Bloomberg’s run makes no sense- for him or for moderates

November 10, 2019 1:33 PM

Poaching older white voters from Biden won’t “check” the left. Michael Bloomberg’s renewed interest in running for president seems motivated in large part by intellectual and emotional hostility to the prospect of an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders nomination. But — to the extent that the billionaire philanthropist manages to garner any support at all — the actual effect of him entering the race is likely to be the reverse: undermining frontrunner Joe Biden to some extent without materially damaging Warren or Sanders or having any realistic chance of winning himself.

The key is that in recent years moderates who’ve successfully fended off the left wing of the Democratic Party have done so with the support of black and Latino voters, who tend to be more moderate on the whole than white Democrats. But Bloomberg’s specific political career gives him little access to this constituency and thus little hope of securing the nomination.

posted by Homo neanderthalensis (139 comments total)

Seen on twitter: Mike Bloomberg’s first major campaign move should be to buy Fox News.

Go on moneybags, buy fox news. That's how you win an election. Then when you don't win (because roflmao you kidding bro?) you can change all of their content to this, making it the most successful tv channel ever.
posted by adept256 at 1:47 PM on November 10, 2019 [70 favorites]

Related: Jeff Bezos asked Michael Bloomberg months ago if he’d consider running for president
posted by ryanshepard at 1:48 PM on November 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

Billionaires saying they'd vote for Trump over higher taxes are saying a country broken by racism and hate is an acceptable price to pay to continue their money hoarding. And yet this is presented as the Democrats' problem.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 1:58 PM on November 10, 2019 [121 favorites]

Still, at least the El Bloombito Twitter account is back.

(Explainer for those new to this phenomenon: Bloomberg, as Mayor of New York, had a habit of making dual-language announcements in Spanish of variable quality. @ElBloombito is a parody account that pretends to be Bloomberg issuing announcements in terrible Spanish.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 2:02 PM on November 10, 2019 [20 favorites]

My concern isn't that he runs in the Democratic primary. My concern is that he continues to run third party afterwards when Warren or Sanders wins the nomination, such is his antipathy to a robust tax system.
posted by Slackermagee at 2:15 PM on November 10, 2019 [31 favorites]

Billionaires saying they'd vote for Trump over higher taxes are saying a country broken by racism and hate is an acceptable price to pay to continue their money hoarding. And yet this is presented as the Democrats' problem.

Well, it kinda is the Dems problem by default, since it’s quite obvious Republicans are a-ok with the racism and hate. The Dems are always stuck with cleaning-up Republican messes, because they’re, in general, the only ones left who actually believe, and actively working toward, in the promise of democracy.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:17 PM on November 10, 2019 [20 favorites]

My concern isn't that he runs in the Democratic primary. My concern is that he continues to run third party afterwards when Warren or Sanders wins the nomination, such is his antipathy to a robust tax system.

Wouldn't that be more likely to be catnip to never Trumper Republicans instead of moderate Democrats?
posted by jmauro at 2:25 PM on November 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

What kind of fucking coup occurred that anything against nakedly corrupt, pro-business/billionaire policies are implicitly "extremist"? Jesus-fucking-Christ. Nothing about the fucking status quo is "moderate". As an American abroad, what qualifies for "left", coming from the mouths of the establishment "centre" in our country is laughable. You guys can't even have a Communist Party by law, can you?

Makes me wonder what the NDP are, as compared to the American metric. Would they be considered as wild as Posadists?
posted by constantinescharity at 2:33 PM on November 10, 2019 [26 favorites]

"You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons’ wars."

- "The Man Who Was Thursday", G. K. Chesterton, 1908.
posted by mhoye at 2:37 PM on November 10, 2019 [156 favorites]

He has Judge Judy's vote. Not too surprising, she made her millions out of literally poverty-shaming.

Ok Bloomer.
posted by adept256 at 2:44 PM on November 10, 2019 [20 favorites]

So his constituency is what? Rich white guys who are not quite overtly racist enough to be republicans?
posted by octothorpe at 2:45 PM on November 10, 2019 [14 favorites]

^ re G. K. Chesterton, 1908: Who is this Guy and Why Haven’t I Heard of Him? lol
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:54 PM on November 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

catnip to never Trumper Republicans

this population is as vanishingly few in number as their media footprint being graciously large

diese ist Kulturkampf: bodies at the ballot box not tweet-inches will be the determinant
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:01 PM on November 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm guessing that Bloomberg's role will be to get out there every day and relentlessly attack Warren and Sanders. That means Biden doesn't have to get his hands so dirty with the job and can stay above the fray.
posted by fuzz at 3:21 PM on November 10, 2019 [15 favorites]

I really don't think anyone has a clue what effect a third party centrist candidate would have on the presidential election, and if you believe different I've got a bridge you might be interested in.
posted by howfar at 3:27 PM on November 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I don’t think he would enter the primary if he’s keeping a third party run on the table. I think a number of states actually bar you from the general election ballot if you ran in a party primary and lost (sore loser laws).
posted by sallybrown at 3:35 PM on November 10, 2019 [5 favorites]

I agree with fuzz - this looks less like a serious run and more of a "get more visibility in order to more effectively attack the Left-most candidates."
posted by AdamCSnider at 3:42 PM on November 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

I really don't think anyone has a clue what effect a third party centrist candidate would have on the presidential election, and if you believe different I've got a bridge you might be interested in.

Ross Perot's effect on Bush I's campaign might offer historical context.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:48 PM on November 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

Will Bunch in the Philly Inquirer wrote a brutal takedown of Bloomberg and his Billionaire buddies today. I want to just copy and paste the whole column and you should just read it but here's a taste:

Did his highly paid pundits not notice that the rock of today’s Democratic Party — and the reason that Biden currently clings to his lead despite such a weak campaign — is African American voters, especially in key Southern states like Alabama, where Bloomberg filed petitions on Friday? If they did, how do they expect to sell black voters on a former mayor whose cops perpetrated a reign of terror called stop-and-frisk that predominantly targeted nonwhite people who were not committing any crime? Do they think folks would simply forget?

Was Team Bloomberg really paying close attention to Tuesday’s off-year election results? If so, did they not notice that the ousting of a Republican governor in red Kentucky was largely the work of public school teachers, the kind of voter who recoils at Bloomberg spending a chunk of his vast wealth to support charter schools that are wrecking public education? Or did they take heed of the election of radical reformer Chesa Boudin as San Francisco’s new district attorney, the latest sign that voters in Democratic strongholds have had it with the mass incarceration regime that Bloomberg long championed? Oh, and did they think Democrats here in Pennsylvania — a key battleground state — will forget the cool $1 million that Bloomberg dropped to foist Trump-supporting Sen. Pat Toomey on the state for six more years?

posted by octothorpe at 3:56 PM on November 10, 2019 [25 favorites]

❯ Go on moneybags, buy fox news. That's how you win an election. Then when you don't win (because roflmao you kidding bro?) you can change all of their content to this, making it the most successful tv channel ever.

Sold. Where do I send the check?
posted by danielparks at 3:58 PM on November 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Yeah, my read is that they decided it’s a lot easier both legally and politically to spend $100 million trashing Warren as a candidate than as an independent citizen. But even before the attacks begin, the threat has effects similar to threatening a third-party run: shape up or we tank your approval with all voters even before the general commences. In neither case is the purpose to win, just to threaten and coerce the other candidates to adopt more pro-billionaire policies.
posted by chortly at 4:01 PM on November 10, 2019 [13 favorites]

That means Biden doesn't have to get his hands so dirty with the job and can stay above the fray.

I don't think it's going to be Biden, but the pro-business DINO folks I know in Iowa seem to be settling on Buttigieg. (And I will vote for him and campaign for him if he gets the nomination, but it will cause me pain to support that fucking unqualified twerp who is coasting on white, male entitlement.) And yeah, I think the plan here is to scare people off of voting for Warren, specifically.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:06 PM on November 10, 2019 [13 favorites]

A bunch of billionaires ganging up on Warren seems like maybe the best way to help her win the primary though?

Like that guy crying on CNBC had to be worth millions in ad spend

Also it was hilarious
posted by schadenfrau at 4:08 PM on November 10, 2019 [18 favorites]

I saw that clip - that dude didn't appear to be crying about Warren, he was talking about the state of the country under the Trump administration - is there something I missed? It's sad that after years and years of telling progressives to get in line behind a centrist to vote the bum out they won't do the same when the roles are reversed. This whole thing may actually backfire when everyone sees how unimpressive they are first hand and how willing they are to set millions on fire for vanity campaigns that could've gone to health care. Can't they just clog up the opinion section of Papers of Record with their opinions on the direction of the Democratic party like all of the marginally relevant Republicans no one asked?
posted by Selena777 at 4:19 PM on November 10, 2019 [8 favorites]

He's crying because he feels like he'll be forced to vote for Trump in 2020 if Warren gets the nomination. He hates Trump, mostly because he thinks he's a crude bore, but will do anything to protect his precious tax cuts even if that means voting for someone he abhors.
posted by octothorpe at 4:30 PM on November 10, 2019 [33 favorites]

You guys can't even have a Communist Party by law, can you?

The Communist Party USA just celebrated its centenary, though exactly how communist it is these days is up for debate, and it's nowhere as influential as it was in the days of yore. Still, based on what I've gathered from local party members I know, Bernie's their choice for 2020, and Warren is catching flak for her "capitalist to the bone" remark, among other things—though the national party newspaper, People's World, doesn't seem all that antagonistic toward her. My guess is if she gets the nomination, CPUSA will back her, since they've backed Democrats ever since they stopped running their own presidential candidates in 1984.
posted by heteronym at 4:59 PM on November 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

So his constituency is what? Rich white guys who are not quite overtly racist enough to be republicans?

The one person I know who expressed real enthusiasm that Bloomberg was nominally in the race is an Asian-American New Yorker who thought he did a good job as mayor.
posted by escabeche at 5:10 PM on November 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

"You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons’ wars."

None of this is even vaguely true, anarchism is a faction of socialism which calls for the abolition of all forms of hierarchy, power, and domination, and the rich believe very strongly in government as long as it serves the rich and well-connected (as it always does). The wealthy and powerful hate the idea of a world in which they cannot use their wealth and power to hurt and command others and Chesterton's idea of anarchism is ill-informed and disconnected from reality.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:14 PM on November 10, 2019 [20 favorites]

I mean Chesterton was writing as a catholic where “anarchism” in the book represents a threat without form and *spoiler alert* doesn’t actually exist, it’s like drug dealers in A Scanner Darkly, something so made up not even the double agents and triple agents realize it’s all a fiction. Which fits into Chesterton’s view that the REAL anarchists are the rich cause they want no law uo their own and refuse to submit to god’s law.

Which is, of course, unrelated and totally off the point of like the international and historical anarchist political movement and philosophy in any of its forms.

Here’s the thing about Bloomberg, either he’s doing this as a grift cause we don’t enforce laws anymore and he’s a greedy rich man, or he sincerely thinks he can win, in which case he’s dangerously removed from reality. At best, this is a movement of capital from the upper class to the professional class in the form of campaign staff and management.

At worst? ..... I’m worried about the upper professional class you guys. Like the billionare liker types, the mid six figure people in their rough early 60s I sometimes interact with. For all that Let That Sink In was an irritating non-phrase three years ago, nothing has sunk in for any of these people cause nothing bad has happened to them. Things are going to get so werid very soon and none of these People will be able to handle it or understand it. It’s never going to be normal again, that 40 year cycle is over, even just on the basis of the weather things re going get stranger, faster.

They can just like, blog through it but they’re going to get even somehow more removed from reality.

Like I knew the destruction of reality consensus would haooen I was just surprised it’s coming hard from the top down. They’re really invested on all of *this* not just collapsing despite it being obvious it’s going to haooen like, soon.
posted by The Whelk at 5:33 PM on November 10, 2019 [28 favorites]

Chesterton's idea of anarchism is ill-informed and disconnected from reality.

Hmm. But which idea of anarchism has ever actually existed on this planet on any scale larger than, say, a commune?

He may not be referring to a particular ideological definition, but I don’t think he’s “disconnected from reality.”
posted by schadenfrau at 5:39 PM on November 10, 2019 [10 favorites]

I think the Chesterton utopia might not be workable, people


shit
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:44 PM on November 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Chesterton's idea of anarchism, in which the powerful rule without restraint, has been the dominant situation on earth for millennia. The denial of that situation is not becoming of honest discourse, and virtually all virtue in history is in the struggle against it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:52 PM on November 10, 2019 [25 favorites]

Bloomberg's candidacy is incredible in the most literal sense of the word. A few months ago I said that Biden is the worst Democratic candidate who had declared, but I think Bloomberg would be even worse. He's somehow even older than Biden, is in only a slightly better demographic bucket, has only won competitive elections in a place where the Democratic Party has zero need to rack up votes, has a signature policy issue in soda taxes that is both widely unpopular and pointlessly awful, brings absolutely nothing else to the table in terms of issues that aren't extremely well-covered by the existing field, ranks among the worst in the primary in terms of personal charisma or likability, and is actively being #MeTooed with accusations significantly worse than what Biden's been called out for. Absolutely any other candidate would be infinitely better, including the other billionaire running a self-funded vanity campaign (or even the other other billionaire who quit his self-funded vanity campaign because people were mean on Twitter), with the possible exception of Tulsi if you think she's some kind of mole.

His last hinted-at run did give us this wonderful electoral map put together by the most craven and/or ridiculous consultants in history. Bloomberg and Trump apparently run neck-and-neck in Texas.
posted by Copronymus at 7:24 PM on November 10, 2019 [14 favorites]

He's crying because he feels like he'll be forced to vote for Trump in 2020 if Warren gets the nomination

or Bernie Sanders who's rhetoric is even more straightforwardly alienating to billionaires
posted by windbox at 7:37 PM on November 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

For whatever reason, Bernie doesn't seem to scare these guys as much as Warren does.
posted by octothorpe at 7:42 PM on November 10, 2019 [26 favorites]

He's somehow even older than Biden

As Maciej Ceglowski pointed out on Twitter recently, 25% of American males who are Sanders/Biden/Bloomberg’s age will die before the next presidential term is finished in January 2025. Almost 50% will be dead before the next two terms are complete.
posted by mbrubeck at 7:57 PM on November 10, 2019 [13 favorites]

interesting you should probably read that link then because in reality it is quite the opposite
posted by windbox at 8:10 PM on November 10, 2019

lemme just say team that i'm happy we have new primaries to litigate.
posted by kaibutsu at 8:12 PM on November 10, 2019 [15 favorites]

For whatever reason, Bernie doesn't seem to scare these guys as much as Warren does.

This is the narcissism of small differences; a billionaire hyper-capitalist like Bloomberg is going to be far more upset with a self-professed capitalist who believes the system just needs fixing than a candidate perceived to be a craven socialist who thinks the system itself is the problem (even though Sanders is really just somewhere between social democrat and democratic socialist).
posted by Ouverture at 8:14 PM on November 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

Man, we’re gonna get Business Plot coup’ed huh?
posted by The Whelk at 8:16 PM on November 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

This is the narcissism of small differences; a billionaire hyper-capitalist like Bloomberg is going to be far more upset with a self-professed capitalist who believes the system just needs fixing than a candidate perceived to be a craven socialist who thinks the system itself is the problem (even though Sanders is really just somewhere between social democrat and democratic socialist).

I don't think that's it. I think they don't believe that Bernie could actually get the nomination, and it has suddenly dawned on them that Warren actually could. They'd like Bernie even less, but they're not as worried about him winning. They may be wrong about that: people have a habit of underestimating Bernie. But Warren has turned out to be a pretty formidable campaigner, and I think they're more worried that she's going to be the nominee.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:28 PM on November 10, 2019 [20 favorites]

Man, we’re gonna get Business Plot coup’ed huh?

$Billions vs Democracy. Does anyone really think they'd pick the latter over the former if push comes to shove? Honestly, I almost don't blame them; the solution isn't to depend on their loyalty to democratic ideals, it's confiscation and threats of the guillotine. A democratic society and billionaires are not mutually compatible.
posted by chortly at 8:34 PM on November 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

but it will cause me pain to support that fucking unqualified twerp who is coasting on white, male entitlement.

Weird thing to say about the first queer candidate with a shot for a presidential nomination, but OK.
posted by No One Ever Does at 8:49 PM on November 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

@heteronym
Sorry, I was mistaken. I had thought that it was banned during the Cold War, by law.
posted by constantinescharity at 8:51 PM on November 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

in the original Taft-Hartley Act (which limited union power and support strikes) you had to pledge to not support any communist party in order to participate in NLRB (National Labor Review Board) proceedings. This was deemed unconstitutional in 1956 but by then a lot of really good union leaders and rank and file had got purged, which cemented the control of the more right-wing, more boss-friendly and anti-democratic labor leadership in the country which set the stage for crisis of the 1970s. (Shout out to the longshoremen unions which stayed radical, and still are!)

also by '56 like fully half of the CPUSA was informants soooooo.

(They, or someone proporting , to be them on Twitter kept trying follow every lefty on Twitter and it didn;t go how they'd like.)'
posted by The Whelk at 9:06 PM on November 10, 2019 [17 favorites]

think they don't believe that Bernie could actually get the nomination, and it has suddenly dawned on them that Warren actually could.

I think they think Bernie can be conned, whereas Warren actually understands how things work.
posted by praemunire at 10:59 PM on November 10, 2019 [13 favorites]

Call me crazy but it may possibly have something to do with not wanting to be taken down by a woman. Just possibly.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 11:39 PM on November 10, 2019 [50 favorites]

which cemented the control of the more right-wing, more boss-friendly and anti-democratic labor leadership in the country which set the stage for crisis of the 1970s.

Don't... don't stop there!

I have been trying to find out what the hell happened in the 70s that made Reagan and Thatcher look like fresh air and I can't work it out.
posted by Merus at 1:55 AM on November 11, 2019 [10 favorites]

In the US, it was much the same as now, an older generation freaking out about attempts to challenge the status quo by minorities, young people and women during the civil rights era and into Vietnam protests of the sixties. This led to a conservative backlash, only broken by the brief interlude of Nixon's illegalities causing him to resign. Back then the unprecedented nature of the crime and threat of impeachment, along with a different media atmosphere, made resignation a better choice than trying to fight a seeming lost cause. Ford pardoned him, wasn't seen as all that presidential, Carter won, seemed ineffectual in trying to deal with the mess left behind and Iran, Reagan swept in and managed to bury whatever was left of the messy dreams of the sixties and seventies in trying to reshape the country and deal with racism. Reagan gave permission to look away from that and focus on white dominance again.

He had plenty of help in doing that of course, the Republican party and from some democrats as well who didn't like seeing their power challenged, so they blamed blacks, young people, crime, and gay decadence for the problem rather than themselves for the discrimination and white voters said "right on!". Trump and the republicans now aren't much different other than being even more brazen for having captured a important part of the media machine, thanks in part to changes in the law under Reagan, and the rich leave their morals behind in favor of their money, which they have a lot more of now thanks again to Reagan and the reactionary rightward shift in ideology ushered during his time in office.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:19 AM on November 11, 2019 [17 favorites]

That's the broad brush stroke version anyway, you'd hear talk about the religious right and fear of the Soviet Union and so on, but the situation today shows how that kind of stuff just gives excuse to the deeper fears over losing dominance. But this, I think, is getting off track so I skipped the details.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:34 AM on November 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted; let's keep things more specific about the candidate(s) and avoid sweeping generalizations about gay men, etc., please. Thank you.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:41 AM on November 11, 2019

I have been trying to find out what the hell happened in the 70s that made Reagan and Thatcher look like fresh air and I can't work it out.

Oil crisis used as an excuse to break the back of labor helped by Volcker.
posted by PMdixon at 5:57 AM on November 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

Biden is not doing well. His strategy was a lot like Jeb Bush's. You were supposed to vote for Biden because he was inevitable. That doesn't work if you can't raise money.

Bloomberg, on the other hand, can raise money. If he has the strong support of Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerberg, then he can raise an almost unlimited amount of money.

There are many, many people who want a more experienced candidate than Buttigieg and who want a less radical candidate than Warren. Bloomberg is a real threat in my opinion.
posted by xammerboy at 7:05 AM on November 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

Psst, we've already had a gay President who was exactly as open as Buttigieg, correcting for norms of his time, and that didn't go so hot for literally anyone else without a ton of privilege. Bonus: he was President during an era of intense civil unrest, which he handled incredibly badly despite also coming from a wealthy family that groomed him for political office!

I'm not saying Buttigieg would be Buchanan mk. 2, and if he wins I'll campaign for him hard, but let me just say there is nothing about him that fills me with confidence.
posted by sciatrix at 7:10 AM on November 11, 2019 [19 favorites]

white, male entitlement.

Weird thing to say about the first queer candidate with a shot for a presidential nomination, but OK.

The belief that being queer some how inoculates you against being racist, misogynist, transphobic, or entitled is widespread in some queer communities and does active harm on an ongoing basis. There is another FPP going on right now where we’re discussing the dangers of believing you are immune to these failings. Which is to say: saying this is a “weird” thing to say just because Buttigieg identifies as gay* is part of that belief, and perpetuates that harm. Please let’s not do it here.

White gay men are just as capable of white male entitlement as the straights, and this is one of the ways intersecting axes of oppression affect the larger queer community. And this particular gay white man believes that being mayor of a town in Indiana qualifies him to be President, which is pants-on-head, crazy-town-baffling to many. I honestly don’t know what else you’d call it other than entitlement. We would certainly call it that from a straight white man.

*I’ve only seen him identified as gay, not as queer, and there can be a difference, so...
posted by schadenfrau at 7:15 AM on November 11, 2019 [51 favorites]

"There are many, many people who want a more experienced candidate than Buttigieg and who want a less radical candidate than Warren."

We have at least 4 of those who aren't getting any traction already, though. This desire is clearly coming from the top down, or else wouldn't it be reflected in the polling?
posted by Selena777 at 7:15 AM on November 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

Bloomberg has a zero percent chance of winning a single delegate. I can't even imagine him hitting 1% in any state. The only conceivable reason for him to get in is to get the candidate rate on ads attacking Warren.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 7:16 AM on November 11, 2019 [9 favorites]

Which is to say: identity is nothing without solidarity, and I have seen very little about Buttigieg that indicates that he understands or believes in solidarity for many other people besides himself. And I don't think his gayness is the primary locus of his solidarity. I think his solidarity lies with wealthy people of his own class and race.
posted by sciatrix at 7:18 AM on November 11, 2019 [28 favorites]

Also, about a handful of the early dropouts were in the moderate, conventionally qualified, not afraid of corporate money mold.
posted by Selena777 at 7:18 AM on November 11, 2019

*for many other people who are not like himself, sorry. Ugh.
posted by sciatrix at 7:25 AM on November 11, 2019

I would vote for Bloomberg hands down. He's not perfect and I disagree with him on a few things (namely stop and frisk, real estate zoning), but he's smart, pragmatic, and solution-oriented. Warren cannot beat Trump, Bloomberg can. Bloomberg is smart and gets shit done, a secular liberal albeit a wealthy one is going to win the middle votes this time around.
posted by waving at 8:08 AM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

If we're placing bets, you can put me down under "doesn't win a single delegate" as well, but I'm not sure that's the point. I see it as more of an Overton Window shifting exercise—Bloomberg et al don't like the leftward drift of what they see as their party, and running himself as a candidate is presumably his way of trying to counter that movement and keep the focus of discussion on less threatening policies than Warren's and Sanders'.

I also think the billionaire class is clearly more threatened by Warren than Sanders, perhaps because she has more of an actual track record of accomplishing change at the national level, and perhaps also because she's not as vulnerable to accusations of being a bomb-throwing Commie, because she works within the existing framework of the capitalist system. It's as Warren has started to come up in the polls that it suddenly seems like the billionaires are coming out of the woodwork to voice their "concern".
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:10 AM on November 11, 2019 [16 favorites]

There are so, so many openly gay fascists/Neo-Nazi/White Nationalists running around now too. Even more if you lump in rich fuck-you-got-mine types that, once they got marriage equality, basically became Republicans. I recommend the podcast BAD GAYS for context from two gay men (one who works for the museum of gay life in Berlin) on bad/problematic queer men in history.

Anyway , the other Jewish American in the race has published an essay that nearly took down Jewish Current’s servers How To Fight Anti-Semitism
posted by The Whelk at 8:18 AM on November 11, 2019 [21 favorites]

Warren cannot beat Trump, Bloomberg can.

Her chances would certainly be worsened, if Bloomberg were to run as a third-party candidate. She would probably lose in that scenario. As a Warren supporter, I do not want Bloomberg running against her.

I agree with some of Bloomberg's positions on public health (including seeing gun ownership as a public health matter) and he is pro-environment, at a time when we are, well, running out of time.

But he is tailor-made as a Republican opponent: New York, Jewish, elitist. It would be easy for them to portray him as out-of-touch and hellbent on taking your guns away (which probably would be the right thing to do for 99% of gun owners, anyway, but that's a separate discussion).

Basically, it is unclear that he would be successful against Trump in swing states, let alone traditionally blue states. If there is polling data, I would certainly revisit my conclusion. But America cannot survive another four years of Trump.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:38 AM on November 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Warren cannot beat Trump, Bloomberg can.

It's worth considering that there is a massive disparity between the popular perception of electability and actual electability. In this cycle, Trump is unpopular enough that electability is not a very useful lens to distinguish between primary candidates.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:49 AM on November 11, 2019 [19 favorites]

*Control+F Pete King*

Okay, let’s talk about the unending nightmare that is New York State politics.

Pete King, a 14 term republican Congressperson, announced he was not seeking re-election today. Some of his more recent hits include

Blaming Eric Garner – who said "I can't breathe" 11 times – for his own killing, because Garner "had asthma, and a heart condition, and was so obese."

Holding McCarthyite hearings targeting American Muslims, said “there are too many mosques in this country”

Having a score of 4 out of 100 from the Human Rights Campaign for his voting record on LGBT rights issues. Opposing the Supreme Court taking on the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case.

Having a "C" rating from NORML regarding his voting record on cannabis-related matters. Twice voting against providing veterans access to medical marijuana via the Veterans Health Administration.

Being called the patriot act’s “Most fervent fan.”

And ...when being challenged by a more moderate young woman in 18’, enjoying the endorsement and fundraising largess of Micheal Bloomberg.

I guess that’s one way to get things done.

(Also he is most likely not seeking re-election cause he knows he’s gonna lose, the question is now does a more left wing democrat take the seat or a more frothing Nazi?)
posted by The Whelk at 9:28 AM on November 11, 2019 [18 favorites]

Pete King, a 14 term republican Congressperson, announced he was not seeking re-election today. Some of his more recent hits include

Don't get me fucking started. He is the absolute fucking worst, I cannot believe he's being allowed to re-brand himself as a Republican moderate, and if Bloomberg actually did support him then that's completely appalling.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:39 AM on November 11, 2019 [12 favorites]

He's a politician and a fundraiser. Support for Pete York, who is a moderate republican, is in part an outgrowth of his time in office, where York was supportive of Bloomberg's administration. Believe it or not, some of these politicians work across the lines, and it does get things done.
His name is synonymous with excellence,” the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, gushed earlier this year. Mr. Bloomberg has done more than just give. Last week, he traveled to Florida to campaign for the Democratic nominee for governor there, Andrew Gillum, at a Jewish center in Pembroke Pines. He donated to Mr. Gillum; his anti-gun group, Everytown for Gun Safety, also donated; and he hosted a fund-raiser, too. This Tuesday, back in New York, Mr. Bloomberg hosted a fund-raiser for Phil Bredesen, the former Democratic governor of Tennessee and current candidate for United States Senate. Mr. Bloomberg is not solely backing Democrats this year; in June, he held a fund-raiser for Representative Peter King, Republican of New York, with whom he worked closely following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. NYT, 2018. I realize Metafilter isn't happy with the anti-Semitic, money hungry Times these days, sorry.

He's no Warren, and I wish her were in many ways, but he is progressive on most social issues, including gun control, climate change, immigration and abortion rights.
posted by waving at 9:56 AM on November 11, 2019

And yet he is probably not even the worst republicans named King in Congress.
posted by skewed at 9:56 AM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Yeah, you know what? Steve King is a Nazi, but he's never actually murdered anyone, and I'm not convinced that's true of Pete King. The dude is literally guilty of conspiracy to commit terrorism, and then he had the absolute gall to imply that American Muslims are collectively guilty of the thing that he actually did. He's a monster.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:02 AM on November 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

Why Bloomberg won’t be the Democratic nominee:

For African Americans, “stop and frisk” was not some one-off police policy. It was a new technique in an old system of racial oppression that criminalized black and brown people, men in particular. To argue in favor of it despite the innocent lives upended by it is to ignore the collective angst and anger that ripples through the overwhelming majority of the community that hasn’t done anything wrong.

Bloomberg would enter the race for the Democratic nomination for president with a serious liability and no clear way to make it right. His reported decision to skip the four early states, which includes South Carolina where blacks make up 60 percent of the Democratic electorate, compounds this problem.

posted by octothorpe at 10:02 AM on November 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

Sanders Couldn’t Stop Laughing at Report of Bezos Asking Bloomberg About Presidential Run [Slate]
posted by benzenedream at 10:31 AM on November 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

Pete King Must Go foreign Policy, 2012.

And yes, this is what the moderate GOP is.
posted by The Whelk at 10:33 AM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'd feel a lot better about Bloomberg at the moment if he'd decided to run as a Republican, like he did when he ran for mayor. Or the sort of third party candidate that gets more votes from the right-leaning side than the left-leaning side. That would be great. This, right now, is not great. I think he underestimates the seething fury of the left. He'll spend a lot of money trashing the policies of Warren and Sanders and then lose the primary anyway. And then what will he do, vote for Trump?

I don't hate Bloomberg or fault him for being a billionaire, and I lived in NYC when he was mayor. I'd take him over Trump any day. I would not take him over Elizabeth Warren.
posted by wondermouse at 11:13 AM on November 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

I have been trying to find out what the hell happened in the 70s that made Reagan and Thatcher look like fresh air and I can't work it out.

In the US, it was Roe v. Wade.

Until Roe, evangelicals were kind of a footnote, voting-wise, and not dependably republican, if they voted at all. The Roe decision engendered the quick rise of the conservative evangelical christian movement, which the Republicans were more than happy to crawl into bed with. In conservative evangelicals, Republicans gained a very large, very loud, and easily motivated block of votes. Dependable votes, so long as the party paid just enough lip-service to evangelicals' single cause, reversing Roe.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:21 AM on November 11, 2019 [11 favorites]

I have been trying to find out what the hell happened in the 70s that made Reagan and Thatcher look like fresh air and I can't work it out.

Also the Southern Strategy, which began during Nixon and blossomed during the 70s and 80s. Good old fashioned racism.

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 [...] and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "N*****, n*****, n*****." By 1968 you can't say "n*****" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N*****, n*****."

In short, Republicans recognized that their economic positions, standing alone, were no longer supported by a majority of Americans. So they tied those positions to white, Christian grievance and a fear of black people.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 11:44 AM on November 11, 2019 [10 favorites]

> Seen on twitter: Mike Bloomberg’s first major campaign move should be to buy Fox News.

It Wouldn't Matter if Bloomberg Bought Fox News

Please note that this is already happening:

In the midst of closing a merger between CBS and Viacom, Shari Redstone is quietly exploring a plan to launch a conservative TV outlet meant to square off with the Fox News Channel, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter....

Redstone has approached current and former Fox News personalities about such a plan, sources say, and she has spoken with former NBC News host Megyn Kelly.

... a Redstone spokesperson confirms that she quietly visited President Donald Trump in the White House recently.... Redstone plays her personal politics close to the vest but shortly after Trumps election she told THR, "He's always been very good to me and a tremendous supporter of me personally."

Imagine if the available talent pool wasn't just Kelly (and Bill O'Reilly) but all of Fox's current and former opinion-show hosts. It's hard to believe someone with deep pockets wouldn't build a Fox 2.0 out of that. No one's tried to pump big money into the Fox wannabes -- One America News Network, Newsmax TV -- and Sinclair hasn't taken Fox on directly. But that would change fast if Fox suddenly weren't there.

A few years ago, I might have said that the Rupert Murdoch/Roger Ailes formula can't be duplicated -- Ailes, in particular, had an evil genius for putting what he wanted to see on the screen. But Ailes has been gone for years, as have several of his stars (O'Reilly, Kelly, Glenn Beck), and Fox just keeps going, with new management and new demagogues to replace the old ones. It's a formula now, one that can be easily reproduced. It would be.

posted by tonycpsu at 11:56 AM on November 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

Disinformation media is here to stay until we have a Supreme Court that will recognize it's the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater. Worse, Trump's strategy will likely be adopted and refined by the Republican party as a whole. For me, that strategy appears to be to make blue collar workers and farmers as miserable as possible and then blame that misery on immigrants and foreigners.
posted by xammerboy at 12:43 PM on November 11, 2019

Is there polling that shows support for Bloomberg?

No, but I have heard from lots of Warren supporters that they are ready to jump ship after she announced her plan for Medicare for All. Many of those same people now say they would vote for Bloomberg.

Warren's in a tough position common to every leader who proposes radical ideas. It takes time to educate the public and sell those ideas. That's fine, she knows what she's doing. But it's not going to help to have Bloomberg and his billions take her on directly.
posted by xammerboy at 12:48 PM on November 11, 2019

Are there people out there who honestly think he has any chance of winning in a general election? I just struggle with someone sincerely thinking he is an electable candidate in any way shape or form. Sure he has lots of money but so do the other side and they are happy to spend too. He's got that sweet billionaire vote though. Or most of it. Could be as many as 500 votes right there.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 2:06 PM on November 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Now Jonathan Martin of the New York Times is reporting that former MA governor Deval Patrick is considering jumping into the race.

I miss Jay Inslee, at least he had a specific reason for running other than “maybe I’ll win.”
posted by sallybrown at 2:37 PM on November 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

The billionaire class. And their sympathizers are desperate and have learned nothing.
posted by The Whelk at 2:47 PM on November 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

Are there people out there who honestly think he has any chance of winning in a general election?

I mean, I think he has a chance in a general as a Democratic nominee. Its called not being Donald Trump. I really don't want Bloomberg, but I would still obviously vote for him over Trump. I think most Democrats and many independents would.

I don't think he's anywhere near the best chance to beat Trump. But realistically ANY Democratic nominee has a chance to beat Trump (unless the Democrats somehow nominated someone worse than Trump, which is beyond any scenario I can imagine).

He doesn't have any real chance to win a Democratic primary, however, so the point is irrelevant. Nor does he have a chance to win as an independent.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:52 PM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

From October 2018: Top Obama Allies Are Ready To Support A Deval Patrick Presidential Campaign

Could these be the same folks mobilizing now?
posted by Apocryphon at 3:06 PM on November 11, 2019

Biden is not doing well.

How can people continue to say this? He has been comfortably ahead in national polling since polling began - 12 months ago, 6 months ago, 1 month ago. As of today, 538's average of a couple dozen recent polls puts him 11 points ahead. Biden has always been leading the pack.

The only place Biden has been losing is in fund raising, which is something that the billionaires could easily fix. It's baffling how billionaires could be interested in a Bloomberg run which hasn't a prayer when Biden is right there and just needs a few bucks. Biden, known as the senator from MBNA, is just their kind of guy.
posted by JackFlash at 4:05 PM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

❯ As of today, 538's average of a couple dozen recent polls puts him 11 points ahead. Biden has always been leading the pack.

Where do you see this? I’ve been looking for something like this, but I can’t seem to find it. I only see 538’s list of latest polls and endorsement tracker.
posted by danielparks at 4:11 PM on November 11, 2019

Which is to say: identity is nothing without solidarity, and I have seen very little about Buttigieg that indicates that he understands or believes in solidarity for many other people besides himself.

Have you looked?

"There is no right or wrong way to be gay, to be queer, to be trans, and I hope that our own community, even as we struggle to define what our identity means, defines it in a way that lets everybody know that they belong among us."

https://peteforamerica.com/policies/lgbtq/

Buttigieg isn't even my preferred candidate - Warren is. But if you're going to give someone criticism based on their stances, at least look up what they are.
posted by No One Ever Does at 4:18 PM on November 11, 2019

538 doesn't have a single average or model yet (they're working on one according to podcasts).

RCP does, however. It also shows Biden ahead by a fair amount.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:20 PM on November 11, 2019

Not in Iowa, though. Biden is in fourth here, after Warren, Buttigieg and Sanders. And on the one hand, Iowa is super white, and Biden seems to be doing better among people who aren't white. But on the other hand, Iowans are paying more attention than the average person, because the caucuses are relatively soon, and it may be that the national numbers will resemble Iowa more when people start paying more attention to Biden and remembering that he's kind of a doofus.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:30 PM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

(Which is not to imply that non-white voters are paying less attention. Just that Iowa is an outlier in a couple of different ways, and it's not clear to me which one is driving Biden's not-strong performance here. And I also don't know what it means for him if he really tanks in the Iowa caucuses. It's one thing not to win, but if he comes in fourth, that's kind of humiliating in a way that may be tough to recover from.)
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:32 PM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

lol Silver only did well in the race that made him cause the press was obsessed with turning it into a horse race for ratings and the Obama campaign identified him as a good media asset and shared their internal polling with him so he could call it early. He’s become less than useless since then and become exactly the kind of culture pundit/oracular click bait mode he always claimed to hate.
posted by The Whelk at 4:37 PM on November 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

Now Jonathan Martin of the New York Times is reporting that former MA governor Deval Patrick is considering jumping into the race.

Someone on Twitter said it best: The charisma of Mike Bloomberg and the wealth of Pete Buttigieg.

I prefer to think of him as 2020’s own Walter Mondale.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 4:47 PM on November 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

It’s just a sea of Paul Tsongas
posted by The Whelk at 4:52 PM on November 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

lol Silver only did well in the race that made him cause the press was obsessed with turning it into a horse race for ratings and the Obama campaign identified him as a good media asset and shared their internal polling with him so he could call it early

Source? If you're basing it on this, that seems kinda backward, given that what made poblano/538 so hot in '08 was precisely the (relative) transparency of his methodology. I'd want to see some evidence before believing that he retrofit the model to fit Obama campaign internals, if that's the claim.
posted by Not A Thing at 4:54 PM on November 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

How can people continue to say this? He has been comfortably ahead in national polling since polling began - 12 months ago, 6 months ago, 1 month ago.

Because national polls for primaries, especially this early, are basically less than meaningless.
posted by Automocar at 5:09 PM on November 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

Because national polls for primaries, especially this early, are basically less than meaningless.

Biden is ahead in the averages for South Carolina and Nevada by a fairly large margin right now. He's tied with Warren in New Hampshire. Only in Iowa is he doing poorly (effectively tied with Sanders).

I'm not a fan of Biden at all, but he's currently leading national polls and 2-3 (depending on how you count NH) of the first 4 pre-Super Tuesday contests.

Thats not doing poorly to me, and it's certainly not even in the same ballpark as Jeb (which the comment above compared him to).

[edit: averages from RCP as linked above]
posted by thefoxgod at 5:18 PM on November 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

Biden is not doing well.

How can people continue to say this? He has been comfortably ahead in national polling since polling began - 12 months ago, 6 months ago, 1 month ago. As of today, 538's average of a couple dozen recent polls puts him 11 points ahead. Biden has always been leading the pack.

The narrative around Biden right now is (in my opinion) clearly being shaped on some level by memories of 2016. The fact that he's not just crushing all opposition is raising traumatic memories for people who watched Clinton struggle to finish off her own progressive challenger and who - perhaps not even on a conscious level - now associate that situation with defeat in the general. Even the pro-Biden reaction sounds very similar to Clinton talking points - the idea that the African-American vote is one of his strong features and so losing "whiter" states like New Hampshire or Iowa wouldn't/won't be as important, for example.

Even if those things are true (and they're reasonable enough), they sound familiar. Which exacerbates an already rising sense of anxiety.
posted by AdamCSnider at 5:30 PM on November 11, 2019 [5 favorites]

In light of Mayor Bloomberg's interest in joining the race, I'd like to humbly resubmit this plan for dealing with rich twits that want to run for office for the wrong reasons.
posted by duoshao at 6:00 PM on November 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

Wasn’t the winning side doing the clown car/melee primary in 2016, though?
posted by Selena777 at 6:23 PM on November 11, 2019

By 'winning' you mean they ended up with Trump?

I sure hope we don't 'win' like that.
posted by adept256 at 6:28 PM on November 11, 2019

For whatever reason, Bernie doesn't seem to scare these guys as much as Warren does.

I don't know about scare, but they're certainly more hostile to Warren. I wonder why that might be.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:10 PM on November 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

The media narratives will likely turn after Iowa, especially because he was an early frontrunner so now they can run "Is Biden's Campaign Over?" stories. Losing Iowa will be painful for him.

Thank you to everyone who had comments about what happened in the 70s to frustrate progressive, but I'm not sure this is entirely an American phenomenon. The UK famously went through something similar, for instance, but the Nordic countries largely didn't.
posted by Merus at 7:25 PM on November 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

I mean, the Meidner plan in Sweden was famously killed cause it would answer the big underlying problem in the US and UK, do we settle for larger wages or we we want more control over the job, do we want democracy at work do we want control over the means of production?

The 70s response was, we can move those jobs overseas and use global supply chains to make sure WE don’t lose profits and use those profits to buy politicians to make sure this whole scheme keeps going.
posted by The Whelk at 7:39 PM on November 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

Hmm. But which idea of anarchism has ever actually existed on this planet on any scale larger than, say, a commune?

Not trying to derail but it had to be said, Rojava is currently a large-scale, successful anarchist society that is flourishing despite dire poverty and military threats from all sides. They operate in the Bookchin-esque, libertarian socialist / communalist tendency of anarchism (they specifically have coined the term "democratic confederalism" to describe their governance). They have a population of about 2 million people and about 19,000 sq mi of territory. They're radically feminist, tolerant of all religions, egalitarian, and deeply devoted to ecological stewardship. Their model is working and can not be dismissed so easily.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:21 PM on November 11, 2019 [16 favorites]

Are these rich white dudes butting in because they're afraid someone like Elizabeth Warren will win the nomination and lose to Trump, or are they afraid someone like Warren will beat Trump and raise their taxes?
The answer may surprise you.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:39 AM on November 12, 2019 [4 favorites]

If Warren wins the nomination, Bill Gates and other billionaires will hold their noses and vote for Trump. When it comes down to it, their money is all they care about.
posted by octothorpe at 7:07 AM on November 12, 2019 [3 favorites]

I don't give a flying fuck who Bill Gates votes for. His vote has exactly as much power as mine. (Actually, it has less, because I live in a swing state.) Billionaires are not a voting constituency. I care who he throws his money and power behind. And I wish I didn't believe that they would throw their money behind Trump if he were in a contest with Warren, but I am not so sure.

I will literally never understand it. I cannot believe that being an astronomically-rich person in a sick society is a better existence than being a merely extraordinarily-rich person in a reasonably-functional one.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:59 AM on November 12, 2019 [18 favorites]

but I am not so sure.

They would and will since the trump tax cuts made them all so much richer and lead to the super rich paying less taxes then everyone else
posted by The Whelk at 8:11 AM on November 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

I cannot believe that being an astronomically-rich person in a sick society is a better existence than being a merely extraordinarily-rich person in a reasonably-functional one.

The really dumb thing is that eventually, an autocrat will impose a large graft tax on billionaires, and they have to pay up or the power of the state will crush them, e.g. what happened with Putin and Yukos Oil. In that case the targeted person also became a political rival which is why he got completely destroyed financially.
posted by benzenedream at 10:33 AM on November 12, 2019 [10 favorites]

I hadn't really thought about it that way or at least didn't want my brain to go down that avenue but you are right.
posted by octothorpe at 11:33 AM on November 12, 2019

Rojava is currently a large-scale, successful anarchist society that is flourishing despite dire poverty and military threats from all sides. They operate in the Bookchin-esque, libertarian socialist / communalist tendency of anarchism (they specifically have coined the term "democratic confederalism" to describe their governance)

They have a constitution. They have legislative, executive, and judicial officials. What makes it anarchist?
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:57 PM on November 12, 2019

What makes it anarchist?

Well, as I said, I'm not trying to create a derail, but to put it simply, Rojava represents an experiment in creating a bottom-up direct democracy without a state. Anarchism is complicated, and there are a lot of different models of society favored by different anarchists. The presence of a constitution (or, as they call it, a Charter of the Social Contract) and administrative institutions does not actually contradict the tenets of anarchism. Anarchism is not centered on destroying organizational structures, it is centered on destroying hierarchies of domination.

There are a large number of Anarchists who see Rojava as fundamentally anarchist, and there are some who don't. Here's a video interview with popular anarchist writer David Graeber where he describes what about Rojava's governance is anarchist *in his opinion.* He likens Rojava to the experiments in direct democracy conducted by the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 2:13 PM on November 12, 2019 [5 favorites]

Mod note: Couple comments deleted. Please skip the bleak humor about truly horrifying events; it too-easily comes across as callousness.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:30 AM on November 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

~ For whatever reason, Bernie doesn't seem to scare these guys as much as Warren does.
~ I don't know about scare, but they're certainly more hostile to Warren.

Maybe they actually want Dems to think they’re more afraid of Warren, hoping the Dems will give the nod to her, because the Mysogenist-in-Chief and his minions believe that they could never lose to a mere woman?
posted by Thorzdad at 2:54 PM on November 13, 2019

Bloomberg will not be the next president of the United States, because virtually no one alive wants him to serve in that role. And yet he and his untouchable peers, who have been allowed through various long-standing failures to have so much more than any person ever should, will spend millions of dollars not in pursuit of any particular set of policies or even the office itself, but out of habit.
posted by The Whelk at 8:43 PM on November 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm getting the feeling, with his late pseudo-entry here, that Bloomberg is planning to run independent if Warren or Sanders gets the nomination. This doesn't really look like exploratory to make a late entry into the already super crowded primary, but like a trial balloon to a) try to terrorize the Democrats into tanking Sanders and Warren, and b) to set things in motion to later sabotage the Democrats if they do permit Sanders or Warren to be the nominee instead of being good little bootlickers and giving it to Uncle Joe the friend of billionaires.
posted by sotonohito at 9:34 AM on November 14, 2019 [3 favorites]

This unbelievably misleading hit piece on Warren is a pretty clear sign that the NYT is feeling the Bloom-mentum.

@jamisonfoser

This is not an analysis of Warren’s plan. The @nytimes should retract this in full.

My analysis of New York Times subscription revenue finds that, if the Times spends the money hiring assassins to shoot nuns, subscribing to the New York Times will result in the murder of hundreds of nuns.

LEFT: The New York Times describing as Elizabeth Warren’s plan something that is not in fact Elizabeth Warren’s plan.

RIGHT: Elizabeth Warren’s actual plan, readily available in the “Plans” section of her website.

New York Times Recycles Incompetent Smear of Elizabeth Warren

This is just embarrassing stuff, and this is particularly true because of Warren’s plan was actually to focus on reducing the deficit you know that the Times would be much more positive in reporting it.

posted by tonycpsu at 3:56 PM on November 14, 2019 [11 favorites]

Which is to say: identity is nothing without solidarity, and I have seen very little about Buttigieg that indicates that he understands or believes in solidarity for many other people besides himself.

Have you looked?

As it turns out, looking at his solidarity outreach causes more problems than it fixes:

Rolling out his racial justice plan, Pete Buttigieg claimed support from 2 prominent black South Carolina officials, Rep. Ivory Thigpen and black caucus chair Johnnie Cordero.

They told me they did not endorse his plan, had their names used anyway. To sum up, a plan implied to be endorsed by several prominent SC black Dems wasn't, neither was Buttigieg. And most of the signees that could be found were white, while others didn't even live in SC.

Buttigieg campaign says that people had a chance to opt out of endorsing and received [an] email before it went public[...]When we told the Buttigieg camp that we had noticed some half of their 400 endorsers of the Douglass Plan for Black America were white folk, they said that was intentional building of a multi-racial coalition. Their own email advertised it as 400 Black SC folk.

On top of everything else, the Buttigieg campaign used a stock photo from Kenya to promote its Frederick Douglass Plan for Black America

And that's all just from this morning!
posted by zombieflanders at 10:39 AM on November 15, 2019 [10 favorites]

Just learned that Bloomberg said (back in 2011 for a speech at MIT):

"I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world."
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:47 PM on November 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

It does seem sort of obvious that Bloomberg isn't running to win, he's running against Warren and Sanders. As a candidate he can spend all kinds of money against them and attack them relentlessly and have a stage to do so.
posted by chaz at 5:30 PM on November 17, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's a bit puzzling because Tom Steyer is already a billionaire financier candidate; but his avowed policies are supposedly at least somewhat more progressive than Bloomberg's, so maybe he's just in it purely for self-promotion and delusion instead of something more nefarious.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:26 PM on November 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

Money makes you stupid.
posted by The Whelk at 8:39 AM on November 18, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'd say it's more that getting a lot of money is more or less random, so a lot of people who aren't all that bright wind up as billionaires. Then they get sucked into epistemic closure because they're surrounded by yes men who never tell them that their latest buffoonery is a bad idea.

Every billionaire sits in a bubble where they are constantly told that they are always right, that their opinions and beliefs are the most valuable ever, and that everything they do is brilliant. Even a billionaire who starts out smart and self aware will succumb to that sort of thing eventually and start believing their own hype.

It's been decades, if ever, since someone told Bloomberg that one of his ideas wasn't great, or that he wasn't the center of every place he went. So of course he thinks what the country really needs is his benevolent awesomeness.
posted by sotonohito at 9:04 AM on November 18, 2019 [6 favorites]

There’s Only One Way the Patrick and Bloomberg Campaigns Make Sense
posted by The Whelk at 7:14 AM on November 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

Hmmm. I'm not saying I think Pareene's analysis is bogus, but I think they're underestimating just how much class solidarity there is among the billionaires. While I don't think either Bloomberg or Patrick would particularly enjoy being a fall guy with no real purpose in the race but to kneecap Warren, I also don't doubt that they'd take the job just to preserve those sweet tax breaks they and their fellow billionaires demand.

A brokered convention followed by the Party elites handing the nomination to a nobody who barely even ran in the primaries and has no actual support outside the elites would seem like a surefire way to give Trump the election in 2020.
posted by sotonohito at 9:38 AM on November 20, 2019

Does the Obama camp actually hate Warren, and if so, why? Every former Obama campaigner I know are for either Warren or Sanders. I can see the Obama "Wall Street" Rahm camp hating Warren but haven't seen much animosity from the low level supporters and organizers (definitely not as bad as Clinton/Sanders animosity).
posted by benzenedream at 9:47 AM on November 20, 2019

Yes, they do hate Warren. The TL;DR is that they wanted Warren to be a good regulatory captured person who would reliably side with the billionaire class and ratfuck her own CFPB. She told them no, and they have had a visceral hatred for her ever since.

To them she's a wild firebrand who won't cooperate, compromise, or recognize that everyone is all on the same team and that giving the billionaires 99% of what they want instead of 100% of what they want is a huge win and big sacrifice for the President. She's the one they tried to tame, tried to reason with, but she just wouldn't listen to reason and instead fought them for no point except her own self aggrandizement and/or insanity. They offered her a sweet insider position where she could struggle for decades to make tiny incremental changes and she had the sheer temerity to turn them down proving that she's an enemy to be crushed rather than a misguided ally to be corrected.
posted by sotonohito at 10:07 AM on November 20, 2019 [12 favorites]

Yeah some people tried to float the idea that maybe the big business wing and the billionares where making so much fuss about Warren in a kind of “oh no don’t give us the business minded reformist we’d haaaate that” but like

These guys aren’t that smart.

They’re also totally full of their own farts and don’t think of Sanders as a real candidate at all and haven’t talked to someone making less than 250k a year for the last several decades unless it was to order a Johnny Walker black.

I think Parnee’s theory is interesting but this is basically a fight to see if the billionaire class will tear a national party to piece rather than give up power - or as Ryan Grim states in his book WE GOT PEOPLE, this will be the test if if actual democracy and people power can overrun aristocratic capital.
posted by The Whelk at 10:36 AM on November 20, 2019 [8 favorites]

Bloomberg wouldn't work as the candidate from a brokered convention. Much easier to hand it off to an also-ran loser who's a known quantity like Kerry- or Clinton.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:34 PM on November 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

Interesting: Bloomberg spending up to $20 million to register 500,000 voters
posted by gwint at 2:38 PM on November 20, 2019

@arianagrande MY GUY. thank you Senator Sanders for coming to my show, making my whole night and for all that you stand for ! @headcountorg and i are doing our best to make you proud. we’ve already registered 20k+ young voters at my shows alone. also i will never smile this hard again promise.
posted by The Whelk at 2:41 PM on November 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

Bloomberg makes it official.
posted by Slothrup at 8:32 AM on November 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

I usually point to watching the People’s Library get thrown into the back of a dump truck as my radicalization moment so good to know the guy who did that now thinks he can buy an election
posted by The Whelk at 9:40 AM on November 24, 2019 [6 favorites]

not gonna lie I have trouble picturing a brokered convention where warren’s delegates plus sanders’s delegates don’t sum to more than 50%.

i have decided to take bloomberg’s narcissistic run (and steyer’s narcissistic run) as further evidence that the billionaire class has grown weak-minded and slow and is as such ripe for overthrow.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 3:36 PM on November 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

Bloomberg's candidacy seems designed to make people stay home.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:33 AM on November 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'd swear I read a claim Bloomberg was not going to ask for donations at alll. If so, how does he get on the debate stage with the Need X donors rules?
posted by rough ashlar at 5:16 AM on November 27, 2019

He doesn't.
posted by octothorpe at 5:40 AM on November 27, 2019

Bloomberg's run has succeeded in booting Kamala Harris out of the race, score one for white (passing) old billionaires I suppose.
posted by sotonohito at 1:07 PM on December 3, 2019

How The Harris Campaign Unraveled (NYT) goes into pretty deep detail of a staff and campaign completely at odds with each other and spiraling out of control. You don’t get that many people willing to go on the record unless things are totally dysfunctional .
posted by The Whelk at 4:25 PM on December 3, 2019 [5 favorites]