of the term. He doesn’t want to nationalize our major industries and replace markets with central planning; he has expressed admiration, not for Venezuela, but for Denmark. He’s basically what Europeans would call a social democrat — and social democracies like Denmark are, in fact, quite nice places to live, with societies that are, if anything, freer than our own.

So why does Sanders call himself a socialist? I’d say that it’s mainly about personal branding, with a dash of glee at shocking the bourgeoisie. And this self-indulgence did no harm as long as he was just a senator from a very liberal state."

I’m sure he is promising them the world if elected.

I hate seeing us get played like this.

It's how he bought his third term.

I'm sure all these endorsements aren't for nothing, but I'm not cynical enough to think he's straight up paying people off

All the Black political leaders that seem to support him in NY despite Stop & Frisk must be getting something for their fealty. Not sure about leadership in the south.

A ton of these mayors went through the Harvard City Leadership Academy, a kind of mayor boot camp sponsored by Bloomberg. He also gives out a ton of grant money (I mean, a ton for the cities - not a ton for him) to these cities through the American Cities Initiative.

Being an American mayor seems like a really frustrating job. Your citizens are subject to constraints that are often well outside of your sphere of political influence but your election depends on being understood as somebody interested in and capable of mitigating the effects of those constraints in ways that are unique to your town. That means making friends with money, and in this case becoming a vassal to Bloomberg's cash - and now his aspirations to higher office.

Even if Bloomberg were doing unqualified good with all of this money and influence, he should still be chased from this election and American political influence altogether. Giving into this now isn't just giving into a rich guy who we think might beat a worse rich guy. It's permitting every rich guy to just buy their way into office as long as they're willing to pay even the slightest lip service to needs of normal people. I've been periodically making the case that things could get worse than Trump if an administratively effect fascist could present a similar challenge to 21st century liberalism but my stupid mistake was thinking that would come from current office holders like Cotton or Hawley (who are, to be clear, horrifying ghouls) when there's no longer any need for that. So we don't even need to use our imaginations and go down the Republican bench to see if there's somebody worse than Trump. We just need to wonder if there's a worse rich guy than Trump and ... fucking obviously there are. Lots of them.

have given way to politicians buying people off directly lol. Absolute corporate corruption of the political process actually has met its usurper. The more the wealth gap continues to grow the worse it will become, and the more beholden to billionaires local politicians will get.

Honestly, as much as I hope politicians won't sell out, for every one that doesn't, ten will fall in line.

I'll be sitting in my easy chair, slowly whiling away my declining years, and consecutive campaign commercials for the 2028 general election will air on TaskRabbit's new streaming platform.

In the first, Eric Trump casually leans out the window of a Ford F-150 to lay out the nutritional benefits of his "turn the homeless into gravy" platform. In the second, Donald Trump Jr. proudly announces his five point plan to annex Saskatchewan and turn it into a ranch to hunt the deadliest prey, high school librarians. Both ads share the same campaign slogan: What the fuck are you gonna do about it?

>I'll be sitting in my easy chair, slowly whiling away my
>declining years, and consecutive campaign commercials for the
>2028 general election will air on TaskRabbit's new streaming
>platform.
>
>In the first, Eric Trump casually leans out the window of a
>Ford F-150 to lay out the nutritional benefits of his "turn
>the homeless into gravy" platform. In the second, Donald Trump
>Jr. proudly announces his five point plan to annex
>Saskatchewan and turn it into a ranch to hunt the deadliest
>prey, high school librarians. Both ads share the same campaign
>slogan: What the fuck are you gonna do about it?

Honestly I would buy this novel. The future sounds MAGAnificent.

>The future sounds MAGAnificent.

/shudder

This site has faction'd pretty severely, which is fine. Arguing loudly, rudely, daily is what happens when people realize that this matters.

But everybody should be furious at this. Think Harris got a raw deal on the "Kamala is a cop" thing? Bloomberg referred to the NYPD as "my own army... which is the 7th biggest in the world." Think we didn't give enough thought to Warren's "I've got a plan for that?" Bloomberg was defending stop and frisk as an effective strategy as recently as January 2019. Think the "too old" knock didn't offer a fair chance to Warren, Biden, and Sanders (who I realize are different ages but are all above 70)? Bloomberg is 78. Tired of Bernie getting called to account because @tankiemcnamara69 said something nasty to Sady Doyle? Take a look at Bloomberg's stack of sexual harassment lawsuits.

https://www.gq.com/story/bloomberg-sexism

Why Is Bloomberg's Long History of Egregious Sexism Getting a Pass?
The surging Democratic presidential candidate and Bloomberg LP have fielded nearly 40 sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits over decades.

BY LAURA BASSETT

February 13, 2020

In December 2015, employees at Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control organization funded by Mike Bloomberg, arrived at work to find a holiday gift on their desks from their employer: the former mayor’s 1997 autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. Flipping through the book, staffers found themselves uncomfortably reading their billionaire founder’s boasts about keeping “a girlfriend in every city” and other womanizing exploits as a Wall Street up-and-comer.

“A few people started immediately going through it and sending the cringe-iest parts around on email chains,” one former Everytown employee told me. “Hardly the most controversial things he’s said, but it’s still a bad look.”

Indeed, Bloomberg’s casual boasts about his sex life in his own autobiography are now some of the least problematic parts of the his candidacy for president. In recent days, the former New York City mayor’s track record on race is undergoing renewed scrutiny: Bloomberg oversaw and expanded the racist and unconstitutional “stop and frisk” program, and a newly unearthed video shows him blaming the end of a racially discriminatory housing practice known as “redlining” for the 2008 economic recession. But it takes a telling amount of gall and cluelessness to gift a book with anecdotes about your own womanizing to employees at your gun safety non-profit in the year 2015, especially for a politician with presidential ambitions who has been vigorously denying allegations of misogyny throughout his entire career—including nearly 40 sex discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits brought against him and his organizations by 64 women over the past several decades.

Bloomberg’s sexism, like that of fellow New York City billionaire Donald Trump, has been prolific and well-documented, but for some reason, the stories about him don’t seem to have taken hold. He is still being embraced by the Democratic establishment as a viable option for its presidential nominee. He surged to third place in several 2020 polls this week; the Democratic National Committee changed its rules to allow him to participate in the next primary debate; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said his presence in the primary is a “positive one.”

All this, despite what’s already been reported and alleged for decades about Bloomberg’s behavior. As a recap, here are some examples: Sekiko Sakai Garrison, a former sales representative at Bloomberg LP, alleged in a 1997 lawsuit (one of four separate lawsuits in a two-year period) that when then-CEO Mike Bloomberg found out she was pregnant, he told her, “Kill it!” and “Great! Number 16!”—an apparent reference to the number of pregnant women or women on maternity leave at his company. She also alleged that when Bloomberg saw her engagement ring, he commented, “What is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?” and that he once pointed to another female employee and told Garrison, “If you looked like that, I’d do you in a second.” Bloomberg denied having said most of those things, but reportedly left Garrison a voicemail saying that if he did say them, he “didn’t mean it.”

Bloomberg once described his life as a single billionaire bachelor in New York City to a reporter as being a “wet dream.” "I like theater, dining and chasing women," he said. On a radio show in 2003, he said that he would “really want to have” Jennifer Lopez, which he later explained away as wanting to “have dinner” with her. A top aide said Bloomberg frequently remarked “nice tits” upon seeing attractive women. Employees of his in 1990 put together an entire booklet of his some of his more egregious comments, including, "If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they'd go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale's,” and, of the computer terminal that made him a billionaire, “It will do everything, including give you . I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business."

More recently, Bloomberg defended his longtime close pal Charlie Rose, who was fired from CBS and PBS in 2017 after multiple women alleged that he made unwanted sexual advances on his female colleagues and subordinates. "The stuff I read about is disgraceful—I don't know how true all of it is," Bloomberg told the New York Times. “I never saw anything and we have no record, we've checked very carefully.”

Bloomberg then took that opportunity to cast doubt on the #MeToo movement as a whole, saying the public should “let the court system decide” whether a man is guilty. "You know, is it true?" he said. "You look at people that say it is, but we have a system where you have—presumption of innocence is the basis of it." (He didn’t give men of color the same benefit of the doubt in 2015 when he was recorded as saying that minorities were arrested at a disproportional rate "because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods," and because “ninety-five percent of your murders and murderers and murder victims fit one M.O.”) Rose, coincidentally, had once described his constant banter with Bloomberg about women in the office (which they shared in the 90s) as “a locker room thing”—the same defense Trump used to excuse his having boasted about “grabbing” women “by the pussy.”

Bloomberg’s campaign, in reckoning with his long history of toxic frat-boy behavior, is essentially asking voters to try and focus on his political values instead. "Mike Bloomberg has supported and empowered women throughout his career—from appointing women to the very top positions in his mayoral administration to supporting women candidates for higher office to an industry-leading 26-weeks of paid family leave at his company," Julie Wood, a Bloomberg campaign spokesperson, told ABC News in October. "At the same time, Mike has come to see that some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong. He believes his words have not always aligned with his values and the way he has led his life." Of course, at least through 2015, he was leading his life in such a way that he proudly passed out a narrative of his sexual exploits to the young people he hired to combat gun violence.

If the Democratic Party wants to claim the moral high-ground on issues of misogyny and sexual harassment in the wake of the #MeToo movement, it has a moral obligation to reject as its highest leader a man who talks about women much in the same way Trump does. A half-hearted apology for behavior so egregious that it sparked nearly 40 lawsuits by women is a bandaid on a bullet wound.

Laura Bassett is a freelance journalist writing about politics, gender, and culture.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Charlie Rose was fired from NBC and PBS for sexual misconduct; Rose was fired from CBS and PBS.

He just isn't occasionally funny.

You wouldn't know it from twitter, but stop and frisk was supported, with some skepticism by a strong majority of New Yorkers, including black people.

https://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/poll-stop-frisk-supported-but-with-revisions-1.6316830

I know it's disqualifying to some but harping on his policing record doesn't hurt him with center and moderate dems (the association maybe even a plus).


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>I know it's disqualifying to some but harping on his policing
>record doesn't hurt him with center and moderate dems (the
>association maybe even a plus).

They should be ridiculed into submission and afraid to share this opinion in public.

wrong....

What the fuck else do you need?

"Even the police objected. When Bloomberg was finally forced last fall to apologize for stop-and-frisk so he could run for president, Patrick Lynch, president of the city’s Police Benevolent Association, issued a blistering statement:

“Mayor Bloomberg could have saved himself this apology if he had just listened to the police officers on the street. We said in the early 2000s that the quota-driven emphasis on street stops was polluting the relationship between cops and our communities. His administration’s misguided policy inspired an anti-police movement that has made cops the target of hatred and violence, and stripped away many of the tools we had used to keep New Yorkers safe.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/opinion/michael-bloomberg-stop-frisk.html

That is pretty damn bizarre. I assumed Pat Lynch would be all for snapping necks and cracking skulls.


I do wonder if the uber strong armed tactics used by the local NYC Police unions are used in other cities.

police sentiment if you look at this quote (not that I would ever sympathize with Patrick fuckin Lynch)

But if the PBA really did take the stance that stop & frisk was BAD for police / community relations, and the police themselves were taking all the heat for doing their job while Bloomberg kept his hands clean in the back seat of his lib-mousine, of course you are going to take any direct attack in the press or otherwise on the guy doing the job as a mortal injury to the reputation of the man and the department.

record. It's not that surprising.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

the context of his quote.

He's saying even the police recognized the practice was bad for community / police relations.

back this deep-pocketed loser.

if not for 90s clean up the subways to 00s clean up the streets policies

DMV Chi Atl would have everyone...

https://twitter.com/tperry518/status/1228154421084872704

fam wtf is going on? lol.

i wouldnt be surprised if al sharpton...who marched against bloomberg for years...comes out and endorses him lol. shit obama might too lol (outside of that creatively edited commercial).

seriously tho...just focusing on the nuts and bolts...this is a pretty remarkable campaign to watch unfold. theyre even nailing micro level shit that other campaigns dont even think of.

dude is paying field ops like $6k/mth and starving out other campaigns for state/ground talent.

i know somebody on here is gonna end up working for his campaign. that money is too good lol.

Isn't Stacey Abrams rocking with him now too?

>dude is paying field ops like $6k/mth and starving out other
>campaigns for state/ground talent.
>
>i know somebody on here is gonna end up working for his
>campaign. that money is too good lol.

lol. He got a significant amount of Kamala/Beto talent as well. He's basically like "here's a 20k advanced check - just come work for me and we'll figure it out" lol


-->

"Flashback: In 2018, Bloomberg donated $500,000 to Abrams’ gubernatorial campaign. In December, he gave $5 million to Abrams' Fair Fight organization, her initiative to fight against voter suppression."

https://www.axios.com/mike-bloomberg-stacey-abrams-georgia-event-aa438c63-ca3f-4672-907e-94f93a94722a.html

Five million is a lot. Would have been cool to take it and then tell him to fuck off.

worthless your life is personally, but it's a larger indication of just how fucked the political process is when 500k and 5mm can buy Stacey Abrams' entire brand:

https://flowingdata.com/2020/02/10/billionaires-spending-scaled-to-your-net-worth/

A drop in the Bloomberg bucket

>he gave $5 million to
>Abrams' Fair Fight organization

Bloomie seemingly wants anything but a "fair fight" in the primary.

-->

Once that money flows people switch up fast as fuck.

Welp. Guess the Black vote is with Bloomberg now. Smh

-->

"Bloomberg also established an insidious patronage system, whereby he would “slash funding in the city’s budget backfill those cuts with anonymous donations.” This allowed him to boast of being a cost-cutter, but also made organizations completely depend on his largesse, meaning that the moment he personally decided to take funding away, it was gone, and forcing them to stay on his good side. (Remember, when billionaires give away money, it has nothing to do with generosity and should not be seen as virtuous, because it costs them nothing. If I give away $50, it is more meaningful than Michael Bloomberg giving away $50 million.) By making more and more organizations dependent on him, Bloomberg took decision-making out of the democratic sphere and turned it over to himself. This is clientelism, a system built on financial quid-pro-quos, and naturally “the mayor and his top deputies… pressed social service, arts and neighborhood groups that receive donations from Mr. Bloomberg to express support for his third-term bid by testifying during public hearing.” (A useful and comprehensive article on the Bloomberg Way in the International Socialist Review also explains how Bloomberg’s “philanthropy” offers solutions to problems he himself creates, such as funding organizations that help men with drug convictions get jobs while escalating drug arrests. It shows how Bloomberg’s wealth is dependent on making sure the financial sector never stops growing.)"

Doomberg credit for thinking of the long con that far down the line.

Assuming his campaign eventually crashed and burns, I do wonder if he throw his massive sums of money down the Democratic nominee.

When you can't stand on your own, you fall for any and everything.

Bloomberg ain't it.

*And I hate this motherfucker*

But...this is essentially the campaign Biden should have been running (obviously with a fuck ton of money and a lot less telling voters to go vote for someone else)


This woman has some interesting takes on turnout, etc...I won't link all her tweets related to Bloomie, mostly because I can't find them but-

https://twitter.com/RachelBitecofer/status/1228329297464774658

She has others breaking down that the reason Bloomberg is being successful (in addition to money of course) is that he is campaigning like a Republican. He is doing things and taking risks that Dems usually don't.

Seyer has money too. No one knows who he is.

But Bloomberg?

The message is clear, and the branding is on point. Something (I'm sorry I know I'm a broken record) Democrats have struggled with.


This dude breaks down why its working and why we should be upset-

https://twitter.com/blakezeff/status/1227976156936171520



I'm fairly disgusted, but as I said- if Bernie or Pete or Amy can't get more Democrats to vote for them than a Republican Billionaire, how are they going to beat Trump and the GOP in a general election?


Last thought- I wonder how the Dems feel that its looking quite likely that the top two candidates for their nomination aren't even Democrats. How Sway? That bench BEEN thin.

** Also, considering all of this, does anyone really think Bloomberg will just drop out if say Bernie actually did win the nom?

Maybe Biden or Pete. But nah. He will run 3rd party if Bernie wins the nom. No way he is spending all of this money, etc to take 2nd to Bernie.

we dont even know where he really stands on policy. his whole approach is basically just bashing trump.

trump is historically unpopular. a majority of americans wanted him removed. even more say he is corrupt and abused his power. and democratic voters almost universally hate him (especially black voters). polls consistently show that dem voters #1 trait in a prospective nominee is who can beat trump.

so of course (D)emocratic candidates/consultants convinced themselves that its a negative to constantly mention him in a fucking democratic primary lol.

if youre a democratic voter...and you arent in the weeds on politics and dont know everyones history...and you see a bunch of dem candidates fighting over shit like the complexities of healthcare and whether you supported the iraq war over 10 years ago...and you see 1 candidate yelling 'fuck trump'...which one do you think is gonna catch your attention?

its no surprise bloomberg is rising so fast. hes running primarily on the 1 issue that the entire party from left to center agrees on. dude is shamelessly targeting the (D)emocratic base better than democrats.

This is some bullshit. I hope folks can get the word out about who Bloomberg really is.

***
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/political/michael-bloomberg-leading-floridas-democratic-primary-race-new-poll-says

Florida's Democratic Primary race has a new leader. According to St. Pete Polls, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is now leading the pack of Democratic candidates in Florida.

In a poll of 3,047 likely Florida Democratic Presidential Primary voters, these were the results:

Michael Bloomberg: 27.3%
Joe Biden: 25.9%
Undecided: 11.2%
Pete Buttigieg: 10.5%
Bernie Sanders: 10.4%
Amy Klobuchar: 8.6%
Elizabeth Warren: 4.8%
Tom Steyer: 1.3%

Former Vice President Joe Biden does still have a commanding lead among African-American voters in the state, with 41.5% of that demographic voting for him compared to the next closest, which was Bloomberg at 22.7%. However, Bloomberg is dominating among Hispanics in the state, with 35.4% of those respondents in his camp compared to Biden's 19.7%.

Our state is currently much different than the national picture, where Senator Bernie Sanders leads with 22% of the vote, according to a poll from the Economist/YouGov released on Wednesday.

Florida's presidential preference primary isn't until March 17, so there hasn't been a ton of polling yet, but the last poll to come out from Florida Atlantic University was from mid January and had Biden with a 26 point lead. The shift from month to month really highlights the volatility of this race.

The next state in the race is Nevada, which has a caucus on February 22 and a debate prior to that on February 19.

in Florida.

He’s going to buy this nomination and maybe the presidency.

>in Florida.
>
>He’s going to buy this nomination and maybe the presidency.
>

damn

Trump getting reelected.

but people have already said that, and y'all didn't listen to them, so I guess you're all just going to repost every article someone shows you until you die.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

cuz bernie has almost 0% chance of winning florida in the general if he is nominated. way too left for such moderate dominated multifactional state.

bloomberg could win florida in the primary but would repel parts of the dem base in other states in the general.

its pretty amazing how obama was able to hold together that entire coalition under one banner.

he did this in defiance of the conventional wisdom, that soon after 9/11

other people may have been greater or more consequential historically but nobody has put together a more perfect 60 minutes where damn near every bit was classic.

But in fairness to current Democrats, Obama may have made Florida really tough for awhile by normalizing our relationship with Cuba. To be entirely clear, this was an unmitigated good idea that took a lot of political courage and was well overdue. So no knock on Obama on this one at all.

But I know there was a lot of chatter at the time that Florida may stay red for awhile after that. If that's true, then I think that using the state as a point of comparison between his campaigns and future ones may be slightly unfair.

Sanders would have flopped in Florida anyhow. That stupid state is like a gross, humid bunker where retrograde ideas about socialism hide out in order to survive. Whatever traction our movement gets this fall, that's going to be one of the last places to catch on.

much like a lot of other areas of political analysis...i think people erroneously viewed a lot of what happened under obama as a guaranteed trend...instead of something that was largely endemic to him specifically.

in 2012 obama seemed to split the cuban fl vote (or even won it slightly). so i think people assumed repubs lost their grip on that demo and cubans were sliding into the dem category (along with every other latino group).

but then trump won low-50s percent of cubans. and repubs have still been winning them by the same recent majority margins they were before.

that could be viewed as obama fumbling away a group that was trending blue (cuban relationship thawing, end of wet foot dry foot, etc). or obama himself was just a unique candidate that appealed to swingy voters and young cubans (who helped tip the balance when they came out in greater numbers).

george w bush won like 75% of cubans in fl. and now repubs are only winning them at barely above 50% at the prez level. so its more likely that obama was just a temporary sharp/large peak among an ongoing consistent trend towards team blue.

>Sanders would have flopped in Florida anyhow. That stupid
>state is like a gross, humid bunker where retrograde ideas
>about socialism hide out in order to survive. Whatever
>traction our movement gets this fall, that's going to be one
>of the last places to catch on.

and having that ghoul Rick Scott, famous for Medicare fraud, serve as governor and now as a Senator, where he's less likely to be tossed off.

I want to see what kind of political project can get people who are committed to seeing Florida literally SINK TFO of office over there.

on Bloomie right?

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/e/ee/Profile_-_King_Candy.jpeg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/516?cb=20190312031135

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keenan_Wynn_Ed_Wynn_Desilu_Playhouse.JPG

This clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROqlhMEWA70

This better not be true fam lol.

-->

they literally keep falling for every single version of the 'hillary plotting her return' story. we gotta be on the 5th or 6th version this go round. same dupes.

Thankfully this appears to be junk gossip for now - but let’s not act like this would be completely left-field. When asked about a run this year (of any kind) - she refused to “rule it out” - and Bill also implied that she may be running for some kind of office. Also, the Iowa debacle was managed by the Clinton wing. Not just the app - but the chairman (who has since resigned because of gross impropriety and no integrity in the caucus administration) was also a Clinton alumni. They have their fingerprints all over this primary process.

Hillary has also inserted herself into the primary conversation at every turn - so she’s invested. In this political era where a gameshow host is President - anything is possible, apparently.

-->

then went on the same conspiratorial rant that low/bad/no information voters do.

nobody ever went broke pushing hillary clinton brain candy.

give some folks a book and they wont read it. give them some tin foil and theyll build a whole world out that bitch.

>then went on the same conspiratorial rant that low/bad/no
>information voters do.
>

^^^^^^^^^ this

>nobody ever went broke pushing hillary clinton brain candy.
>
>give some folks a book and they wont read it. give them some
>tin foil and theyll build a whole world out that bitch.

lol

Facts that you still haven’t acknowledged about Iowa. But you have acknowledged unconfirmed reports of 4chan trolls invading the Iowa Caucus, and still peddle junk RussiaGate conspiracy every chance you get - but I’m the “theorist”?

Lol ok.
-->

you typed one sentence calling it gossip. then typed an entire paragraph later about why its completely plausible lol.

then once someone makes you realize how silly it/you look...you throw a whole bunch of irrelevant shit up against the wall to draw attention away. its becoming a pattern.

I def will point out how hilarious it is to see you peddling junk conspiracy though - like talking more about “reports” of 4chan trolls being more responsible for the Iowa Caucus debacle than the IDP.

You’re the biggest conspiracy theorist in here.
-->

>You’re the biggest conspiracy theorist in here.
>-->

The desperation is palpable.

I’m glad nobody is consulting your for counseling - let alone political analysis lol.

-->

https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/1228704614737821697

i guess once it became clear that hillary wasnt running for president (after multiple cycles of rumors) they just moved to vp as the next believable option for the usual dupes.

>https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/1228704614737821697
>
>i guess once it became clear that hillary wasnt running for
>president (after multiple cycles of rumors) they just moved to
>vp as the next believable option for the usual dupes.

No wonder he didn't have any links and talked about "back-channels" smh

>No wonder he didn't have any links and talked about
>"back-channels" smh

New York Post, DailyMail, Fox News, Heavy etc....

This is back-channel junk reporting that’s been picked up by a lot of media.

If you weren’t so pressed to cape for Hillary at every turn you might be able to actually think clearly.

-->

and 1 is just an upscale bro/lad bible site.

and they all reference the same drudge article.

no independent sourcing/confirmation (like legit outlets tend to at least try to do).

you fell for the right wing spin machine because it confirms your pre existing bias about a particular political figure.

it doesnt work on people more diligent/discerning with the information they consume (eg high info voters).

they count on people like you being people like you. and you proved why.

This rumor has been picked up by all kinds of media.

Nobody here is reporting this is as fact - it's simply being mentioned because we're talking about Bloomberg.

This isn't hard, nor controversial, nor indicative of Macedonian troll farms lol.

-->

>
>>No wonder he didn't have any links and talked about
>>"back-channels" smh
>
>New York Post, DailyMail, Fox News, Heavy etc....
>
>This is back-channel junk reporting that’s been picked up by
>a lot of media.
>

"Bloomberg’s internal polling has found the combo “would be a formidable force,” campaign sources told the Drudge Report Saturday."- NY Post

"Mike Bloomberg is considering making Hillary Clinton his running mate, a source close to his campaign has told Drudge Report."- Daily Mail

"There are reports that Bloomberg is considering asking Clinton to join him in a Bloomberg/Clinton ticket as his vice presidential running mate, were he to get the nod. The report initially came from the conservative Drudge Report on February 15, 2020." - Heavy

>If you weren’t so pressed to cape for Hillary at every turn
>you might be able to actually think clearly.
>

Hillary is garbage, that doesn't make it ok to spread "gossip"

>>https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/1228704614737821697
>>
>>i guess once it became clear that hillary wasnt running for
>>president (after multiple cycles of rumors) they just moved
>to
>>vp as the next believable option for the usual dupes.
>
>No wonder he didn't have any links and talked about
>"back-channels" smh

The face I made when I read his “back channels” lol.

Dude is starting to sound like Trump. “You know,
many say....”

WTF?

to run for president to stop surging progressive conservative tulsi gabbard.

poor vex.

dude is the target audience for macedonian clickbait farms meant to make money off gullible trump supporters.

>to run for president to stop surging progressive conservative
>tulsi gabbard.
>
>poor vex.
>
>dude is the target audience for macedonian clickbait farms
>meant to make money off gullible trump supporters.

It's back-channels

You got really worn out from the mere mention of a rumor.

Yikes.

Please indulge us in your 4chan conspiracy theory about the Iowa Caucus though. I really want to hear more as I do get entertained by unhinged, crackpot conspiracy theories flung from Establishment fanboys.

>>
>>No wonder he didn't have any links and talked about
>>"back-channels" smh
>
>The face I made when I read his “back channels” lol.
>

lol he's go a secret line to Drudge

>Dude is starting to sound like Trump. “You know,
>many say....”
>
>WTF?
>
>

Yep exactly like Trump

Which is why it was referred to as “junk gossip”

But again, we live in a world where TMZ breaks news. Let’s not act brand new.
-->

definitely worth more exploring.

also let us know how your creative arts agency and democratic establishment media collusion investigation turns out.

maybe that’s why you can’t accurately predict a political outcomes if your life depended on it.

Please tell us more on how Beto is the one, or how Biden has “the most diverse support base” of all candidates - or how Warren was going to beat out Sanders - or how Kamala was going to be the front-runner.

And definitely don’t leave out your unhinged RussiaGate conspiracy theories. I love those more than your imprecise political analysis.

its afternoon but its already too late in the day for you.

btw good luck to top 7 tulsi (your front runner).

fam you’re the Stephen A. Smith of the game when it comes to your political predictions. Have a seat.

>its afternoon but its already too late in the day for you.

Speaking of deflection lol.

>btw good luck to top 7 tulsi (your front runner).

Again, I never predicted her to win any contest. Unlike your Kamala/Beto/Biden/Warren woeful predictive paper trail.

-->

.

It’s on brand for both Bloomberg & Clinton. Hillary is super invested in Sanders not being the nominee - which is why she can’t help but trash him at every opportunity.
-->

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

-->

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/02/michael-bloomberg-nypd-mayor-presidential-campaign?fbclid=IwAR209haeiAt2o_ot17J9my_LR8l0kzp7rGQrjEAWxMDTTPrjNv646XLc53Q

n 2014, New York City quietly agreed to pay an $18 million settlement to the hundreds of people who had been ripped from the streets and locked away for peacefully protesting the Republican National Convention. Fittingly, Michael Bloomberg was no longer in office to hand the money out. Apologies don’t come easy to oligarchs.

More than 1,800 people, including teenagers and many uninvolved bystanders, were caught up in the massive NYPD sweep outside the 2004 convention. They were detained, thirty or forty at a time, in dismal pens with oil-soaked floors and chemical fumes. Some were held more than two days before being brought before a judge, a violation of New York law. Released detainees were taken straight to hospital for treatment of rashes and asthma.

The debacle surrounding the Republican National Convention, absurdly situated in deep blue New York City, should never be lost to history, especially now. Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York, was then a card-carrying member of the Republican Party, desperate to lure their convention to Manhattan. He endorsed the reelection campaign of George W. Bush, the architect of the worst foreign policy disaster of the last forty years, and brought to bear the weight of a militarized police force that would make any rabid neoconservative proud.

The 2004 crackdown was emblematic of a Bloomberg mayoralty that could very well resemble a Bloomberg presidency. Leftists have spent the last year decrying the surges of various candidates, like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, but Bloomberg is an emissary of something far more sinister than smarmy, professional-managerial class centrism. Bloomberg is a genuine admirer of dictators, violent foreign interventions, mass surveillance, and sprawling police states. His ascent to the presidency would represent the apotheosis of a certain sophisticated, immovable global elite that disdains, above all, popular dissent.

Corruption in Reverse
These days, Bloomberg is campaigning as a conventional, center-left Democrat. He calls Donald Trump names. He says he will raise taxes on the wealthy. He wants a higher minimum wage. Like other Democrats, he sounds the alarm over climate change. Moreover, his money has the power to rewrite history.

Bloomberg’s Iraq War support alone should be disqualifying. “Don’t forget that the war started not very many blocks from here,” Bloomberg said in 2004, standing next to First Lady Laura Bush at a memorial for September 11 victims. A decade later, during the savage Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Bloomberg flew to Israel to show solidarity with Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruthlessness. He has a soft spot for authoritarian China, blocking journalists at his news company from reporting on the country’s oligarch class. He has repeatedly boosted the murderous Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.


While Donald Trump plays a wealthy person on TV, Bloomberg is no pretender, with enough billions to finance a small nation-state of his own. He has a remote chance of buying the Democratic nomination for president. There might be enough Democrats, too Trump-addled to long for genuine democracy, who let him.

Bloomberg and Trump represent two different perversions of democracy. Trump is a corrupt, wannabe autocrat, flagrantly mixing his family business with the nation’s, a hollow, orange-stained vessel for the billionaire donors who shape our health care and tax policies. He rose to the presidency on a wave of wall-to-wall cable television coverage, his rallies carried live, the corporate networks ever thirstier for his carnival act.

Bloomberg, through the blunt force of his unprecedented wealth, has bought his way into contention. Since the fall, he has plowed more than $300 million into his own campaign, with no end in sight. Some Democrats, broken by Trump, welcome as a savior such a titanic figure now playing for their team. Others, especially those in elected office, are far more transactional: witness the wave of local officials and members of Congress now endorsing him, no doubt hoping for the largesse of a campaign check or Bloomberg-funded Super PAC in due time.

His potential capture of the 2020 Democratic establishment mirrors his successful strategy in New York, where his unlimited reservoir of wealth bought deference from Democratic elected officials, labor unions, and various local power brokers. Spending as much as $100 million to win a mayoral race, he was able to put a large number of the consulting class on his payroll and effectively rent political parties. His philanthropic giving cowed the city’s nonprofit sector: as he violated the will of voters to change city law to seek a third term, he pressed the community, arts, and neighborhood groups who relied on his personal giving to back his efforts. They largely did.

It was corruption in reverse, of a kind the media has always had a hard time understanding. Bloomberg was not bought. He simply bought others. And those who weren’t directly bought feared the wrath of a man who could single-handedly wreck any charity or cultural institution.

Oligarchy Personified
The best way to understand Bloomberg is to study his twelve years leading America’s largest city. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: there were things to like about Bloomberg’s New York, particularly if you were white and carried a degree of wealth. He was, to his credit, an early supporter of same-sex marriage. He cared about protecting the environment. It was a good thing when smoking was banned from restaurants and bars. Bloomberg stuck up for pedestrians and cyclists. The 311 system simplified the process of lodging complaints.

All of this is easily negated by the pain and terror he wrought. If you were a Muslim in Bloomberg’s New York, the NYPD was deployed to spy, without cause, on your mosque. Bloomberg’s police infiltrated Muslim student groups and put informants in mosques. The blanket surveillance, the NYPD would later admit, didn’t produce any tangible leads. Three lawsuits were eventually settled after Bloomberg left office.

Around the time Bloomberg announced his presidential campaign, he cynically ventured to a church in a black Brooklyn neighborhood to apologize for his police department’s maniacal abuse of stop-and-frisk tactics. Under Bloomberg, police stops — which overwhelmingly targeted black and Latino men — increased from 97,296 in 2002 to a peak of 685,724 in 2011. The stops, for these young men, were traumatizing, as heavily armed police officers stalked and then aggressively searched their bodies for no justifiable cause. In 2013, a federal judge ruled the practice unconstitutional.

Rather than accept responsibility, Bloomberg fought back, appealing the ruling. “There is just no question that stop-and-frisk has saved countless lives,” Bloomberg thundered in 2013. “I worry for my kids and I worry for your kids.”

Bloomberg was unrepentant. Police power could do no wrong. In 2011, armed police stormed Zuccotti Park in the middle of the night to forcefully break up Occupy Wall Street, a movement that kicked off a public reckoning with America’s surging income inequality. The protest ultimately offended his sensibilities. “I don’t appreciate the bashing of all the hard-working people who live and work here and pay the taxes that support our city,” Bloomberg said at the time.

Bloomberg’s total lack of interest in staunching his own city’s spiraling inequality fueled homelessness and displacement. Rezonings in formerly working-class neighborhoods spurred luxury development and increasingly unsustainable rent hikes. His lavish donations to Republicans in the State Senate ensured New York’s laws protecting tenants would remain in a weakened state as long as he remained in office. Public housing further crumbled under his watch. And in 2011, Bloomberg killed a housing subsidy program for homeless families, directly triggering the homelessness crisis New York is still grappling with today.


With a straight face, Bloomberg now supports raising the federal minimum wage to $15. Yet, as mayor, Bloomberg repeatedly decried wage hikes as anti-business. In fact, as recently as 2015 he said he was “not in favor, have never been in favor, of raising the minimum wage.”

There are some darlings he will not kill. Though the Democratic Party has moved away from its admiration for union-busting charter schools, Bloomberg remains an ardent supporter. He isn’t about to embrace single-payer health care. He does, at least, believe in science and he would, inarguably, represent an improvement over Donald Trump, but that is not supposed to be the bare standard on which the next president is judged.

Swapping kakistocracy for oligarchy will not undo the damage of the Trump presidency. It will merely calcify the rot.

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!

Stop and Frisk...sorry about that
The financial crisis wouldn't have happened if redlining was legal...apologies
Sexual harassment....don't remember
Card carrying Republican...I've changed

What's the point of debates...if a $B can buy the election with ads?

Literally, the choice of 2 evils.

so much that they'd fall in line behind The Next Trump.

Shit's ridiculous

>NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!
>
>Stop and Frisk...sorry about that
>The financial crisis wouldn't have happened if redlining was
>legal...apologies
>Sexual harassment....don't remember
>Card carrying Republican...I've changed
>
>What's the point of debates...if a $B can buy the election
>with ads?
>
>Literally, the choice of 2 evils.

base

(IMO, misguidedly) opposed to Bernie Sanders that they refuse to hear why Bloomberg is being uniquely called out as bad.

Bloomberg is Trump.

He's TRUMP.

I'm not even selling Bernie on folks. Just trying to tell folk Bloomberg is BAD. BAD!!!

New Yorkers who dealt with him as mayor tell you he's bad.
Numerous Black people say he's bad.
Khalief Browder ain't enough to tell you?
20+ more sexual misconduct allegations than Trump ain't enough?

GET THIS MOTHERFUCKER OUTTA HERE!!!!!

but keep hearing people talking about how Mike is gonna secure their bag. lol really? Dude is offering bribe money for the next 8 months so that his ego can live out a schoolyard boyish fight with Trump (which he'll lose) - and people are ready to publicly back this W. Bush Republican because they think there's something in it for them?

Americans really love getting conned.
-->

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/03/de-blasio-bloomberg-new-york-2020-074864

-->

Last night when asked if Bloomberg will be onstage for the Nevada debate

Threshold being +10% in 4 national polls or 12% in 2 Nevada polls

Bloomberg will be in the debate (c) CNN this morning

Should be obvious, the networks love his ad buys

Remember when network execs loved Trumpster’s ratings boost

Glad to see the Ds stick to their moral guns.

I can now understand why political advertising works. I was honestly pretty unaware of this dude's existence about a month ago.

Dude went from nobody to a potential front runner in what, three weeks or so.

Did folks really think Obama’s rise was all organic?

Dude had slick ads, a slick logo and tag line to go with it.

They are too smart to be manipulated

Every time they come on I have to consciously stop them from coloring my attitude towards him.

interesting to see his apparent change of heart.

https://www.wral.com/north-carolina-facebook-page-is-disinformation-campaign-experts-say/18958076/


https://www.snopes.com/2020/01/06/how-bl-investigation-came-to-be/

they were running a massive pro trump disinfo operation on facebook. and somehow had manipulated the twitter algorithm so that their ‘articles’ would always be the ones attached to political trending topics.

their digital game is crazy.

not surprised to see them involved with that bl shit.

Crossing the aisle is way different than voting for Bloomberg because Biden shit his pants.

I don’t think FB ads had people going from Dem to GOP.

jk...




i think.

>I can now understand why political advertising works. I was
>honestly pretty unaware of this dude's existence about a month
>ago.
>
>Dude went from nobody to a potential front runner in what,
>three weeks or so.
>
>

Unaware of Bloomberg, how ?

I mean I knew his name. That he was mayor. And something about banning sodas. But that's about it.

I just found out a couple of weeks ago that he was a republican not too long ago.

And I bet a bunch of other people are in my boat. Especially when you get away from the Northeast

our democracy is already in a precarious position. but if a republican who supported republican policies can just come in and scoop up a large part of the dem base just based on ad presence?

right now all we have is polls and votes havent been cast with him on the ballot. so who knows how much of this is actually ‘real’.

hopefully his performance in the debate will make his detractors actually glad that he qualified and got exposed to some degree.

in this ‘vote blue no matter who’ environment (i even see a lot of ‘progressives’ saying it now) its amazing that we still stumbled upon a major candidate that would completely turn a significant portion of the dem base off (rightfully so).

bloomberg said even if he loses he will turn his money and campaign infrastructure over to helping the nominee and downballot dems. hopefully thats where we end up at when all the smoke clears.

>bloomberg said even if he loses he will turn his money and
>campaign infrastructure over to helping thr nominee and
>downballot dems. hopefully thats where we end up at when all
>the smoke clears.

than I am, but I don't see Doomberg turning anything over to Saunders or Warren in terms of support, at least in terms of any serious financial support.

and he would prolly run a bunch of anti-trump ads...like how koch bros claimed they werent supporting trump but just flooded the airwaves with ads bashing clinton.

he also is a large donor to the dnc. so that should help in general.

The idea is he might be a racist authoritarian, but he'll be *our* racist authoritarian, not the other side's.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/02/18/politics/michael-bloomberg-surge-2020-democrats/index.html

Not that he isn't a popular fascist.

we just want to be right about our guy winning, is all

Fuck Bloomberg.

what bloomberg really is.

and now their critiques arent having the same impact because they cried wolf too many times.

this is why people gotta stop trying to paint their disfavored dem candidates as the ‘same evil’ as those close to actual evil.

and even with bloomberg...there are significant differences with trump on major policy points like abortion, immigration, climate change, lgbtq rights, etc.

you shouldnt have to rob the conversation of all nuance and polarize every debate to advance your agenda. thats what the youknowwhos do.

the narrative (earned or not) speaks to why putting him up against Trump is such a bad idea. as you said, there was enough this two evils/two sides of the same coin talk out their with Hillary for people to either not care, go third party, or take a shot on Trump. Hilldawg outspent Trump something like 2-1, and had the David Frum (and Bloomberg) crowd on board.. Running an actual Republican is just gonna be that much worse.

it's also probably why Warren could have been the perfect balance of holding onto the left without scaring the middle away... if she wasn't so bad at this.

if he's the nominee, i'll definitely still vote for him. and he'll lose.

The critiques aren't having the same impact because this candidate is playing big bank take little bank

And also slid in to an already thinned-out herd of candidates without having been put to the fire

Sure he has neolib cred. He is cool with gay rights but not with men of color. Definitely not cool with poor people.

We are supposed to be thankful he is running?

This has nothing to do with Hillary and Kamala

This is rich asshole money jumping in because Biden looks old and tired.

Dude ain’t on one ballot yet and we know how polls do. I’ll wait until Bloomberg actually starts winning delegates before I get really worried.

Can’t think of any other reason someone would cape for HRC after 3 years of Trumpster

LOL@the plea cop...well at least she’s not as bad as Bloomberg = real tears.

the "leftist" argument was Hillary was a neo-liberal war hawk who could give a fuck about the working class, and that Kamala was a "cop" (who heavily punished the working class to get ahead), not progressive on the material interests of the voting public.

Bloomberg.... is something else. at best a combination of the two but even worse. like the kind of video game boss that Trump wishes he could be. the worst of the neoliberals, warhawks, and cops, in one man.

>the "leftist" argument was Hillary was a neo-liberal war hawk
>who could give a fuck about the working class, and that Kamala
>was a "cop" (who heavily punished the working class to get
>ahead), not progressive on the material interests of the
>voting public.
>
>Bloomberg.... is something else. at best a combination of the
>two but even worse. like the kind of video game boss that
>Trump wishes he could be. the worst of the neoliberals,
>warhawks, and cops, in one man.

Right. So by going above and beyond to paint HRC, Kamala, and others as "Bloombergs" (according to your definitions) or worse, far-left hysteria about an actual Bloomberg ends up not holding much weight. Because *everyone* that's not Bernie has been painted as some neolib racist cop warhawk republican trying to exterminate the working class (or some variation).

In place of lefties

it's starting to look crazed fam

this doesn't seem like a cry wolf...

i think he's just outspent the outrage machine where it counts

Terrible...they are complicit in his targeting of “low hanging fruit”, see outside of nyc ppl don’t know that much about him. So now all they get is his Obama ads and radio spots on Black radio.

It’s insidious. But Black elected officials know better and need to do better.


He really will suppress a lot of votes, I don’t even think I can bring myself to
Vote for him.

“There has been plenty of conjecture over whether a Trump-like figure could take over the Democratic Party. And I would say with Bloomberg that we’re about to find out. The cries of “Bloomberg is not Trump!” will rain down on me now, and, of course, he’s not. But there are a disturbing number of similarities. We have a figure without connections or the same value system as the party he seeks to represent, with racial and sexist skeletons in his closet, and a penchant for subverting democracy and showing contempt toward the rule of law. Democrats who are acting as pundits and thinking that Bloomberg offers the most certain close to the Trump era are playing with a stick of dynamite.

There is a persistent pattern in Bloomberg’s political life: buying off anyone who can be bought for their support or their silence. Bloomberg paid off pastors helpful to his mayoral candidacies, paid off members of Congress who are now backing him with millions in donations, and paid off mayors who have endorsed him with $350 million in city grant programs that filled budget holes. He has doubled the rate for campaign organizers and guaranteed them job security until November, catering their meals and giving them free swag. One by one, he’s buying off the political class; Nathan Robinson quips, “I sometimes feel like being in the Ionesco play Rhinoceros, in which people unexpectedly become rhinoceroses overnight.”

-->

>there are a disturbing
>number of similarities. We have a figure without connections
>or the same value system as the party he seeks to represent,
>with racial and sexist skeletons in his closet, and a penchant
>for subverting democracy and showing contempt toward the rule
>of law. Democrats who are acting as pundits and thinking that
>Bloomberg offers the most certain close to the Trump era are
>playing with a stick of dynamite.
>

Oh you guys are scared by Trump gutting our foreign and public service agencies and replacing the highest officials with goons and cronies (if he even bothers to fill the vacancies)?

Bloomberg won't even need to do that, he'll just buy off the current politicians or silence / destroy the ones that don't comply.

People with a conscience find it horrible that immigrants are painted with the broadest brush as criminals and treated like animals?

I know somebody with a lot of experience systematically doing this to his own citizens.

He's already shown you who he is. It took close to 8 years for me to understand how thoroughly he has no regard for working people and people of color ....and then he bought 4 more years.

>People with a conscience find it horrible that immigrants are
>painted with the broadest brush as criminals and treated like
>animals?
>
>I know somebody with a lot of experience systematically doing
>this to his own citizens.

Folks think he's just going to just take it easy with America's immense talent for institutional violence because why? Do people think dictators never held local office before they make it to fascism's big show? The fact that he hasn't been openly antagonistic to immigrants isn't any comfort when he's obviously only going to augment the state apparatuses (apparatii?) that Trump has established to crush them. So Bloomberg will crush somebody else.* And somebody after Bloomberg will crush immigrants again. Or both. Whatever.

*it's going to be homeless people.

If he’s so confident he can defeat Trumpster...why not do it in the Republican primary?

Blooming Onion has spent too much money on Dem candidates to be taken seriously as Repug so the moderate Repugs that are distancing themselves from Trump wouldn't be big enough without a larger swath of Dem voters

He needed to go Dem bc he's been watering that lawn most recently and bc he needs those demos along with those more moderate or just Trump-fatigued supporters to tip the scale

If he gets enough Dem endorsements...he'll gain enough traction to pull big numbers from both parties and likely the "independents" too

Wouldn’t that be an easier obstacle to overcome than switching parties?

His career stands in contrast to the D platform

Who’s taking him seriously as a D?

Also, the battle is for independents

Neither party has a majority of registered voters

Independents are a modest estimate of 30% of registered voters.

I don’t see the math for Bloomberg in the D primary...and I expect the entire field to tee off on him tonight like a Trumpster crash test dummy.

He checks all the boxes on climate, guns, jobs, health and immigration.

I think I fall somewhere between left and moderate and I don't doubt he would, policy-wise, govern similar to Obama, Hillary, Corey, Biden or Kamala. They would all hire the same people.

I get the Bernie/Warren folks finding Bloomberg intolerable, not sure he is THAT distinguishable from the other neoliberal candidates.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Literally no starker contrast than nominating an oligarch.

If he wins the nomination...I expect a mass exodus from the party...maybe that's the plan...?

Let's be real...folks like Bloomberg are the ones benefitting from the Trumpster administration and policies.

>He checks all the boxes on climate, guns, jobs, health and
>immigration.
>
>I think I fall somewhere between left and moderate and I don't
>doubt he would, policy-wise, govern similar to Obama, Hillary,
>Corey, Biden or Kamala. They would all hire the same people.
>
>
>I get the Bernie/Warren folks finding Bloomberg intolerable,
>not sure he is THAT distinguishable from the other neoliberal
>candidates.
>
>

I could see the appeal of someone doing whatever it took to pass the Dem agenda.

Like, had Obama been willing to play dirty AND had fuck you money?

It wouldn't be my first choice, but I'd take it.

That said, I don't trust him and its fuck Bloomberg. All day.

which is why repub govs/legislatures pass 'right to work'/union busting laws, wage preemptions, regulatory and tort 'reform', etc.

im not sure any dem prez would be able to do anything dramatic in that area (especially with conservative courts essentially legislating from the bench).

speaking of courts...thats where i think bloomberg should be trusted the least.

with the judicial filibuster done away with...dems be should shuttling left wing beaks into the 3rd branch (super pro voting rights, equality, labor rights, criminal justice reformers, etc).

i wouldnt trust bloomberg to do that. itd prolly be more like george w bush style judges like reggie walton. still right leaning but not completely extreme/unqualified like trump picks.

>which is why repub govs/legislatures pass 'right to
>work'/union busting laws, wage preemptions, regulatory and
>tort 'reform', etc.
>
>im not sure any dem prez would be able to do anything dramatic
>in that area (especially with conservative courts essentially
>legislating from the bench).

Right but Bloomie seems like the type of dude that would do whatever it took to get around that...court reform or whatever.

Plus seems like the type of dude who would strongarm senators and/or just throw a bunch of money for their opponent.

Its completely fucked up, but if I trusted that he really cared about the causes I could see the appeal.

Like if he woke up and said "I want to be this generation's FDR"- for whatever reason, even if just to get his face on currency- seems like he's got the resources to do it.

I just don't think he wants it. You don't become a progressive in your 70s.

In fact, it kind of seems like the opposite. Like he is essentially buying all sorts of movements to squash them or keep them in check.



>
>speaking of courts...thats where i think bloomberg should be
>trusted the least.
>
>with the judicial filibuster done away with...dems be should
>shuttling left wing beaks into the 3rd branch (super pro
>voting rights, equality, labor rights, criminal justice
>reformers, etc).
>
>i wouldnt trust bloomberg to do that. itd prolly be more like
>george w bush style judges like reggie walton. still right
>leaning but not completely extreme/unqualified like trump
>picks.

Exactly.

I couldn't find if he took a stance on Bart at all. I even checked his 2020 site to see if there was a section on the courts...I couldn't find one.

I didn't look much though, I felt too dirty.

like the govs of ma, vt, and md.

all of whom are super popular (including with dems).

I was chopping it up with some older family members and it's hard to reconcile how they were team Jesse Jackson in 84 and die hard Obama fans, but are okay with Biden and even Bloomberg but won't give Bernie the time of day and to me it seems like it all comes down to the belief that all white folks are racist.

If you believe that referring to some racist comments any of them make isn't shocking or revelatory at all. If you believe that you believe that there isn't much difference with Sanders, he just hasn't been caught yet.

If that's the case then the only thing you really worry about is electability (rightly or wrongly being able to gauge that) because you simply don't believe that these progressive politicians will deliver on all that they are promising but you know that they will be marginally better than trump (and not as openly racist).

The only other group I see approaching politics like this are my native american friends. They put NO faith in the government to do the right thing.

It's cynical and very transactional but I can't say it's completely wrong or unwarranted.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Bernie Sanders solidifies front-runner position as Joe Biden loses African-American support: Poll

https://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-solidifies-frontrunner-status-joe-biden-black-voters-poll-1487925?piano_t=1

Once choice is clearly better than the other.

Cynical that any meaningful change will ever come - that all the candidates are racist/corrupt - and thus - might as well get some grant money or a bloated 9-month contract to staff up with Bloomie.

But it's important to note that there's a clear delineation across generational lines. Black voters over 50 are much more prone to adopt the aforementioned cynical view (and who can really blame them given how broken the system is) - but Black voters under 40 are very different, and are voting for their own interests with an actual belief that they can dig their hands into meaningful change when they participate in the political process.

This is why Biden/Bloomberg poll so well with older Black voters, and why Sanders dominates the vote with Black voters under 40.

There is also a factor of the political class trying to hedge their bets on the next cash cow (for many, Clinton was that cash cow) - they see Bloomberg as possibly a setup for job security/grants/preferential treatment - whereas Sanders represents an end to cronyism and bloated gravy trains that concentrate power to a political class establishment without real merit.
-->

Bernie ain’t been seen with Black leaders, didn’t do the stupid ass southern church speech so they gravitate towards the shitty familiar politicians who use and abuse our votes.

https://twitter.com/axios/status/1230133937936228353
-----
Mike Bloomberg's campaign is sounding the alarm that Bernie Sanders will soon amass an unsurmountable delegate lead if the Democratic field stays split — and took the extraordinary step of suggesting laggards should drop out.

https://t.co/fkSI1aF4TV
-----

dude hasnt even been on a single ballot yet and he wants 3 of the top 5 delegate leaders (including 1st place) to drop out lol.

honestly this entire shit show is bidens fault. if dude hadnt run one of the shittiest and laziest frontrunner campaigns in recent memory and performed on par with hillary clinton...it would be smooth sailing.

>if dude hadnt
>run one of the shittiest and laziest frontrunner campaigns in
>recent memory and performed on par with hillary clinton...it
>would be smooth sailing.

She did a ton of stuff wrong for a wide variety of reasons, but no matter what horrible things I believe about her, I'll always concede that her hate is pure. She ran that dumb campaign because she believed in it and believed it was the way to win.

Biden just wasn't up for any of this.

how about this for a counterfactual to chew over: if the party had committed to anointing Elizabeth Warren over the past few years, then it would have inoculated them against Sanders in the way they're desperately searching for now. Instead, they hedged their bets because even her willingness to preserve the interests of capital but with some reform was too aggressive. They got greedy, and now they're paying for it.

The party created this mess by not running a real primary in '16.

That is, actual challengers who could have beat Hillary played good party soldiers and didn't run.

Leaving the door open for Bernie...


Had they run a real primary then Bernie would be our Ron Paul. A fringe candidate very few took seriously. That is even if he ran in '16.


But because there were no other choices, people actually listened and liked what they heard.

They continued to doubt him since then, and didn't learn a fucking thing from '16 in the sense that...it seems a lot of folks thought Biden was a lock in the way they thought Hillary was a lock.

Plus the bench is fucking thin.

And they didn't flush the clinton campaign folks down the toilet like they should have. Theres no reason Kamala should be at home while Amy and Pete are still on the stage.

You can't tell me party strategists, etc thought Pete would be a frontrunner.


To me the whole "Ready For Hillary" (ie its her turn) is the root cause of a lot of this shit. I swear I started seeing that phrase before Obama was even half way done with his 2nd term too.

>Had they run a real primary then Bernie would be our Ron Paul.
> A fringe candidate very few took seriously. That is even if
>he ran in '16.

That tracks. And I think there's some evidence to support the idea that this is basically how he understood his own campaign in 2016 until he actually started getting some real traction. It was a protest campaign that grew legs.

>And they didn't flush the clinton campaign folks down the
>toilet like they should have.

Yeah. I'm sure they're pleasant people who want good things for the world (I am actually not sure of this, but whatever) but they're in a high stakes job and there has to be consequences for fumbling as badly as they did.

>Theres no reason Kamala should
>be at home while Amy and Pete are still on the stage.

Yeah, absolutely. Though sometimes I think this may just be one of the stupider outcomes of our interminable election season. Kamala threw a punch at Biden and actually got some movement in one of those early debates, and then the momentum subsided... and that was, what, five months ago and four months before a single vote was cast? Seems like a dumb way to do things.

But this campaign would benefit from her presence in it. And Castro. I disagree with them on pretty much anything that's actually important, but they're serious people and are good candidates in the traditional sense. By contrast,Buttigieg is... not a serious person.

>>Had they run a real primary then Bernie would be our Ron
>Paul.
>> A fringe candidate very few took seriously. That is even
>if
>>he ran in '16.
>
>That tracks. And I think there's some evidence to support the
>idea that this is basically how he understood his own campaign
>in 2016 until he actually started getting some real traction.
>It was a protest campaign that grew legs.
>
>>And they didn't flush the clinton campaign folks down the
>>toilet like they should have.
>
>Yeah. I'm sure they're pleasant people who want good things
>for the world (I am actually not sure of this, but whatever)
>but they're in a high stakes job and there has to be
>consequences for fumbling as badly as they did.
>
>>Theres no reason Kamala should
>>be at home while Amy and Pete are still on the stage.
>
>Yeah, absolutely. Though sometimes I think this may just be
>one of the stupider outcomes of our interminable election
>season. Kamala threw a punch at Biden and actually got some
>movement in one of those early debates, and then the momentum
>subsided... and that was, what, five months ago and four
>months before a single vote was cast? Seems like a dumb way to
>do things.
>
>But this campaign would benefit from her presence in it. And
>Castro. I disagree with them on pretty much anything that's
>actually important, but they're serious people and are good
>candidates in the traditional sense. By contrast,Buttigieg
>is... not a serious person.
>
>

though I like Castro. Either way, there is no reason Pete should be there over him, Kamala, Booker, etc.

Your point on the election season is spot on. It feels like its been 4 years of just this. Hell, it seems like ages ago Kamal announced to what 20,000 people?

..and its obvious at this point that the primary season benefits a guy like Bloomberg who can just sub in during the 4th quarter with a bunch of money and make a splash...if not win.

He was able to avoid all the early squabbles and M4A stuff. He's a leading candidate and most people probably haven't even heard him speak, much less debate or hold a townall, etc.

On the other hand, I think it helped weed out a nostalgia pick in Biden. So...it has its positives. Its better people remember how bad Biden is at this during a primary rather than the general.

Of course, maybe you weren't referring to the length of the primary my bad if misread.

Missed his chance and would have been a lot stronger. I don’t know what kind of state he was after his son’s death and everyone handles grief differently but that woulda been a point of strength.

I think part of his decision not to run then was what u were talking about, all the establishment agreed to let it be Hillary’s time not realizing how many voters didn’t want her.

i meant if dude hadnt run such a shitty campaign and *instead* ran a hillary type primary campaign by the numbers (af am vote, moderates, etc...aka the numbers/margins he began with at the start)...then he would have coasted out the primary.

in the beginning...he actually appealed to 'white working class' voters, right leaning indies and crossover repubs, latinos, and previous obama voters more than hillary. shit would have been a walk in the park if he was a capable retail politician.

I read that wrong. Makes perfect sense.

If that was dude's real concern, he could have just thrown a bunch of resources/help to one of the said laggards.


Either way, I hope he runs some of these effective ass ads for some senate candidates out there.


The media wants this dude to win though. They haven't talked about anything else.

Bernie winning, Pete surging, Amy surging, Liz still in 3rd...all erased because another rich asshole wants in.

They should all gang up on him, but I kind of doubt they will.


And yeah, Biden thought it was his- thought he was a lock. He (and a lot of other people) forgot what its like when Biden actually runs for something.

Now, he should drop out and endorse one of the other moderates to stop Mike IMO. But he won't.

while mikey is attacking bernie mostly through surrogates and endorsee/ally politicking...and framing it as a collision course between him and trump.

its (prolly intentionally) careless by the media.

its pretty damn shrewd/cunning by the bloomberg campaign.

his whole campaign is making me reevaluate the entire dem political operative/consultant class.

they can make great candidates look hard to stomach.

meanwhile the bloomberg campaign is making a hard to stomach candidate look like a great candidate.

>while mikey is attacking bernie mostly through surrogates and
>endorsee/ally politicking...and framing it as a collision
>course between him and trump.
>
>its (prolly intentionally) careless by the media.

is that they (media) are lazy.

I don't rule that out, but I also think they want this. The battle of the rich dudes. And I've lost track of what outlets Bloomie owns.

Either way, Bloomberg vs Trump is probably A LOT better for their bottom line than say Pete vs Trump.

>
>its pretty damn shrewd/cunning by the bloomberg campaign.

Which is mad-making on its own. What if these resources were thrown behind an actual worthy cause?

Who are the strategists behind it?

>
>his whole campaign is making me reevaluate the entire dem
>political operative/consultant class.

Yeah man. Dems struggle with branding and consistent messaging.

Plus, lefties were busy arguing over M4A in 2 years or 4...and Biden was telling fucking cornpop stories and telling voters to go vote for someone else.



>
>they can make great candidates look hard to stomach.
>
>meanwhile the bloomberg campaign is making a hard to stomach
>candidate look like a great candidate.
>
>

Right. Fuck it, maybe Bloomberg should run the DNC. I'm kidding, but that is the type of thinking the party needs.

Like I said, what if these ads were running for Senate candidates not just in Maine and Colorado, but even fucking Texas?

free healthcare and debating busing from the 70s? lol.

then candidates who desperately need the black vote broke their back to distance themselves from the previous dem (black) president who currently carries a 95+% approval rating with those same black voters?

then they spent an entire debate trashing obamas immigration policy and signature legislative achievement that just won the 2018 midterms for them? lol.

meanwhile bloomberg is launching a full frontal media assault with ads treating barack obama like he is mlk lol.

>while mikey is attacking bernie mostly through surrogates and
>endorsee/ally politicking...and framing it as a collision
>course between him and trump.
>
>its (prolly intentionally) careless by the media.
>
>its pretty damn shrewd/cunning by the bloomberg campaign.
>
>his whole campaign is making me reevaluate the entire dem
>political operative/consultant class.
>
>they can make great candidates look hard to stomach.
>
>meanwhile the bloomberg campaign is making a hard to stomach
>candidate look like a great candidate.
>
>

Nothing looks great about Bloomberg, his ads and surrogates only work on people looking for an excuse to justify supporting him.

and close to the lead or in the lead in states like fl and az.

among *democratic* voters.

so apparently somebody thinks hes looking like a great candidate.

We will not know anything until Super Tuesday unless he pulls a Biden tonight. He's not a great candidate people are desperate.

his ads are designed by his campaign operatives/consultants.

hes not a great candidate but his ads are making him look like a great candidate which is why he is rising in the polls.

what are you saying thats different from what im saying?

to get Trump out.


>his ads are designed by his campaign operatives/consultants.
>
>hes not a great candidate but his ads are making him look like
>a great candidate which is why he is rising in the polls.
>

Dirty water looks good to someone in the desert.

>what are you saying thats different from what im saying?

The desperate people will take anything to beat Trump is the different part.

that successfully play on peoples desperation to get trump out.

something that most dem voters list as their #1 trait in a candidate.

and his ads...designed by his campaign operatives/consultants...are putting forth a message that hits home with those voters.

his campaign mapped out the current political landscape...targeted voters based on that landscape...and a lot of voters are responding positively to the campaigns strategy.

once again...what are we saying that is different?

>that successfully play on peoples desperation to get trump
>out.
>

Desperate people embraced Trump and put him in. So now desperate people on the other side might put Bloomberg in.

>something that most dem voters list as their #1 trait in a
>candidate.
>

Yeah that's why his ad works but it doesn't make him look great.

>and his ads...designed by his campaign
>operatives/consultants...are putting forth a message that hits
>home with those voters.
>

If they are desperate everything hit's home. That's why Biden was at the top.

>his campaign mapped out the current political
>landscape...targeted voters based on that landscape...and a
>lot of voters are responding positively to the campaigns
>strategy.
>

Super Tuesday will show if he looks great, but the voters and the landscape is last ditch, last chance...etc none of that looks great, it looks like grasping at straws.

>once again...what are we saying that is different?
>
>

Great is different from desperate.

for change.

so much so they abandoned conventional criteria/orthodoxy and voted for the candidate that successfully appealed to that desperation.

shit bernie too.

for some reason you think someone who appeals to desperation is mutually exclusive from being seen as a great candidate.

bill clinton was a desperation candidate against an unbeatable incumbent.

overt racism and a win.


>for change.
>
>so much so they abandoned conventional criteria/orthodoxy and
>voted for the candidate that successfully appealed to that
>desperation.
>

Nah they voted for Obama because he checked all the boxes for safe and they hated Hillary.

>shit bernie too.

He has to win it all before you include him.

>
>for some reason you think someone who appeals to desperation
>is mutually exclusive from being seen as a great candidate.
>

It's a disservice to great candidates to call a hail mary candidate someone that looks great.

>bill clinton was a desperation candidate against an unbeatable
>incumbent.

Bill Clinton ran against Perot and Bush plus Dems were desperate for a win. Bloomberg is buying people which might be enough, but he does not look like a great candidate.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23AskBloomberg&src=trend_click

Not a great look

https://twitter.com/i/status/1228344396392759296



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

His best bet is to just stand there while his ads run on a screen

it feels like he came to the rescue when sanders passed biden.

but he jumped in during the warren surge late in the year when a whole bunch of billionaires were freaking out about her wealth tax. thats what originally scared him.

crazy how this rapid fire news cycle can make you forget the real chain of events.

I did the Spike Lee... HELL NO!

but I should’ve heard the pitch to see what they are saying.

Fuck, I’m about to go vote right now.

https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1230162990584008704

seriously.

if any of you join his campaign please come back and let us know. no judgment.

i know folks rightfully hate him. but dude is throwing around good ass money and i wouldnt blame anyone for wanting to keep the lights on.

trabajo de luz


thats pretty much $15/hr. an upgrade over so many peoples job right now.

can you join and sabotage him?

and made less money than that.

now she works at some latino culture site i think...and complains about how undervalued social media ops are all day.

she was on that kamala is a cop train but i bet shes polishing up that resume and cover letter for the bloomberg campaign.

kinda hard fighting against the establishment from a studio apt on your neighbors wifi.

His words on the campaign trail can't compare to a lifetime of action that says, rather clearly, that rich people are better than everybody else and they absolutely have a right to treat you as poorly as they want because, money.

Voting as a political act is pretty weak tea, generally. But in the case of voting against Bloomberg, I'm willing to elevate it somewhat. You will never have another opportunity to tell somebody that rich to go fuck off than you do by not voting for Bloomberg.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bloomberg-nondisclosure-harassment/

EXCLUSIVE: Leaked Bloomberg Campaign NDA Protects Abusive Bosses
The campaign’s nondisclosure agreement could prevent staffers from reporting workplace abuse and discrimination.

By Ken KlippensteinTwitterYESTERDAY 2:56 PM

Anondisclosure agreement utilized by the campaign of Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire CEO of Bloomberg LP and former New York mayor now running for president, contains language that could prevent staffers from reporting workplace abuse.

The NDA totals nine pages and forbids employees from discussing “any and all non-public information” and “activities” by the campaign.

And while it’s understandable that a campaign would want to keep things like internal polling under wraps, transparency advocates say that the NDA is overly broad to the point of preventing sexual harassment, as well as other forms of workplace abuse like racial discrimination, from being reported.

Even when the campaign ends, it may be difficult for the public to learn what happened since, unlike many NDAs, this one does not expire.

Jordan Libowitz, spokesperson for the nonpartisan government ethics and accountability group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, found the NDA troubling. “The thing that jumped out at me was the non-disparagement clause, which the Trump campaign used in 2016,” Libowitz said. “That can have a chilling effect on people reporting abuses and speaking publicly about things like sexual harassment.”

“This is much longer and deeper than anything I’ve seen before and it raises some issues, not just this specifically but some of these more in-depth NDAs campaigns are using,” Libowitz added. “This seems like it’s written for some major corporation like Google trying to prevent people from going to Amazon. This seems pretty far outside the lines of how campaigns tend to act.”

The NDA was provided to The Nation by a Bloomberg campaign employee who requested anonymity to avoid professional reprisal. A Bloomberg campaign spokesperson said in an e-mailed comment that “this document only covers the campaign’s strategies and plans; it doesn’t prevent anyone from speaking out about harassment. We can’t speak for other campaigns or workplaces, but legal agreements that protect proprietary information are incredibly common and sensible.”

Bloomberg has some familiarity with allegations of sexual harassment. Nearly 40 harassment and discrimination lawsuits from 64 different employees have been filed against him and Bloomberg LP, which Bloomberg founded and owns a majority stake in, according to a report by Business Insider. Three lawsuits are ongoing. (Bloomberg has denied allegations that he oversaw a toxic workplace culture.)

Although the NDA does make an exception for information legally required by a court or governmental authority, Libowitz cautioned that this still wouldn’t cover many cases of workplace abuse, which often do not make it to a court.

“While the clause doesn’t cover disclosures required under law, it does work to keep people from talking about what are frankly often abuses, workplace behaviors that happen on campaigns,” Libowitz said.

The Bloomberg campaign’s NDA is infamous among staffers, several of whom commented on how long and detailed it is. “The NDA section was absolutely bonkers,” one Bloomberg staffer told The Nation.

“It does make people paranoid,” another staffer said. “I mean I’ve had coworkers joke about having no rights.”

While the Bloomberg campaign’s NDA may be more exhaustive than those used by the campaign’s rivals, the use of such agreements has increased in recent years across the board, along with public awareness—and criticism—of the practice. In December, an advocacy group founded by three prominent former Fox News employees, all of whom were women, released an open letter calling for an end to NDAs.

“These NDAs are a driving force in silencing workers and promulgating a culture where employers are able to cover up toxicity, including issues of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, rather than address it and end it,” their letter stated.

Bloomberg has been using confidentiality agreements since long before the campaign. In January, he personally refused to release several women who had sued him from these agreements.

“They’re legal agreements, and for all I know the other side wouldn’t want to get out of it,” Bloomberg reportedly said. (ABC News subsequently reported that several of the women involved expressed interest in telling their stories.)

Senator Elizabeth Warren criticized Bloomberg’s decision at the time, saying that NDAs are “a way for people to hide bad things they’ve done.” “Women should be able to speak…. if Michael Bloomberg made comments like this, then he has to answer for them,” Warren said.

Pete Buttigieg, on his part, cited an NDA as his initial reason for refusing to disclose the nature of his work with McKinsey & Company. Following the criticism, McKinsey released Buttigieg from the NDA and he disclosed what he said was a summary of his work.

What did the two-and-a-half years of work he was so hesitant to disclose include? Energy efficiency research, grocery pricing for an unidentified client in Canada, and, to quote the campaign, working with a “health insurance provider…identifying savings in administration and overhead costs.”

A copy of the Bloomberg campaign NDA may be found here.

He said...the complaints weren't about me...except for a joke or 2 I told...

That statement should negate the NDAs right?

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/bloomberg-brokered-convention-strategy-116407?fbclid=IwAR2RV0FjV-VOuMj4ESBjfOQyBy5_meQB_QyfxuIopOueCzcmfqoFqB01o5A

Mike Bloomberg is privately lobbying Democratic Party officials and donors allied with his moderate opponents to flip their allegiance to him — and block Bernie Sanders — in the event of a brokered national convention.

The effort, largely executed by Bloomberg’s senior state-level advisers in recent weeks, attempts to prime Bloomberg for a second-ballot contest at the Democratic National Convention in July by poaching supporters of Joe Biden and other moderate Democrats, according to two Democratic strategists familiar with the talks and unaffiliated with Bloomberg.

The outreach has involved meetings and telephone calls with supporters of Biden and Pete Buttigieg — as well as uncommitted DNC members — in Virginia, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and North Carolina, according to one of the strategists who participated in meetings and calls.


With Sanders’ emergence as the frontrunner in the presidential primary, Democrats in those states have recently raised the prospect that the democratic socialist could be a top-of-the-ticket liability.

“There’s a whole operation going on, which is genius,” said one of the strategists, who is unaffiliated with any campaign. “And it’s going to help them win on the second ballot … They’re telling them that’s their strategy.”

It’s a presumptuous play for a candidate who hasn’t yet won a delegate or even appeared on a ballot. And it could also bring havoc to the convention, raising the prospect of party insiders delivering the nomination to a billionaire over a progressive populist.

Other candidates have quietly been in contact for months with superdelegates — the DNC members, members of Congress and other party officials who cannot vote on the first ballot at a contested national convention — but none have showcased it as a feature of their campaign, as Hillary Clinton did in 2016.
-->

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkqlE1J7uXw

just like I do in the house

Call it philanthropy, or whatever you want

Bloomberg wrote a check = bribery

He helped the Virgin Islands out so that Tim Duncan would endorse him for president 3 years later?

I'd def describe some of his recent endorsements as bribery but not this


>Call it philanthropy, or whatever you want
>
>Bloomberg wrote a check = bribery

That Freudian slip

I bought those elections...in response to Warren pointing out his financing Lindsey Graham

LOL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaIAoFMyk5I

http://i.imgur.com/U7e8k.png

while bernie pulls into the mid 20s in ca...bloomberg is threatening to pull other candidates under the 15% delegate threshold...so *nobody* but bernie gets delegates (essentially clinching the nomination). once again...bloombergs campaign run is dumb af. i hope he can turn a lot of his campaign machinery over to dems later on tho.


https://twitter.com/MonmouthPoll/status/1230552778453458944
-----
CALIFORNIA DEM PRIMARY POLL: #2020Dem nomination preference:
24% @BernieSanders
17% @JoeBiden
13% @MikeBloomberg
10% @EWarren
9% @PeteButtigieg
5% @TomSteyer
4% @AmyKlobuchar
2% @TulsiGabbard
13% undecided

#SuperTuesday #CaliforniaPrimary
https://t.co/l4BbXxxuFt
-----

https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/1230947595528396800
-----
UMass-Lowell//YouGov CA Dem poll

Sanders 24%
Warren 16%
Biden 13%
Bloomberg 12%
Buttigieg 12%
Klobuchar 7%

https://t.co/oQ81Vjcmcf
------

So this dude...is paying people $2500/mo to setup Twitter accounts and push his agenda

But they can't even write 140
unique characters of endorsement


https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-21/twitter-suspends-bloomberg-accounts

LOL, like I said, every supportive voice feels like a bribe.

-->

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-21/twitter-suspends-bloomberg-accounts

"As part of a far-reaching social media strategy, the Bloomberg campaign has hired hundreds of temporary employees to pump out campaign messages through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These “deputy field organizers” receive $2,500 per month to promote the former New York mayor’s candidacy within their personal social circles, in addition to other, more conventional duties. They receive campaign-approved language that they can opt to post.

After The Times inquired about this pattern, Twitter determined it ran afoul of its “Platform Manipulation and Spam Policy.” Laid out in September 2019 in response to the activities of Russian-sponsored troll networks in the 2016 presidential election, the policy prohibits practices such as artificially boosting engagement on tweets and using deliberately misleading profile information."

-->

If they're claiming Trumpster and the Russians are trying to help get Bern elected

That kinda leaves Bloomberg's $$$ as the culprit

Really weird seeing such specific attack ads during a primary debate

Can't say I've seen that before.

I just saw it watching survivor. He’s pathetic, the narrative and the dirt is already out on u Mikey

Hopefully ppl don’t fall for the okie doke

It’s very “binders full of women”