Mayor Bloomberg may be a decent person in his personal life. He certainly is as wealthy as he claims and, as far as anyone knows, he made that fortune legally. The one thing he is not is a Democrat or aligned with even the center to center right most constituencies within the Democratic Party. I give you exhibits 1 through 7!
I saw @MikeBloomberg speak to a group of rich executives end of 2018, when he was already considering running for president. I was so shocked at his views that I took notes.
Here are the highlights: (thread)
— Federica Pelzel (@federicca) November 8, 2019
He's against investing in tech education in public schools because -get this- "we invest in computers and then they're used for porn and to plagiarize homework" , verbatim.
I could spend a whole thread just on this but there's more to cover.
— Federica Pelzel (@federicca) November 8, 2019
Literally said "you can't train people to do tech jobs, they're just not wired that way" when asked about tech education to mitigate job loss because of AI advances
— Federica Pelzel (@federicca) November 8, 2019
at some point said "women all of a sudden have opportunities now" so there are 2 bread winners in every family…
Sorry Mike, ALL OF A SUDDEN?
— Federica Pelzel (@federicca) November 8, 2019
In conclusion, pls don't.
— Federica Pelzel (@federicca) November 8, 2019
And the recounting above doesn’t even get into his authoritarian streak as NY City mayor, which, to be honest, verged on the creepy, which ranged from asserting he had the second largest intelligence and security apparatus in the world and was not afraid to use it to trying to ban Big Gulps. The fact that he’s supported some of the worst ideas in policing and law enforcement, which has left him a pariah among African Americans in New York. And his bankrolling of a number of gun control organizations and his public support for gun control make him a pariah in the fifteen or so states where the 2020 presidential election is actually going to be contested. And that includes among some of the Democratic and Democratic leaning Independent voters in those states.**
I’m not particularly worried about his announcement this week. He’s made it clear he won’t run third party because unlike Howard Schultz and the four dumbeats that were his principal advisors, he understands Durveger’s Law and doesn’t want to risk creating the conditions that would allow the President to once again eke out a narrow victory in the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. And he’s not going to be the Democratic nominee because he’s out of touch with all but a slim sliver of one of the constituencies that make up the broad multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-generational coalition that is the Democratic Party in 2019. That said, I’d wish he and Steyer would use their money for far more productive purposes in the 2020 election, but I’m not advising either of them and doubt I’d ever be asked to.
Open thread.
* In the next few days I’ll have a more substantive post about the 2020 campaign.
** This is not an attempt to ignore the need for reasonable firearm regulation, nor to argue against it, just a realistic assessment that this issue is fraught with danger for the potential Democratic nominee, as well as Democrats down the ballot from the presidential election. And before anyone starts, I’ve seen estimates that about 60% or so of concealed weapons license holders are registered Democrats and Democratic leaning Independents in Florida even though there aren’t any firm numbers of the political affiliations of the nearly 2 million Floridians with concealed weapons licenses. And yes, I think that percentage is high, though it wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t close to a 50-50 split. (this paragraph has been edited for clarity)
Friday Recipe Exchange: Kid Friendly Chili-Mac
Damien
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to say “and there’s this asshole” in the last five years I could compete with Michael Bloomberg in fortune.
mrmoshpotato
Well, someone needed to be sarcastic right away!
debbie
.
debbie
He’s making Biden look good. //
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This puts me in mind of a CSPAN forum I watched with Christopher Buckley. It was in 2013 and he was talking about his vote for Obama in 2008 (and maybe 2012? can’t remember) and what he liked about Obama and what he didn’t. He said Obama was arrogant and offered as evidence that Obama had recently played a round of gold and had lunch with Michael Bloomberg and didn’t ask him one question about the economy or the budget. He raised his eybrows and looked slowly around the room and repeated for emphasis, “Not. One. Question. For Michael Bloomberg”. He was incredulous. I wished I were in the room to point out that: 1) we had just an election featuring a ticket that agreed with MB on the eoncomy, and said ticket lost 2) if Obama were launching a media company, it might make sense to ask MB for advice, not otherwise and 3) the fact that Buckley knew Obama hadn’t asked MB for advice proved it was pretty smart that Obama didn’t ask him.
I hope he doesn’t start throwing money at “moderate” Republicans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
trollhattan
You parents know there’s some point at which you transition to living vicariously through your kids. Mine goes to her XC state sectional meet in the foothills tomorrow morning, then in the evening volunteers at a Dem fundraiser that will feature the governor and Nancy SMASH!.
I’ll be home with the dog.
Jeffro
Truer words were never spoken
Except for these.
These old white male ‘socially liberal, fiscally GET OUT OF MY WALLET’ billionaires have constituencies in the single digits. Not single digit percentages: single digits.
Much ado about nothing, and the next couple of weeks will prove that out. Schultz figured it out early. Steyer’s about too. Bloomberg? Let him spend a couple hundred million on consultants and ad buys…it’ll do more for the economy than just sitting there in his McScrooge vaults.
dmsilev
What’s the point? Is he that desperate for fawning pundit coverage? Because that’s the only constituency that he appeals to, he’s not going to be in next week’s debate and probably not the December one either so no help there, and it isn’t really all that long now until Iowa.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: Good luck!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Tell me about it, the kid had dinner in Barcelona and I’m having leftover pizza with the dogs.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bouie is on point here.
“If you extreme partisans would just simmer down, we could get back to, um, good times. Where I didn’t have to worry about the president* tweeting and crashing my portfolio, running the economy into the ground with his dumb tariffs and trade war, or exploding the deficit. If that sounds like I’m laying the blame for GOP policies at the feet of the GOP and the Democrats, well then yeah, that’s exactly where I’m amazingly, stupidly at.”
Mike, you beeyotch, just cough up a couple hundred million to the ‘centrist lane’ candidate of your choice and STFU.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s not complicated, really. They worship rich people. It’s their sole measure of success. The ideology is second to their almost childlike reverence for anyone who is wealthy.
Most of them say it, in so many words. They say Warren wants to go after “successful” people. By that they mean “wealthy” and that’s all they mean. Successful people are all rich and people who are not successful are not rich. There’s no more thought involved than that.
Another Scott
One of my favorite aphorisms is: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.”
Bloomberg doesn’t see the problems afflicting most of America because he doesn’t live there.
Hard pass.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@dmsilev: The point is, he’s in a double panic. He realizes that the Mango Menace very well could get re-elected and cause the death of the Republic (narrator: actually, trump won’t be able to do that from jail, but whatever). He’s also terrified of the Warren/Sanders ‘leftist’ tilt of the Dems these days (narrator: we say ‘leftist’ but by modern standards in Western democracies, we’re basically talking center-center here).
So in short, he’s laying down a marker for someone, anyone, HIM to come to the defense of perfectly good ultra-rich folks who have some common sense and recognize the existential threat to the country that is trumpism, but aren’t willing to pay higher taxes to solve the country’s most pressing problems (despite their tax burden being lower than ever, and in many cases lower than regular ol’ working folks).
They really can’t bring themselves to just say ‘F it, we have to get trumpov out of there and we’ll settle the rest out later’. As if they’ll be on the street or something.
Kent
I’m curious how the hell MB is going to even get into any of the debates. Don’t they have really huge fundraising requirements by now? How is he going to get 200,000 or whatever the number is of individual contributions? Is ANYONE sentient going to contribute to a billionaire vanity campaign?
Bill Arnold
@debbie:
Could be the motive. (That was my first thought on the news TBH.)
As Adam says, Bloomberg has plenty of money that could be much more effectively spent, if one of his goals really is to destroy Trump and his accomplices who have taken over control of the top national ranks of the Republican Party and exiled centrists.
E. Warren really has billionaires worried. :-)
Not sure where I saw this, worth bookmarking:
A Trump Conflicts of Interest tracker:
Tracking President Trump’s Unprecedented Conflicts of Interest
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: They could use their money to fund get out the vote, voter registration, ensuring voters have the proper ID, and voter education programs up and down the ballot in every state. They could set up and endow a fund so that Marc Elias and the other Democratic election law specialists are properly funded and ready to go everywhere. All of these are doable. Bloomberg has enough money to actually buy Fox News and liquidate it, not that he will, which would be a huge public service.
Jeffro
Btw I see that Nikki Haley is trying to throw in a few good words for trumpov before the walls completely close in on him. Nikki, it won’t work on anyone but his rump base…it’s too far gone now. You’re just alienating those suburban swing voters and giving us more ammo…oh, hell, who cares…not our job to save her from pretending to be the ‘new face’ of the GOP once trumpov is removed.
Kay
@dmsilev:
No one can tell them what to do. So while his run makes no sense and it would make a lot more sense for him to back a centrist who is more likely to win, no one will tell him that, just like no one told Steyer or Schultz.
I don’t know why they don’t just stay in the private sector. Let’s go back to having private and public sectors. It worked better and we can have both.
jl
@Kent: Maybe Bloomberg will do town halls, like Schultz did. They’ll get big network and cable airtime because Bloomberg is rich, and that is all the corporate news media need to know about him. He’s rich so very important.
If so, the Bloomberg town halls will make Schultz humiliating experience look like ice cream socials.
Bloomberg is rich enough to pay people to contribute to him, so maybe he’ll get the number of donors qualification covered, at least until the scandal hits the news. From Steyer’s campaign, our modern billionaire set think they can do things lesser people can’t, even if they see themselves as having good intentions. That’s a big problem with them.
tokyokie
@Kay: Yeah, a values system that considers Eric Trump more successful than Albert Schweitzer.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro:
rikyrah
Three words about Bloomberg:
STOP AND FRISK
that’s the beginning, middle and end
John Revolta
Then there’s the fact that he believes that term limits are only for the little people.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Yup. The Borowitz Report today ran with a story where Bloomberg just flat-out offers trumpov $10B to leave the WH (“but you have to be out by tonight”). Why not? Although I think a half $B would be more than enough to get Donnie to pack his bags and light out for Moscow, to chill and tweet to his heart’s content while waiting for that May Day parade.
Anyway, this is why I think Bloomberg’s blessed last-minute run will fizzle like a (insert bad metaphor here). Mike, just shut up and give a tenth of your pretend campaign budget to efforts that are already up, running, and effective. Hell, give Stacy Abrams’ organzation $100M and I’ll be your chauffeur for the first half of 2020!
Kay
@Jeffro:
It’s not really true, either, what Haley said. They only released the funding after they found out about the whistleblower. They got caught – that’s why they released it. The Trump Administration timeline is different than the public timeline. They knew they got caught before we knew they got caught. It’s like “deciding” not to rob a bank after you found out the police got a tip and were parked around the corner, waiting for you to arrive.
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
This made me laugh today:
‘You’re going to get a vision!’ Televangelist Paula White promises spiritual results in exchange for donations up to $2,000 in sermon quid-pro-quo after Donald Trump hires her for White House post (Daily Mail, David Martosko, 6 November 2019)
Bold mine:
(Matthew 19:24)
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: The Armed Intelligentsia thinks it’s a DNC conspiracy, The author was a member of the President’s 2nd Amendment Task Force, which quickly went defunct. The commenters are they commenters.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/reasonable-gun-control-bloomberg-will-assume-the-lead-for-the-democrat-nomination/
jl
@Adam L Silverman: ” Bloomberg giving $100 millon to a Booker super PAC. ”
No, that would not satisfy Bloomberg at all. Even the corporate friendly Booker is a commie and minority grievance merchant from his point of view. Bloomberg may be far more conservative than any Democratic candidate. Certainly more so than Biden or Klobuchar. He’s nearly out of the penumbra of Delaney, and to the right. Bloomberg has zero constituency in the Democratic party.
Like other ultra wealthy, he sees progressive wing Democratic party growing in strength and he is worried about losing his very outsize wealth, and losing his very unfair, undemocratic, outsize, and unjustified access to power and influence. Nothing more. He’s an ass.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I am not Dave Weigel.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Exactly. “All this radical talk is making me unsettled and I can’t guarantee the outcome and I live way too much in the NY/DC media bubble to know that higher taxes (especially wealth taxes!) won’t swing the whole country blood-red and give us four more years of Crazy Grandpa GAAAAA!”
Kay
I don’t know of course but I think if I were a billionaire I would accept that I might be out of touch with the masses. I don’t think that’s a huge admission to grapple with, or something they should deny to themselves. I would be okay with it. Upside: billionaire. Downside: probably not in touch with the everyday concerns of the common man. That seems like an acceptable tradeoff. Why do they think they get everything?
jl
@Adam L Silverman: Hmmm… that comment raised my suspicions. Anyone seen Silverman and Wiegel in the same place at the same time? No, I thought not.
Jeffro
@Kay: Wait…you’re saying Nikki Haley lied? No way.
I’m trusting Schiff to put out some sort of timeline that shows exactly what you’re noting here, Kay. The only reason they came out with anything is that they knew they were busted; the timelines they are putting forth don’t match up to reality. The timelines that DO match up are incredibly incriminating.
Then again, we’ve basically been watching this gang of inept crooks scramble for cover stories and obstruct justice for four years now. It’s like, “would anyone even REMOTELY innocent sound/act like this, America?”
Or perhaps, “Do y’all even remember what it was like to have eight – EIGHT! – scandal-free years in this country? Jesus, in the space between W and trumpov it’s like we had an almost decade-long respite from corruption, self-dealing, lies, and frankly insulting ‘spin’ thrown in our face daily and twice on Sundays”
S Herl
I think your math is bad on registered Democrats and CC permits. There’s about 5 million registered Dems in FL and 60% would be 3 million which exceeds the the total of all CC permits
jk
@debbie:
And Elizabeth Warren is making Biden look a like a clueless, uninspiring, tongue tied moron which he is.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: The last dregs of Reaganism is a hell of a hill to die on, but these folks’ approach to this stuff is we can have their legacy tax cuts when we take them from their cold dead hands.
Bill Arnold
@Adam L Silverman:
Pure wingnut at the end:
I’ve been hearing the Michelle Obama-as-nominee theory for at least a year, maybe 2. (Haven’t tracked it down in print though.)
jl
@Jeffro: Trumpsters are so desperate that apparently they are going to try to throw all of Trump’s principal flunkies under the bus at the same time. That should be interesting to watch.
No one considers the bus in that metaphor. I guess no reason to. A standard bus can run over a thousand people, one at a time, and it will be fine. But you try to run it over half a dozen Trumpster flunkies at once, might gum up the works. Then to bus that runs over people is busted. What do you do then? Maybe we’ll find out.
Jay
Adam L Silverman
@jl: I have far less preposterous facial hair than Weigel.
hilts
@jl:
Bloomberg is like Delaney minus his charisma.
Adam L Silverman
@Kay: @Jeffro: Here you go:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
I think the idea of The Fountainhead is basically that the MOTU types are the source of all bounty in the world? I’ve never read it and I’m not going to, but the way you phrased your question made me think of this quote from Dimon (which I remembered as worse than it is). Jamie Dimon in 2012:
Those attacks on work ethic were IIRC a return to the marginal tax rates of the 1990s, that great economic wasteland.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
That is funny. I don’t loathe Bloomberg as much as I do some of them because to me he seems more “cranky” than “evil”, but I suppose I’ll grow to loathe him when he begins the now-customary Billionaire Scolds the Masses campaign.
They complain about Lefties being sanctimonious and sometimes they are but no one has these people beat as far as delivering stern lectures. It’s all they fucking do. One of them shows up on my tv screen and I know I’m about to get a stern talking to. It’s patronizing as hell and I’m sick of it. I know they’re all used to people kissing their ass but I don’t want to and I won’t. If he wants to run in a Democratic primary tell him to go to Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina and campaign like everyone else.
Adam L Silverman
@S Herl: I think I typed that wrong and it should’ve been “I’ve seen estimates that 60% of Florida concealed weapons license holders are registered Democrats and Democratic leaning Independents”. Though I think that’s likely to be way high as well. I’ll go and make a correction.
jl
@Bill Arnold: ” Michelle Obama-as-nominee theory for at least a year, ”
Every time the subject came up , Michelle Obama very firmly asserted that she has less than zero interest in running for partisan political office. So, I don’t understand why we’ve heard this nonsense at all.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold: The author is a middle aged white guy from the Chicago suburbs and, based on me reading his posts and comments for several years, is, at least, casually bigoted towards people of color.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Someone’s going to have to point out to them that somehow the country functioned…nay, thrived…back when tax rates were higher. It’s almost like we need a…a professor…one well versed in American history, politics, and economics.
Ok, I kid, I kid! As if that would mean squat to the MOTUs or the American public. But still!! (sob)
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I read about three quarters of it in high school but I thought it was a bad book so didn’t finish it. At some point I realized you don’t have to finish bad books which was like a revelation to me. That was allowed. Now I’m ruthless.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill Arnold:
Wishful thinking on both the right and the left. On the left because Michelle Obama is considered to be intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, professional, honorable, honest, and competent. And for a yearning for things to go back to normal, despite that we now know that normal was a very thin, fragile veneer, when someone named Obama was president. On the right because she’s second only to Secretary Clinton as boogey-woman in their feverish, conspiracist dreams.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Makes about as much sense as my RWNJ dad’s constant fever dreams of Hillz jumping into the race any day now. Sorry! You trumpublicans don’t get the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have your candidate run against the person who’s been on the receiving end of 40+ years of GOP smears x national snooze media enabling.
Jay
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He only sees two categories of people- rich people, who are successful, and poor people, who are not and need his charity. There are, like, no successful nurses or truck drivers. That’s not a possible category of person. Are nurses rich? No, they are not. Therefore…they are not successful.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Kay, Kay…Mikey B can just roll in on Super Tuesday and KO all these other folks, just on the strength of his argument that trumpov sux but we must not go overboard with this taxing thing. Why slog through all 99 counties in Iowa for that when you’ve got ‘right’ on your side?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: speaking of bad books….
ETA: The RNC bought a bunch of copies to send to donors, once again, the rubes are putting money in the family’s pockets.
Jeffro
@Kay:
You know, I’m cautiously optimistic now. This is a good argument/upset reaction/rallying point for Dems. (REAL Dems, not Bloomberg!)
jl
@Jeffro: And the implication, in a billionaire’s mind, is that not successful people should show great deference to successful people. And show great gratitude for whatever charity they get from successful people.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: The kid, whose a RN, drives a Lexus. She went to Barcelona for the long weekend.
Redshift
I remember reading an op-ed by someone like the head of the National Association of Manufacturers, back in the 90s, perhaps. The thrust of his argument was that it’s okay that incomes aren’t going up, because most women are working now, so household incomes are doing fine.
Sooo… your family is collectively working twice as many hours, and you’re making *some* extra money. Why are you complaining that it isn’t twice as much, peon?
dww44
@Kay: Of the billionaires I’ve seen on my teevee, the most humble, non-arrogant, and nice one is Warren Buffett. Of course, he may not be a billionaire? Certainly he’s a one per center, no?
Jay
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@dww44: Wiki says he’s worth $82 billion. I think he’s usually called the second-richest person in the US, after Gates
Jay
Gender reveals have killed more people than antifa.
Adam L Silverman
@Jay: I’ve already advanced this with the leadership of two of the three US Army major commands that generate the Army. In the case of one of them, it is an ongoing discussion with senior leadership about what needs to be done.
Ohio Mom
@dww44: Buffet is an asshole, he’s good at playing a folksy oldster and has lots of people fooled.
Jay
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Buffett owns See’s Candies, I’m good with him.
Citizen Alan
@Kay:
I’ve never read The Fountainhead, though I gather the “hero” triumphs at the end by blowing up public housing because he disapproves of its aesthetics.
I fought and clawed my way through Atlas Shrugged until 5 pages into John Galt’s Speech. Then, I started flipping ahead, realized that the next FIFTY pages consisted of that fucker reciting nonsense into a microphone, and literally threw the book across the room.
Bill Arnold
@Citizen Alan:
Classic piece on McSweeney’s (some may have read it):
Our Daughter Isn’t a Selfish Brat; Your Son Just Hasn’t Read Atlas Shrugged (McSweeney’s, Eric Hague, August 12, 2010)
To be clear, I don’t particular object to selfishness that doesn’t do more than minor and consensual harm to others willingly playing the same games. I just believe that selfishness makes people weak. :-)
Kent
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: that was before Bezos. But yes, he is stinking rich. But probably the most palatable of all the billionaire class. He didn’t even have the ego to want to create a big foundation in his own name. He just gave billions to the Gates Foundation instead, which is actually doing good work.
Kent
@Bill Arnold:
Fair Economist
@Citizen Alan: Adam Lee at Patheos has a hilarious series dissecting the Fountainhead. He has another on Atlas Shrugged, with a few diversions on the unbelievably amateurish movie trilogy, where they didn’t even have the same actors in the three movies.
The Fountainhead is just unbelievably bad. Even when I liked Ayn Rand I hated The Fountainhead.
Ruckus
I’m not a paid advisor to either but I didn’t let lack of a paycheck stop me from advising Tom Steyer to get the fuck out of the running and use his money for something far more productive, like trying to elect people who aren’t rich fucks telling the rest of us how to live because they have some bullshit need to be even richer by not paying taxes.
I haven’t heard back if he needs any more advice.
Ken
@Ruckus: Remember that rich people think of everything in terms of money. You offered free advice, so of course Steyer thinks it’s worthless. Send him a bill for half a million and he’ll rush to take your advice.
Jay
Ruckus
@Ken:
I’m not sure but I might actually like the way you think…..
Josie
@Kay:
This is genius and so true. I can always spot your comments because they are so crisp and insightful. You should be writing ad copy for the Democrats.
Dennis Doubleday
You sound awfully sure he won’t run 3rd Party. I’m not…the billionaires are going to run SOMEBODY 3rd Party because they’ve made it clear that Trump is preferable to them vs. Sanders or Warren, and I consider one of them the likely Dem nominee.
They would accept Charles Manson as President before they will accept a wealth tax.