Election 2020

[B-Fly]

Or... he's a scumbag billionaire who will run 3rd party to tank the Democrats if Sanders wins the primary. Unless the CIA takes care of Bernie before that, of course.

Bloomberg will definitely not run 3rd party. He's been crystal clear and definitive on that and actively criticized Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz when Schultz was contemplating a 3rd party run.

[B-Fly]

I'm normally pretty sympatico with Obama, but I think he's wrong to consider "speaking up to stop" Sanders from being chosen as the nominee.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/472090-obama-privately-said-he-would-speak-up-to-stop-sanders-report

I think it's important to let the primaries play themselves out and the swing state head-to-head polling develop more as the primaries play out before Obama makes an endorsement or anti-endorsement. If Bernie Sanders proves himself strong with African-American primary voters and "blue collar" Democrats as the field winnows, particularly in those swing states, then he'll have proven he's the best option to take on Trump. And defeating Trump is far more important, in my opinion, than any ideological gap between progressives and neoliberals.

[Teenwolf]

Bernie finally did something worthy of my criticism. So he put together this ad appealing to working class voters in Iowa. It's a simple and effective ad. But of all the places, you had to pick a guy from Clinton, Iowa? You had to put that Clinton text up on the screen? Ugh... talk about a buzzkill.

[revo]

Just in case some recent polls got you down, here's one that shows the good guys bludgeoning Fat Donny:

General Election: Trump vs. Biden	SurveyUSA	Biden 52, Trump 39	[B]Biden +13[/B]
General Election: Trump vs. Sanders	SurveyUSA	Sanders 52, Trump 40	[B]Sanders +12[/B]
General Election: Trump vs. Warren	SurveyUSA	Warren 49, Trump 42	Warren +7
General Election: Trump vs. Buttigieg	SurveyUSA	Buttigieg 48, Trump 41	Buttigieg +7
General Election: Trump vs. Harris	SurveyUSA	Harris 47, Trump 42	Harris +5
General Election: Trump vs. Bloomberg	SurveyUSA	Bloomberg 46, Trump 40	Bloomberg +6

[Teenwolf]

Bloomberg will definitely not run 3rd party. He's been crystal clear and definitive on that and actively criticized Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz when Schultz was contemplating a 3rd party run.

Shaun King posted about Bloomberg today, with accompanying pics of Trump and Bloomberg palling around.

Here’s the truth that Michael Bloomberg doesn’t want the public to know. Michael Bloomberg has been close friends with Donald Trump for generations. They’ve been two peas in a pod for decades. Now that he’s running for President, he’s trying to claim otherwise, but they’ve always been friends. This notion that Bloomberg is somehow Trump’s arch enemy is laughable. No single candidate running for President has ever been better friends with Trump than Michael Bloomberg.

While he was Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg was the author and chief defender of one of the single most racist practices in the history of the city. It was called “Stop and Frisk.” And if you aren’t familiar with it, it was where over 1 million Black and Latino New Yorkers would be randomly stopped and searched every single year. Every single day, over 25,000 New Yorkers, who had not committed a crime, but were just Black or Brown, would be stopped, and inspected from head to toe, by the NYPD. It was humiliating, degrading, and relentless. Some people testified that they had been stopped and searched by the NYPD over 25 times. It made New York into something akin to an Apartheid State where white New Yorkers lived one type of existence and everybody else was constantly stopped, harassed, and searched by police.

When every single civil rights leader in the city told him it was racist, he not only defended it himself, but made city lawyers defend it in court for years, until finally the courts, not Michael Bloomberg, deemed the racist policy to be illegal. Almost monthly for the six years Bloomberg has been out of office, he has defended this racist policy, so the notion that this man, who was a Republican for most of his life, is now going to run for the Democratic nomination of a party where Black voters are the backbone, nah man. Not going to work. Not only that, Bloomberg announced several deeply problematic things about his run. He said he’s not even going to run in the first four states, including South Carolina where Black voters have so much say. He knows he will bomb there.

I have some disagreements. Its unclear what he means by "friends for generations". Like, their parents were friends, or their kids, or what? I also disagree with the end point about entering the race late. I think it's ridiculous to allow a media company owner with major sway on the entire journalism industry to run. It's a total conflict of interest and disqualifying on it's own merits. Much bigger concern for me than skipping the first 4 states.

I know you're adamant he won't run 3rd party, but I don't see his intentions as pure. He's switched party affiliations for political convenience before.

I just need a refresher. You think his main motivation here is defeating Trump? Correct me if I'm wrong. Despite being friends for decades, and Trump's billionaire friendly tax cut, you think he sees Trump's disruption as worth burning a half a Bn dollars to stop? Doesn't make any sense to me that he would be running to win, especially knowing he can't win the black vote, let alone skipping the first 4 primary states. That only leaves 3rd party run, but we'll have to wait and see how it plays out.

[Sour Masher]

Shaun King posted about Bloomberg today, with accompanying pics of Trump and Bloomberg palling around.



I have some disagreements. Its unclear what he means by "friends for generations". Like, their parents were friends, or their kids, or what? I also disagree with the end point about entering the race late. I think it's ridiculous to allow a media company owner with major sway on the entire journalism industry to run. It's a total conflict of interest and disqualifying on it's own merits. Much bigger concern for me than skipping the first 4 states.

I know you're adamant he won't run 3rd party, but I don't see his intentions as pure. He's switched party affiliations for political convenience before.

I just need a refresher. You think his main motivation here is defeating Trump? Correct me if I'm wrong. Despite being friends for decades, and Trump's billionaire friendly tax cut, you think he sees Trump's disruption as worth burning a half a Bn dollars to stop? Doesn't make any sense to me that he would be running to win, especially knowing he can't win the black vote, let alone skipping the first 4 primary states. That only leaves 3rd party run, but we'll have to wait and see how it plays out.

All of the friendship stuff should have been labeled in past tense. As this article explains, their relationship soured once Trump ran for office and his politics became more front and center: https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...db9_story.html.

Like many rich and powerful people, the Clinton's included, that palled around with Trump before he ran for president, I think there is a difference when they were friendly with a powerful real estate developer in a way that one would not be once he runs for and become president. We all have friends, I think, that we disagree with politically, but brush those disagreements off, because the friend's beliefs aren't front and center in our face, and we are not confronted with how their thoughts negatively affect others. That changes when you become POTUS and start enacting things that deeply affects millions of lives.

That said, I do ding everyone that even pretended to be his friend. Sure, he was more side-show than horror show years ago and he didn't talk about his beliefs on serious issues all of the time, but there was that Central Park 5 issue that should have been a red flag, certainly once they were exonerated, and Trump still refused to admit he was wrong. And, of course, the racism he displayed as a developer. And, of course, all of the birther nonsense that was so obviously racist. So, yeah, he was always a scumbag, but one whose thoughts and actions affected far less people before he entered politics. So, while I would have never palled around with him, again, to me it is a little different to compare folks who did before he ran for POTUS to those who still did and do once he ran and won. I do think Bloomberg's break with Trump was sincere. But I do also agree with the notion that Bloomberg really doesn't want to see Sanders or Warren win the primary, or the presidency. I just think he wants to see Trump reelected even more. That is, unless he is completely lying, which I don't think he is. That is why I don't see him running 3rd party.

[revo]

Michael Bloomberg is worth north of $60BN, what's $500 million to him?

[Teenwolf]

Michael Bloomberg is worth north of $60BN, what's $500 million to him?

It's certainly a smart investment. The question is, what is he looking for as a return on that investment? Beating Trump isn't enough. He already has a stranglehold on the media, given that Bloomberg have so much influence in the media sphere. Do you really think that isn't a clear conflict of interest, if not disqualifying?

The DNC are sitting on $8 million cash on hand with $7 million debt. They're broke, and the RNC is sitting on $65 million cash on hand (as of a couple weeks ago)... Bloomberg announced a certain amount of anti-Trump ads to fund the DNC in exchange for the DNC legitimizing his candidacy, exactly as Hillary Clinton bankrolled the DNC to rig the election against Sanders... Man, the more I think about it, the more it seems like Clinton and Bloomberg were equally as corrupt as the DNC... weird...

[revo]

A couple of guys named Steve Bullock and Joe Sestak dropped out of the Dem Presidential Race.

[Gregg]

exactly as Hillary Clinton bankrolled the DNC to rig the election against Sanders... Man, the more I think about it, the more it seems like Clinton and Bloomberg were equally as corrupt as the DNC... weird...

Yeah I would much rather have these over...

[revo]

Latest Dem poll shows Biden again surging to his prior heights, with Liz Warren plunging and Bloomberg showing a surprising amount of support already. Warren has dropped from 26.8% in mid-October in RCP's aggregate to just 14.3% today:

2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination	The Hill/HarrisX	[B]Biden 31[/B], Sanders 15, Warren 10, Buttigieg 9, [B]Bloomberg 6[/B], Harris 2, Yang 2, Klobuchar 2, Booker 1, Steyer 2, Castro 2, Gabbard 0, Bennet 1	[B][COLOR="#FF0000"]Biden +16[/COLOR][/B]

[revo]

Kamala Harris drops out of the race

[nots]

Kamala Harris drops out of the race

There was never any there there with her. On paper, she looked like a very strong candidate. In reality......

[Kevin Seitzer]

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-mckinsey-helped-the-trump-administration-implement-its-immigration-policies

Just days after he took office in 2017, President Donald Trump set out to make good on his campaign pledge to halt illegal immigration. In a pair of executive orders, he ordered “all legally available resources” to be shifted to border detention facilities and called for hiring 10,000 new immigration officers.

The logistical challenges were daunting, but as luck would have it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement already had a partner on its payroll: McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm brought on under the Obama administration to help engineer an “organizational transformation” in the ICE division charged with deporting migrants who are in the United States unlawfully.

ICE quickly redirected McKinsey toward helping the agency figure out how to execute the White House’s clampdown on illegal immigration.

But the money-saving recommendations the consultants came up with made some career ICE staff uncomfortable. They proposed cuts in spending on food for migrants, as well as on medical care and supervision of detainees, according to interviews with people who worked on the project for both ICE and McKinsey and 1,500 pages of documents obtained from the agency after ProPublica filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.

McKinsey’s team also looked for ways to accelerate the deportation process, provoking worries among some ICE staff members that the recommendations risked short-circuiting due process protections for migrants fighting removal from the United States. The consultants, three people who worked on the project said, seemed focused solely on cutting costs and speeding up deportations — activities whose success could be measured in numbers — with little acknowledgment that these policies affected thousands of human beings.

I'm not sure if any of this sticks to Buttigieg. His McKinsey background is the reason I won't vote for him in the primary and will have to hold my nose to vote for him in the general, but I'm sure I've had more personal negative experience with McKinsey than the average voter.

[Teenwolf]

Interesting, but I disagree. I think either Harris or Booker will do much better than the aged triumvirate of Biden, Sanders or Warren.

Now that Harris is out, Booker soon to follow, and the top 3 lining up as Biden, Sanders, Warren, this prediction couldn't have whiffed harder. Posted nearly exactly 1 year ago.

Going through the early pages, digging into our thoughts on Harris. I'm so glad she's gone. I hated her from the start. Her 10 year health care transition plan was also insane.