From The Post:
But her tarmac…
by Betty Cracker| 115 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics
by Betty Cracker| 115 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics
From The Post:
Comments are closed.
tam1MI
Bloomberg has a giant plus when it comes to a great deal of Dem voters.
He’s not Bernie Sanders.
Betty Cracker
@tam1MI: Those voters have lost the plot, IMO. YMMV.
NotMax
Barr spends so much of his time cherry picking, he qualifies as a farm worker.
//
Mandalay
What is the meaning of “random Karen”?
I googled, and it’s obviously a thing, but I’m none the wiser on what it actually means, or where it comes from.
Cermet
I tried a semi-blind taste test of the Impossible burger and Beyond Meat; for me, the Beyond tasted almost exactly like a burger my mother would make many decades ago; the Impossible tasted fairly good (just like McD or Burger King) so, for most people, that might be more to their liking. The Impossible feels just like a burger meat both before cooking and after. It also has ready accessible Heme (Fe) that is plant based via magic of genetic engineering – the later isn’t an issue for me but maybe some; still, for woman, this is a positive feature so they get iron without eating an animal..
NotMax
@Mandalay
No idea either. But it would be a great name for a race horse.
MobiusKlein
It’s worth noting that even if Biden drops out, dirt generated is meant to smear democrats at large. So no, nothing will change except the sharks will go into feeding frenzy after their first kill.
Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray
Yeah, cause the guys Rudes hangs out with in Kyiv are completely above board.
Al Z.
@Mandalay: Maybe a reference to this meme: https://www.vox.com/2020/2/5/21079162/karen-name-insult-meme-manager
Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray
Crashman06
@Mandalay: Vox just did an explainer about this today! Here! TLDR; Karen has become a pejorative meme to describe entitled, middle-class white women.
MattF
Graham’s submissiveness to Trump is crossing all sorts of lines. Maybe it’s a small matter in the universal scheme of things, but Graham’s chosen a very bad person to be his Master.
Chyron HR
@Betty Cracker:
If I have to choose between two evil old bastards who want to hijack the Democratic primary because running as a Republican is too hard, I’m going to go with the bastard who doesn’t openly hate Democrats.
Mandalay
@tam1MI:
Oh really? I see it differently: Sanders has a giant plus when it comes to a great deal of Dem voters. He’s not Michael Bloomberg.
Folks here continue to huff and puff and whine that Sanders isn’t really a Democrat, yet Bloomberg is obviously and blatantly a Republican with a big bank balance running as a Democrat, and nobody here says anything about it. From Betty’s link in the OP:
NotMax
@Crashman06
Then by rights it ought to be Karyn. Or Carynne. Or Karin, with a little heart above the i.
;)
pat
I just had a weird thought. What if Biden had never become a candidate?
Wasn’t the whole purpose of trump’s shenanigans with Ukraine to smear Biden? No Biden, no phone call, no impeachment?
Where am I going wrong here?
MattF
@Mandalay: Regardless of what happens between Sanders and Bloomberg, we’re going to have to deal rationally with ex-Republicans. Specifically, accusing an ex-Republican of having been a Republican isn’t going to be an effective tactic.
Baud
@Mandalay:
It’s bad either way. No getting around it.
rp
@Betty Cracker: Usually I agree with you 100%, but not here. I would take Bloomberg over Sanders 99 times out of 100. I think Sanders would get absolutely smoked in the election, and if by some miracle he did win he’d be a horrible president. He could set the left back generations.
It hit me over the weekend that we need someone to beat Sanders badly in the primaries. If he wins he could lose 40-45 states against Trump, and if he loses a close primary or, god forbid, a brokered convention, his supporters go bananas and he potentially runs third party
It’s almost like someone is using him to tear apart the Democratic party.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Fuck me, at this point I’ll vote for sentient yogurt (h/t John Scalzi).
Bloomberg is running an ad in the Denver market every second or third ad spot (or it seems like it).
germy
@pat: I’m guessing drumpf would have tried something improper “investigating” whatever other candidate frightened him.
sdhays
@Baud: Yep. Ironically, Bloomberg may end up helping Sanders by taking votes that would otherwise go to Biden.
NotMax
@hedgehog the occasional commenter
Williamson dropped out.
:)
Baud
As much as I would have loved to see Hillary get her revenge, after the 2016 election, I agreed with her decision to retire. Now I’m not so sure. The current state of play is depressing (and not because I think we’ll lose).
Betty Cracker
@MattF: I agree that being an ex-Republican isn’t disqualifying, and I don’t agree with every insinuation made in the linked article. But it seems to be a pretty well-sourced compendium of shit Bloomberg has said or done that would sink anyone else seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@NotMax: (bows)
chris
@NotMax:
Mai naem mobile
@Betty Cracker: I think a lot of Dems think Bernie will be destroyed in the general by all the 70s commie stuff/Jane college scandal and health stuff – forget the explanations on how he’s going to pay for stuff and soshulism. I am willing to take Bloomberg as Veep because he will spend whatever it takes. My preferences are Warren/Klobuchar/Biden/Buttigieg and then in no particular order Bloomberg/Steyer/Bernie.
Betty Cracker
@rp: I think Sanders could beat Trump — any Democratic Party nominee could, IMO. But I share your fear that Sanders would be a crappy president who might set back the left for a generation. He hired toxic cultists who urged people to vote for Stein in 2016 to run his 2020 campaign, and I can’t get past that. One thing that could get me past it is if the only other option was Bloomberg. I hope like hell it doesn’t come down to those two. We have MUCH better choices all around.
Miss Bianca
@MattF: I dunno, seems to have been effective as an attempted smear in some circles. Against *women* candidates, tho’, so Bloomie’s probably just fine.
rp
@Betty Cracker: To be clear, I don’t particularly like Bloomberg (I’m still hoping for Warren (…or Harris)), but I think he (a) is likely to win, and (b) would be a competent President who wouldn’t do anything incredibly stupid.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Bloomberg is the one candidate that would make me stop and consider Bernie. But the big practical problem with Bernie as the nominee is that it would immediately put to every Dem Senate and House candidate the question whether they support or oppose Bernie’s agenda, and there would be no room for nuance. Bloomberg wouldn’t create that problem (nor would any moderate candidate; Warren might, but I think she is smart enough to handle it).
Brachiator
What’s next, Fox News getting an official office in the Department of Justice?
This obvious, blatant, public in-your-face shameless partisan witch hunting is a bad dream.
Another Scott
ICYMI, Nancy LeTourneau at WaMo:
Preach!!
I assume there’s going to be a really, really rapid pivot from this Heartland™ crap as soon as the polls close on Tuesday. We’re a big, diverse country; most people live in or near cities; and this corn-pone Rugged Individuals Who Are Masters Of All They Survey™ nonsense doesn’t play in cities and suburbs…
Cheers,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@rp: Bloomberg would be better than Trump, for sure, and if he’s the party’s nominee, I’ll vote for him. But I think a Bloomberg nomination would be as dangerous for the party’s long-term health as a Sanders nomination. We’d be saying our nomination is for sale, and maybe it is. I’d like to believe it’s not.
Mandalay
Really? He didn’t do that in 2016, so why would he do that now? And at least Sanders signed a loyalty pledge to the Democratic Party. Has Mike “Republican” Bloomberg?
It seems far more likely that the amoral Bloomberg would ditch the Democratic Party in a heartbeat, and run as independent candidate later this year, if he thought that was a pathway to becoming president.
Brachiator
@rp:
Bloomberg would be, what? a kinder, gentler Trump?
I’ve heard his radio ads out here in Southern California. He is a rich guy with no political experience. I don’t understand why he is attracting any attention.
Mnemosyne
The most frustrating thing about the next several months is that the MSM is going to treat any and all “reports” out of Ukraine as legitimate news even though we just went through AN ENTIRE FUCKING IMPEACHMENT that showed in detail that anything that comes out of Ukraine about Biden is going to be 100 percent fake.
Fuck these assholes.
Mandalay
@Crashman06: Thanks. Now I know.
Reddit has a interesting thread that’s all about Karen: https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckYouKaren/
WaterGirl
@Chyron HR: No, he just gets Republicans elected to office.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
History would treat it as a one-off to deal with the existential crisis that is Trump, assuming that it didn’t keep happening.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: People like pretty pictures, nice ads and hate Trump?
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Sanders said this? Was he on drugs at the time?
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: Er…whatever you may think of his tenure, you can’t exactly accuse a three-term mayor of NYC as having “no political experience”. Sorry, but you just can’t. Perhaps you’re confusing Bloomberg with Steyer? One billionaire does look an awful lot like another…
Baud
@WaterGirl:
In fairness, I think well done ads can leave the impression that the candidate is willing and able to fight well and fight hard in the general election, much like a stellar debate performance can.
Jamie
@Brachiator: I’m not carrying water for Bloomberg, but mayor of New York City for over a decade doesn’t really scream “no political experience” to me.
Jamie
@Miss Bianca: Beat me to it.
chris
@Mandalay: knowyourmeme is another site useful for keeping up with the crazy kids like Betty Cracker. Here’s their Karen entry.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
You’re mixing up Bloomberg and Steyer. Bloomberg was elected mayor of NYC three times (the third time thanks to some term limits shenanigans), so he does at least have some political experience. NYC has a population of over 9 million, which makes the NYC mayor a little more akin to a governor than a small-city mayor.
Bloomberg is not my first, second, or third choice of the remaining candidates, but I’ll take him over Sanders or Gabbard because he does have at least some experience as an elected executive.
Chyron HR
@Brachiator:
Bernie is high on LIFE – “Lord, I’m a Fucking Egomaniac”
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
I should have said that Bloomberg has no significant national level political experience.
And in the history of the universe, no New York mayor has ever been successful at running for president. If I recall correctly, the only former mayor of any city to become president was Grover Cleveland, and he also had been a governor.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I sure hope so, but it doesn’t seem to work that way, if not in history, at least with the electorate. Trump’s EC win resulted from an extremely unfortunate influx of black swans, but the chief takeaway seems to be “only white men can win.”
I’m old enough to remember 1990s politics and understand why Democrats thought they had to co-opt some Republican framing to win, but I think we’re still suffering the hit to our “brand” as a party. Bloomberg might finish the job.
Chyron HR
@WaterGirl:
In case you forgot, it is the explicit position of Bernie’s shitty deranged revolution that they would prefer Republicans in congress to non-DSA Democrats.
“We don’t want blue unless it’s Bernie blue.” – Nina Turner
Felanius Kootea
@Mnemosyne: It’ll be pretty much a waste of their time if Biden implodes like he has every other time he’s run for president. The time the news media waste on that is time not spent shitting on a more viable Dem candidate. I mean none of them seem bothered at all by the fact that the Republicans have cancelled most of their primaries and don’t have a back up plan for if Trump (1) resigns, (2) has his neurological issues progress to the point where he can no longer run because he’s babbling like an idiot 24/7, (3) gets sabotaged by Vlad because he fails Russia in some way, (4) develops an aggressive tanning-related melanoma, or (5) spontaneously combusts (any of which could credibly happen with this mess of a president).
Mandalay
@Brachiator:
Well technically yes, but not really. What he actually said was
“…many urban communities are doing just fine”, in contrast to rural communities.
So the quote was blatantly dishonest and contrived. You can make people say anything you want if you deliberately and dishonestly omit very relevant parts of what they said.
Sanders surely says enough stuff that you can genuinely disagree with that going down this slimy path says far more about the character of the poster than Sanders.
And the twitter poster who made that malicious tweet had “Hillarybot” as part of their bio.
Miss Bianca
@Felanius Kootea: How far the GOP has fallen from the scrappy days of 1976, when Ronald Reagan challenged Gerald Ford!
Mandalay
@Chyron HR:
You’re nuttier than a fruit cake. Nobody “explicitly” said that at all, and the quote you cited doesn’t remotely support your stupid claim.
WaterGirl
@Chyron HR: I had not seen that. Even without seeing it, Bernie is the bottom of the barrel for me. Bernie over Trump, that’s it.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Being mayor, even mayor of New York City is significant, but is still not much in the way of political experience compared to a governor or senator.
New York mayors don’t pick state Supreme Court judges. What does Bloomberg know or understand about the Constitution?
And I think we may have been here before, and I noted that New York mayors have never realized their presidential ambitions.
Sanders and Gabbard are definitely bottom of the barrel. But so far, as far as I can see, Bloomberg can join them. He has not made a case for me that his business success can translate to what is needed to be president.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
As you often say, the notion of the Dem brand is out the window if the party has to accommodate all rational, fact-base, nom-treasonous points of view.
Baud
@Mandalay: That’s really not much better. It would be great if someone could find the full quote, instead of paraphrasing.
Baud
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
RE: Sanders said this?
Still stupid. Many vs what? some? all rural communities?
But you are right that it is a slimy distortion of what he said. Thanks for the larger context.
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator: Wilmer’s trying real hard for the city folks’ votes, I see.
Brachiator
@Felanius Kootea:
Wouldn’t they have Pence as their fall-back?
But it would be wild to see the GOP be forced to select a replacement candidate at the GOP convention, having had no primaries.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
If it’s a choice between Bloomberg and Trump, I’ll take Bloomberg rather than another 4 years of Trump. I won’t be thrilled about it, but I can deal.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Today, on The Price Is Far Right….
;)
Kent
He was 3-term mayor of a city that is larger and with a more complex bureaucracy (from police to public education to public health) than 37 or 38 states
He’s not my first choice either. But mainly because I question his Democratic bonafides, not because I think he lacks governing experience.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: True! Ideally, we’d be running against Bloombergs, not running them! :)
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne:
That’s an understatement. If NYC were its own state, it would be rank eleventh in population. I’m not on the Bloomberg train either, but arguably, he has more executive experience than anyone else in the race.
Mnemosyne
@Felanius Kootea:
I sort of want the dude to drop dead of natural causes sometime after the RNC just to see what happens, but I would much rather beat him at the ballot box and make him slink home in shame.
Mo MacArbie
I think I do prefer Bernie to Bloomberg. Faint praise, to be sure, but there it is. He’s actually helping to clarify Bernie’s basement for me. Thanks, Mike.
And, thankfully, I will have more choices than that, unless Biden sounds like a harpooned whale, Buttigieg stalls, Warren falls further, and Bloomberg becomes the only viable not-Bernie, all in the next three weeks. Then I might just write in Harris, purity intact.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
If it’s a choice between Bloomberg and Trump, I’ll take Bloomberg rather than another 4 years of Trump. I won’t be thrilled about it, but I can deal.
Bloomberg may be a nice guy, but ultimately another plutocrat amateur who promises to run the country like a business. This shit just debases democracy.
A bit from one of his radio ads stands out. It talks about how he holds himself responsible for his decisions. This is admirable, but very different from putting yourself in a position where you are accountable to other citizens.
I would like to say that I don’t think that Bloomberg has a serious chance at the nomination. But who knows, a chunk of the electorate seems to have given up on the idea of a working democracy.
I see Bloomberg as just as bad as Sanders and acceptable only because he is not Trump.
Felanius Kootea
@Brachiator: I don’t think they want Pence as their fall back. He’s a guaranteed loser.
Another Scott
@Mandalay: For completeness, VPR:
(Emphasis added.)
CDC:
Yes, suicide is generally worse in rural areas. But saying “many urban communities are doing just fine” is not a way to address the issue. “Many” doesn’t make it better. (“Many” rural areas are “doing just fine” too.)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I think people are still understandably freaked out by 2016 and don’t want to take the slightest chance of losing to Trump a second time. Bloomberg looks good right now because he’s an old white billionaire, and maybe he would be appealing to independents.
I don’t think his surge is going to last past the one debate he’s scheduled to be in, which is why Warren’s campaign pushed for him to be included. He looks great in carefully-crafted TV commercials, but I don’t think he’s going to do nearly as well in an actual debate.
rp
@Brachiator: “another plutocrat amateur”
Come on. This is an absurd reading of Bloomberg. And the general view that he’s a slightly better version of Trump is equally absurd. To believe that, you have to buy into the media’s view that there’s nothing particularly aberrant about Trump.
Brachiator
@Kent:
@Citizen Alan:
Again, New York mayors have never been successful at presidential runs. Nor has any former mayor of any city, except for Grover Cleveland, who was also a state governor. But this is just trivial political history.
Does Bloomberg plan to appear in any debates? I would like to know how he rates as a Constitutional scholar. It’s about more than promising to appoint liberal judges.
I’d like to know his foreign policy positions.
Bloomberg is not quite a blank slate, but being a mayor of a city, even a big city like New York, still only amounts to a fairly shallow level of political experience. Bloomberg is just a Mayor Pete with a bigger bank balance.
Betty Cracker
Anecdata: one of my Trump-voting uncles told me this weekend he’d vote for Sanders over Trump but assured me the Dems would “screw Bernie again.” He believes nutty conspiracy bullshit all around and always fall for some candidate who he thinks will “shake things up.” Until Trump came along, he mostly voted for third-party douchebags. Make of that what you will.
Mnemosyne
@Another Scott:
“Rural” and “urban” are dogwhistles. That doesn’t mean that rural communities don’t have problems, but it’s funny that the solution for rampant drug problems in cities was to lock everyone up and the solution for rampant drug problems in rural areas is compassion and healthcare. ?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Cermet:
For those of us who didn’t grow up knowing your mom’s cooking, does that mean the Beyond is bad? You seem to be putting it in contrast to the Impossible, but it’s not clear.
Baud
@Another Scott: Yeah. He didn’t need to bring urban areas into it at all. Thanks for finding the transcript.
Baud
@Brachiator:
What about Bloomberg, who is also kind of independent-y.
Mai naem mobile
This sounds desperate but how exactly does Harris’ suspended campaign work? Is she still on ballots? Can she come back in? Even if she can come back does she just hurt Warren and Klobuchar and strengthen Bernie? Ugh, I feel like somebody evil has set us up with this choice. Somebody evil like from another country that rhymes with Gushaa.
Kent
@Brachiator:
Again, New York mayors have never been successful at presidential runs. Nor has any former mayor of any city, except for Grover Cleveland, who was also a state governor. But this is just trivial political history.
Does Bloomberg plan to appear in any debates? I would like to know how he rates as a Constitutional scholar. It’s about more than promising to appoint liberal judges.
I’d like to know his foreign policy positions.
Bloomberg is not quite a blank slate, but being a mayor of a city, even a big city like New York, still only amounts to a fairly shallow level of political experience. Bloomberg is just a Mayor Pete with a bigger bank balance.
First term Senators from IL never successfully won the presidency until Obama. Governor’s of Texas never successfully won the presidency until Bush. And shady NYC real estate developers never successfully won the presidency before Trump. I don’t think any of that means anything.
I’m not sold on Bloomberg. I figure worst case scenario we wind up with some sort of Eisenhower Republican type who likes to cross the aisle. Which is still 100x better than Trump second term.
Brachiator
@rp:
Again, as a potential national political figure, Bloomberg is a plutocrat amateur.
I despise Trump and don’t give a rat’s ass about the media’s view of anything.
Bloomberg may be a nice guy. And he appears to have actually earned his billions, unlike Trump.
However, Bloomberg has no business running for president. He ain’t got the chops for the job. I am somewhat suspicious of his motives in trying to interject himself into the political campaign.
Why does Bloomberg want to become the president, the head cheese, without ever having run for any other political office?
Another Scott
@Brachiator:
You’re underestimating him if you believe that.
Repost – Detroit News (from 2014):
Unions would be decimated if Bloomberg got his way. He’s not our friend.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mo MacArbie
I don’t see what the Presidential record of NYC mayors has to do with anything. How many Vermont senators have ever been elected to the White House?
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: Oh, cut it out. Bloomberg certainly does have “the chops for the job” – unlike, say, a certain mayor of South Bend. Who *doesn’t* have the chops for the job, certainly not when it comes to administrative experience, but that doesn’t keep him from trying, because hell, why not? says every white guy in America, looking at Trump.
I don’t like the way he’s buying himself a seat at the Democratic table, any more than I like a Leap Year Democrat at the top of the primary polls. But maybe this is just the new normal, for a while, in the Trump and immediately Post-Trump Eras.
Hoodie
Part of the problem is that Trump needs to be humiliated in the next election, taking down a shitload of GOP senators and congressmen with him. I can see that happening if a candidate other than Bernie (including Bloomberg) is nominated, but the alternatives are eating into each others’ support. If I were to choose today, I’d take Klobuchar, because I think she’d do better than Warren in the general election, in part because she’s a bit of a blank slate. It’s certainly true that Bloomberg fits the traditional Republican mold, but he’s not really a Republican the way they define themselves these days. As a candidate, Bloomberg’s republican tendencies may not be as dangerous, as he will not have much of a power base within the Democratic Party to enact a legislative agenda that is contrary to Party interests. If he were able to build an agenda, it would take pretty widespread defections from the GOP, further fracturing that party.
Brachiator
This bit of international political news might have some interesting political implications for the Western democracies.
I suspect that both Trump and Boris Johnson are happy at this turn of events.
Mai naem mobile
@Kent: Bloomberg is supposed to be at the next debate. Its either end of this week or next week. I am turned off Bloomberg on the Union thing in Michigan and the Penn Senate race. Unions are one of the very few things that keeps Dems competitive. At the same time I think Bloomberg would be better down ballot than Bernie. I am not hoping for a disaster on any one particular candidate that would benefit Warren but,jeezus, I wish Warren would have some viral event that would boost her.
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
That’s just it. Trump is vile, evil, the absolute lowest of the low. But much like ancient Greece, we have tyrants, wealthy citizens attempting to woo citizens, in effect asking us to suspend democratic principles and instead turn to them.
I didn’t know much about Sanders in 2016, but eliminated him based on his abyssal interview with big city newspaper editorial boards.
I was going to ask if Bloomberg had been interviewed by any newspaper editors when I ran across this tidbit.
Now, Bloomberg doesn’t have to suck up to the Times in order to seek their endorsement. But as an political outsider with no national level experience, he should be thoroughly vetted. There is no excuse for him not submitting to an interview, and only running self-serving political ads.
Kay
@Another Scott:
I don’t know how “competent” he was. The person who was elected after him ran on “fix the damn roads” and she won.
He also poisoned a water system.
Doesn’t get much more basic than roads and water. Snyder failed at both.
Kay
I got a mass mailing letter from Bloomberg today. I showed my teenage son and he said “oh. that’s scary”
It is weird. Like he’s not just purchasing the Democratic primary but also all registered Democrats.
sdhays
I hope you’re right. His strategy of swooping in at the last minute and carpet bombing the nation with advertising is designed to avoid any actual scrutiny before voting has taken place. It’s what Dump would have done if he were an actual billionaire and actually intended to win at the beginning.
Kay
Sanders is up to 19 in that poll w/AA voters. He’s catching Biden.
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: Maybe he feels about the FTFNYT’s political reporting the way a lot of the commenters here do.//
Personally, I wish all the Democratic candidates would take a page from his book and give the FTFNYT the finger and explicitly reference its Comey-fluffing “but her emails” coverage as the reason why.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I’m with Mnem. Rural = white and urban = black/non-white. I’m not sure I’d call that a dog whistle as much as a blaring siren.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: As you said this weekend:
zhena gogolia
Bloomberg is an autocratic, arrogant asshole. But he’s lightyears better than Drumpf, and if he can beat him, I’m all for it.
Kay
It will just be such a shame if the reward the Republican Party gets for embracing Trump is Democrats electing a moderate Republican.
Jesus Christ. Even when they lose they win. The realm of the possible shoots right back to “everything between Donald Trump and Mitt Romney” and no further Left.
I don’t even trust him on judges. I think he’d pick some corporate tool like John Roberts and all of media would coo and gush over the “bipartisanship”. I won’t even get judges out of this deal.
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
It’s not about the New York Times. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 interview was with the editorial board of the Daily News.
As far as I am concerned, political outsiders without a track record have a special duty to make themselves known to voters. I want interviews, I don’t care which editorial board. I want to see tax returns.
I am not interested in some outsider claiming to be a white knight who will magically save us from “regular” politicians.
Another Scott
@Kay: +1
We’ve had one voting contest thus far, and too many people are in such a rush to pick a “safe” winner that they’re painting all of their hopes on someone who isn’t even competing yet. Someone who hasn’t been in any debates. Someone who hasn’t sat for extended interviews.
It’s madness.
I fearlessly predict that we’ll pick an actual Democrat to be the nominee and that that person will defeat President Crimey in the fall, will lead a team to victory to keep the House, and also take the Senate.
Who’s with me?
Cheers,
Scott.
Mo MacArbie
On second thought, maybe Bloomberg is just the kind of prick we need to get congress to cut the executive branch down to size. It’ll have to be a Dem president getting reined in, for obvious reasons. Sigh.
Gin & Tonic
Canada has the right idea with some of the coastal Newfoundland towns. They are dying because the cod fishery is gone, and it ain’t ever coming back. They are too expensive to maintain services to, so the government is buying people out and shutting them down. A lot of rural America is like that – there’s no economic foundation, and there won’t be. Farming is mechanized and computerized to an astonishing point, and there’s no other reason for those towns to exist. Let them die.
Mai naem mobile
@Mnemosyne: this does not really apply to BS comment but I do believe there’s a non race based rural vs.urban divide. I know urban and rural are usually seen as dog whistles but in the past few years(with gentrification of cities with white folks) I believe urban is becoming the formal definition i.e city not ethnicity. I would love to see actual voting stats from a large city from the past few years. Do whites vote in the same numbers for GOPrs and are balanced out by a greater number of non whites? I believe a city’s needs are different and people vote accordingly for Dems.
Mai naem mobile
@Kay: I actually trust him on judges because he actually believes in global warming. I don’t think he can nominate an environmental judge without the judge being liberal. Also the Senate is heavily involved in judges. I don’t see a Democratic Senate Judicial Committee going along with a moderate after the nutjobs Trumpov has appointed. I think this is all moot because I don’t think he will do that well in the debates. Its just his honeymoon period.
Brachiator
@Mo MacArbie:
The executive branch is currently Trump, Ivanka, Jared and sundry bag men.
Mo MacArbie
@Brachiator: Perhaps I should clarify that I mean powers, not personnel. Reassert the power of the purse, curb warmaking abilities, restore meaningful oversight, etc.
WaterGirl
How about if we don’t roll over and compromise on someone who is more Republican than democrat before anybody but Iowa has even voted?
The sure way to defeat is to settle before we’ve barely gotten started.
PJ
@Kay: Bloomberg is a very wealthy man with a massive ego who thinks organizing a city (or country) for the convenience and taste of rich people is the best way to go about things. He sure as shit is not going to do anything about income inequality on his own. But he is not an idiot. He hired excellent ad and communications people for his campaign and it is paying off. He would never hire people like Nina Turner and David Sirota to work for him. Despite his ego, he would be concerned, if not disturbed, if his campaign staff led a chant of “the One! the One!” at his rally. I’m against Bloomberg, but his judgment is way better than Bernie’s.
Bill Arnold
Nathan J. Robinson spends too much of his writing attacking Democrats other than Bernie Sanders, IMO. And perhaps not enough attacking D.J. Trump. In his own words,
I personally think this is Utopian Underpants Gnomes[1] politics in the US context, though it’s nice to see proper left writing.
[1] A Gnome faction that did not (AFAIK) appear on South Park.
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold:
Yep. Over the weekend someone was explaining to me that if Bernie is president and Congress does not give him what he wants, all Bernie has to do is call out the grass roots.
Someone in a debate should just straight out ask Bernie if he believes in representative government.
tam1MI
According to Nate Silver, our votes are meaningless, Bernie’s already got it in the bag.
I hear shit like that and Bloomberg looks better and better to me every day.