The end of Michael Bloomberg in 2:19.pic.twitter.com/nN0pGwhkBu
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) February 20, 2020
The Guardian‘s liveblog summary, which pretty well encapsulated what I’m seeing elsewhere:
Elizabeth Warren made a strong showing, criticizing rivals with well-prepared remarks. Her campaign reported record fundraising during the debate. Facing his opponents for the first time on the debate stage, Mike Bloomberg found himself fending off attacks from every angle. The candidates questioned his record on race and policing, as well allegations that he encouraged a hostile work environment for women. Bernie Sanders, who is leading in polls, cruised through. He briefly faced criticism over his supporters’ online attacks and said he disapproved of such behavior and disowned those who acted inappropriately. Moderates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar were at each other’s throats vyying to lead the middle lane. Joe Biden generally failed to breakthrough.
Warren & Biden were fighting for their political lives & showed it. Strong performances. Bloomberg will have to up his spending to make up for a v-bad night. Reversal on Klobuchar/Buttigieg: She beat him in NH; he beat her tonight. Bernie took some blows but rolled on.#DemDebate
— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) February 20, 2020
It has to be a first that women finished 1-2 in speaking time for a debate. pic.twitter.com/jlG3oHOj0Y
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) February 20, 2020
This is good advice and the media shouldn't proclaim Bloomberg's campaign dead (or anything close) without seeing the evidence.
But also it wasn't clear how alive Bloomberg's campaign was in the first place and the media may have jumped the gun in proclaiming him a frontrunner. https://t.co/I7QL7rBCDG
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) February 20, 2020
the DNC rigged the primary against Bloomberg by changing the rules to get him in the debate, where they knew he’d get the shit beat out of him. and honestly, I’m thankful
— The Online-Normie Complex (@canderaid) February 20, 2020
Hadn't occurred to me Bloomberg would serve as a good billionaire Trump proxy in a way Steyer (a nice-seeming super-progressive guy) isn't at all, offering the others a perfect chance to show how hard they can throw down against Trump in the general. He's been a gift to Warren.
— Will Wilkinson ? (@willwilkinson) February 20, 2020
Knees weak arms are heavy #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/rk8pyZDEfl
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 20, 2020
Bloomberg’s media people are really good at their jobs and the dem nominee should probably hire them.
— Adam Serwer? (@AdamSerwer) February 20, 2020
Re: zesty debates. 2016 GOP debates were insane and GOP nominee won. 2008 Obama and Clinton debates were pretty spicy and the Democrat won. Bush and McCain almost came to blows in 2000 & W won. In ‘92 Bill Clinton & Jerry Brown did not speak in gentle tones of mutual admiration
— John Dickerson (@jdickerson) February 20, 2020
Main page of https://t.co/qadp7q2Kae tonight: pic.twitter.com/EEWdQ21yew
— Joshua Green (@JoshuaGreen) February 20, 2020
Another person who told me just yesterday about the excitement for Bloomberg among longtime Democratic donors and supporters looking for an alternative to Biden just texted me:
"Cannot read texts as I am packing to move to Canada"
— Michelle Ye Hee Lee (@myhlee) February 20, 2020
Still pretty wild she came right out and admitted they harass people as a matter of campaign strategy.
— DSA Pinkerton Caucus (@agraybee) February 20, 2020
Press analysis: Bernie was on the defensive, but also nobody attacked him. pic.twitter.com/IgYhilu6t7
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) February 20, 2020
Counter-arguments:
Sanders fanboi –
They might want to play nice the rest of the debate, this is so bad Bloomberg might just go third party
— David Dayen (@ddayen) February 20, 2020
NYTimes reporter –
yall there's a debate next week a vote on Saturday and then like a bunch of votes after that. Narratives from early 2019 debates lasted a month. These wont last a Scaramucci
— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) February 20, 2020
Chyron HR
500 asshole “political commentators” just perked up their ears.
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Double blech
JPL
trump must be quite happy that he came out unscathed. Dems the party that eat their own.
Baud
It’s the Guardian, so I’d like to see what polling says. He had a fairly string night, and with Bloomberg getting hit, he may have a second chance.
debbie
Whoever said The Guardian is in the tank for BS is right! I just listened to a clip of someone criticizing him about his dispute with the culinary unions over M4A, and he did not come out looking good.
John S.
Pundits really are a$$holes. The only thing that comes out of them is crap.
It must be nice to get paid for making things up and being wrong all the time. In my line of work, I actually have to know WTF I’m talking about.
Anya
It’s@JPL: Calm down. It’s a primary, candidates are supposed to challenge each other.
Morzer
I have to say that the Guardian strikes me as not having much idea about the Democratic primary overall. Then again, they were pretty clueless about the utter disaster that was Corbyn, so…
John S.
@Baud: I generally like The Guardian for news, but boy are they in the tank for BS. They seem to have a weak spot for politicians who bloviate, accomplish nothing and are doomed to lose elections (e.g. Corbyn).
Anya
@debbie: I subscribe to the Guardian and it’s fully and completely in the tank for Bernie. I consider it part of the campaign.
Sab
@JPL: It’s a primary, dude. That’s when we sort out who our candidate will be. The general election is when we go after their guy.
Baud
@debbie: That would be anyone who has read the Guardian.
Anya
@Morzer: To be fair, they were never clueless about Corbyn. Maybe they supported him in the beginning but they kinda knew his weakness. It’s just that the alternative was beyond the pale
(((CassandraLeo)))
I believe that Bloomberg has been, as the kids say, rekt. I feel like I need a cigarette after watching that exchange – and to be clear, I’ve never smoked tobacco in my life. If anyone is capable of utterly humiliating Donald Trump, it’s gotta be SPW. That was a brutal, surgical evisceration by a complete professional. I don’t want him just defeated. I want him humiliated, sputtering, stammering, grovelling. I want him begging on the street.
Psalm 109. That’s what I constantly find myself thinking of now. Here’s a sample:
I don’t think any of the candidates running will quite get us there, but SPW will undoubtedly get us the closest. If our billionaires had to work for a living, they’d starve.
(Obligatory caveat that I don’t include Barron in this as he’s still a kid, and Tiffany seems to have had as little involvement as it is humanly possible to have without outright saying “my father is a psychopath and I hate him”, and maybe she should do that too, but I think I’ll still give her a pass. But as for DJTJ, Eric, Ivanka, and Melania? Fuckem. I want them begging on street corners too. They’re all on my metaphorical Arya Stark list. I’m increasingly vindictive as a result of this administration* and hold more grudges than I knew I was capable of holding. I’m not about to go start committing acts of violence, but the whole family – aside from the exceptions I mentioned – needs to be humiliated.)
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: It has been obvious to even one as oblivious as I for quite some time. shrug I generally skip those articles.
Baud
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Warren showed she would beat up on Trump and enjoy doing it.
debbie
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Let him also keep his word on his promise to fund whoever the nominee turns out to be.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, I’ve basically stuck to just their live blog, so I would not have known that.
Morzer
@Baud: She would try – but Bloomberg constrained by being onstage in a Democratic primary is a very different beast to a shameless, vicious thug like Trump playing to his vile base.
Jeffro
Kind of glad I skipped the debate – the DBTs were awesome, as was opener Buffalo Nichols.
Sure wish Bloomberg had run in the GOP primaries (if there are any still being held). People keep talking about his crossover appeal, but you have to win the party base first…right?
We’ll see how it goes post- Super Tuesday.
Cacti
@Morzer: Also assumes that Trump would debate the Dem candidate. I’ve had my doubts about that for a long time.
JMG
The political press has already made up its mind, from the bloviators to the numbers crunchers. Sanders is a lock for the nomination and a lock to lose to Trump. The most helpless Fox News addict shut-in doesn’t live in the bubble the national political press and cable news talking heads do. They only know what they tell each other.
Morzer
@Cacti: I think Trump would very much want to debate the Democratic nominee. Running away from the fight amid Democratic laughter isn’t something that his desperately frail ego could handle. Trump would want to debate Warren just so he could throw the Pocahontas taunt in – and his base would lap it up.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I read them every day. Some days it’s like a 2×4 across the bridge of the nose.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Morzer: He wouldn’t just be in front of the vile base, though. He needs more than that to “win” (obligatory note that he lost 2016 by three million votes and probably stole the states that swung the Electoral College). He needs swing voters, too.
Warren showed how to humiliate a billionaire on national television. And if she also humiliates Donald Trump… she’ll have humiliated one billionaire in the course of this campaign!
(Ok, actually at least two. There was that dude she literally made cry a few months ago – already forgot his name. But just let me have my joke, please!)
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
Sab
@debbie: He lied in his ads, so why should we believe him now.
But if he gets clobbered in debate, that ought to rule out a third party run.
Baud
@JMG:
That’s a fear, but I haven’t see the media make that case (except for pundits perhaps).
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
dnfree
Agreed. There will be no debates. No tax returns, no actual medical reports, no debates. Terms will never be acceptable to Trump. Lots of rallies, no debates.
Morzer
@(((CassandraLeo))): What worries me about Warren is that e.g. the Pocahontas thing began with Scott Brown – and Warren never really found a way to shut it down. Trump picked up on it – and she still hasn’t really found a way to handle the taunt. I am sure she’d try and go after Trump, but I am far from convinced it would go well. Trump’s strategy isn’t just to turn out his base – it’s also to push down his opponent’s vote. I think it’s possible that a debate where Trump lies, mocks and taunts without an effective response by the Democratic candidate might have that effect.
rikyrah
rikyrah
Steeplejack (phone)
You guys are being too hard on Bloomberg! Many’s the time I have forced a big corporation to enter a nondisclosure agreement with me to protect some little bit of mis- or malfeasance I committed. Not to mention the hurtful jokes about their fat bottom lines.
rikyrah
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Morzer: Bullshit. It’s completely disappeared as a talking point over the last year, because Warren already addressed it at the start of the campaign and it’s old news now. That was how she addressed it – by making it last year’s news. Apart from Trump, you’re literally the only person I’ve heard even mention it in months.
But yes, Trump would try to get under her skin with that racist claptrap, no doubt… and she’d slap it down like the elementary-school insult it is. No one has more experience shutting down juvenile taunts than a teacher.
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
rikyrah
satby
Didn’t watch, don’t like “debates” that arent, and I hate Chuck Todd’s guts. But the reviews all mention Bernie being a bit thrown by Bloomberg, which should have been a predictable attack. Bernie doesn’t want to release his medical records, is cruising for another heart attack, and I think he’s already showing signs of vascular dementia:
Morzer
@(((CassandraLeo))): The reason it hasn’t come up is because any Democrat who tried to use it would be committing suicide in public. Trump is not going to be constrained – and he’s used that slur on Twitter in recent months. I am absolutely certain that if Warren is the nominee, it’s going to be thrown at her until she finds an adequate response.
rikyrah
Steeplejack (phone)
@rikyrah:
Good morning. ?
debbie
@rikyrah:
You know what, it would be nice to hear the answer, but it will only help Trump formulate his attack on the nominee and probably define the entire campaign, so I’m fine with waiting until January 2021 for the answer.
rikyrah
rikyrah
satby
@satby: and I’m betting that the reason he’s refusing to release them is because they’re bad and reduced cognitive function as well as cardiac function is noted in them, however slight.
rikyrah
zhena gogolia
I wish they had focused on the horrible front-runner.
germy
chopper
@(((CassandraLeo))):
right. if warren can eviscerate a billionaire like bloomberg she can definitely humiliate a millionaire like trump. or so’s the reasoning. it’s why she came out so hard against bloomberg in the first place.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Morzer: And if he did that Warren would just laugh as he blew up his campaign and the entire Republican Party’s chances in many of the most important Senate races. I don’t think you’re considering how awfully such a repeated display of naked racism would play with swing voters. He might as well just start doing the tomahawk chop or even start screaming the N-word. Neither of those would be much less overtly racist.
Warren doesn’t need to worry about Trump being a dick. In fact, I’m sure she’s counting on that. You might even say, to coin a phrase, that she has a plan for it. She’ll swat him away like a fly.
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
Cacti
That was probably Bloomie’s one effective moment of the debate.
That Bernie seemed genuinely taken aback by it was somewhat surprising.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
TS (the original)
Nate Silver has turned into the front runner in each way betting analysis. Probably will be the biggest “both sides” in the campaign against trump. He sure lost it when the NYT taught him to go with the republicans.
OzarkHillbilly
And I still have a hard time believing this idiocy actually has legs as a slight against Warren when we have trump who sees Hitler as his inspiration. But I am not normal. This is not a shot at you. You are acknowledging a very real thing that exists out there, a thing that just utterly baffles me every time I hear someone say it.
But you said “for example”. What other “lie, mock or taunt” do you see her being ineffectual in response to?
zhena gogolia
@Cacti:
He was taken aback because none of the rest of them ever attack him. He will melt into a pool of jelly the minute he becomes the nominee and faces the challenges he should have faced in 2016 and this year.
TS (the original)
@Anya:
Pleased I read down – you said what I was about to say. Thanks.
OzarkHillbilly
@(((CassandraLeo))): My son mentioned it to me just the other day. And he was just the latest. I don’t get it, but there it is.
Morzer
@(((CassandraLeo))): I think you are in for a terrible shock if you believe that Warren’s going to able to swat Trump away like a fly. As for the idea that racism is going to wreck Trump – the last three years haven’t wrecked him and he’s been more nakedly, consistently, shamelessly racist than any politician in the last two decades. His base loves that stuff – and if he throws Pocahontas at Warren in a debate you’ll hear the howls of glee from the fever swamps loud and clear.
Cacti
@Morzer: If racism was going to wreck Trump, we’d be in year 4 of the Hillary Clinton administration.
Kraux Pas
I wasn’t able to watch last night, but my main takeaway is that Bloomberg is the king of the eyeroll, like it bothered him to be up there answering questions. He came across as pissy and dismissive.
Ohio Mom
I did not see the first part of the debate, so I am only now seeing Warren eviscerate Bloomberg. Ouch! I don’t like the guy at all and still I was cringing in embarrassment for him. Good!
You can see Warren’s background as a lawyer coming through. But I am not convinced her debating skills will mean anything if she and Trump go head-to-head. Hillary ran circles around Trump after all.
Morzer
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh, where do I begin? Pocahontas is going to be the crude and nasty focus, but you’ll hear about Warren’s Harvard elitism, her snobbery, her hatred of Christianity, her crooked swamp insiderism… We all know what Trump is going to say. We all know it’s a parade of vile lies. Will that matter? No – because there are an awful lot of people out there who want to believe the lies, or at least hear them being thrown at “liberals”.
germy
Hence, the “hot mic” incident after one of the earlier debates. The Chuck Todds and Jon Karls want them to destroy each other. The media owners don’t want their taxes raised.
germy
@Morzer: Trump and the republicans will talk shit about anyone who runs against him. You think we have a magic candidate who’ll be immune to the narrative trump tries to create?
Kraux Pas
In fairness, those aren’t the votes we’re likely to have to win.
Morzer
@germy: I think we need a candidate who is effective at responding to the lies – and my concern about Warren is that she’s never found a way to do that with the Pocahontas stuff. I think she needs better strategists and better communicators than she’s got so far, because that slur has lingered and lingered.
germy
‘Are You Trying to Say I’m Dumb?’ Klobuchar and Buttigieg Get Testy at Debate
Immanentize
I want to hear Kay’s take.
Betty Cracker
IMO, the only facet of the “Pocahontas” bullshit that has any chance of landing with a significant number of non-MAGAs is the charge that Warren used claims of Native American heritage to get jobs that would have otherwise gone to Native Americans or other minorities. The Boston Globe — a paper that’s notably hostile to Warren — comprehensively debunked that lie more than a year ago, IIRC.
Warren engaged in some cringey stuff with those heritage claims many years ago. She has apologized for it, and she’s done so directly to the people with the most standing to take offense. Folks who still make an issue of it after that will never let it go, but I think the number who were actually gettable votes is vanishingly small.
Butter Emails
@Morzer: Trump’s going to bestow a nickname on whichever candidate he faces and his cult members will lap it up. I’m not sure why you think the difficulty in dealing with school yard taunts from the toddler in chief is limited to Warren.
germy
@Morzer: They said she lied about her ancestry. She said “I’ll take a test, and if I win then Trump has promised to donate a million dollars to charity.” She took a test that revealed Native American ancestry, and Trump didn’t donate anything to any charity.
Who is your choice for the Democratic nomination? Who is the candidate that can respond forcefully to the lies?
Immanentize
@Morzer: I almost hate to ask, but what the hell does this mean?:
Shalimar
@Cacti: Trump debating will turn out the same as him releasing his tax returns or testifying to Mueller. He will brag about how much he wants to do it, any day now, until the clock runs out and it somehow never happened.
OzarkHillbilly
So in other words, he’s going to say she’s a DEM. OK.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Morzer: Have you looked at a single approval poll during this entire administration*? Even one? I’ll wait. You can report back when you do so.
I’m tired of people treating Trump as some unstoppable juggernaut. He’s not. He’s widely hated. He’s the most hated president of my lifetime. His naked racism is a major reason for that. He’s not going to do his campaign any favours by doubling down upon it. Yes, he’s popular among Fox News viewers, but that’s all he’s popular with. His numbers with independents are terrible, and he only even got installed in the office in the first place by a statistical fluke, 25 years of the last Democratic nominee being built up as History’s Greatest Monster, the interference of the inexplicably respected hack FBI director…
Trump’s shtick doesn’t play well outside the bubble, but it’s all he has. So he’ll double down on it… but he’s unpopular, and he’s always been unpopular, and I’m sick of you Chicken Littles treating him as unbeatable. And this is coming from someone who literally uses the mythological Cassandra as part of the inspiration for their screen name. Knock it off. The last thing we need is for our side to feel demoralised. Trump can be defeated. And if we don’t wallow in pointless defeatism, I think he will be.
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
Morzer
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think that the Boston Globe’s efforts are going to count for anything in the fight. I have never thought the MAGA types were gettable either. What I fear is that the Pocahontas stuff lands with the people in the Midwest who are independent or who might think about switching from Trump, but aren’t going to do so for someone they see as having gamed the system by lying about her identity. That’s why I worry about the fact that it has lingered around Warren ever since her race against Scott Brown. I feel very nervous about a candidate who hasn’t found a way to address that sort of issue and put an end to it.
OzarkHillbilly
In other news, good news even:Red-state Utah embraces plan to tackle climate crisis in surprising shift
Say what???
Oh. They finally figured out they can make money off of renewables just as well as oil and coal and they come with the added benefit of not destroying the planet. Well, welcome aboard boys.
Will wonders never cease. Floridians don’t want to drown after all.
Jeffro
@(((CassandraLeo))):
I’ll have a second helping of this, please. Dems should run with confidence no matter who they run with in the end. trumpov is eminently beatable (which is remarkable, given people’s perceptions of the economy).
Morzer
@Butter Emails: I have never suggested that Trump won’t do exactly that. I will say that he loves using that taunt against Warren – and there’s still no effective response from her to it.
Immanentize
My conclusion — Morzer is here with us today (together in communion) to knock down Warren and offer no alternative. Even when asked. Because that would reveal his true heart.
I gotta go. Good luck, peeps.
Shalimar
@Morzer: She responded by speaking to Native American tribes directly and gathering strong support from them. You say it is ineffective because you haven’t heard it reported. Which sounds like blaming her because the media doesn’t cover her.
https://thinkprogress.org/indian-country-gives-strong-show-of-support-for-elizabeth-warren-at-candidates-forum-6a23c86f3095/
Kraux Pas
Translation: A full accounting and apology weren’t enough for me, so likely nothing ever will be. Hunter Biden Hunter Biden Butter emails.
Chyron HR
@Kraux Pas:
Okay, but it’s certainly going to be harder without Bernie’s supporters on board.
Morzer
@(((CassandraLeo))): Sure, let’s all assume that the monster Trump is going to be crushed, just as he was by HRC. Trump has a very loyal base, an economy that’s doing well and so far the Democrats haven’t exactly suggested that they’ve got a candidate who can unite the party, let alone out-punch an incumbent president. I’d like it if there were better news to be had, but there isn’t at this point and ignoring the vulnerabilities of candidates we fall in love with isn’t going to help.
evodevo
@OzarkHillbilly: What kills me about this is…she DOES have Native American heritage – the DNA test suggested that. The only qualifier was that it was a lot farther back in her bloodline than a great-great…but, then again, anti-science anti-rational Trump voters don’t care about any of that…they will just hoot and holler like a chimp. It’s the swing voters she needs to bring over who need to hear this stuff.
JMG
Don’t you all understand? It doesn’t matter who’s the nominee, Trump will lie about them and use slurs and his base will eat it up as will the media who need a show to keep the revenue flowing. If that works it works, but that is beyond the control of any nominee. No one can control what others say about them. Go vote for the nominee you think will be the best President.
PS: Trump is not debating this year, not after what he saw happen to Bloomberg. He wasn’t going to before that, but this makes it certain. Debates are “unfair.”
Morzer
@Immanentize: Well, you remember the great War on Christmas and the way in which Trump heroically enabled people to wish each other Happy Christmas again…
Shalimar
@Chyron HR: Bernie’s supporters want to burn down the Democratic party. Yes, it will be hard to convince them in November if he isn’t the nominee. But not as bad as giving them the keys to the house would be.
Kraux Pas
Good thing it will only be a tiny minority of his supporters who may not support another nominee.
Dorothy A. Winsor
My writer group met for 3 hours last night, so I missed the debate and am just catching up. Sounds like Warren kicked butt. Good. She’s my first choice.
Emma from FL
Lordamercy, we surely find ways to snatch defeat out of the iron jaws of victory, don’t we? Elizabeth Warren had a great night — AAAAIIIIEEEE, what about Trump’s racial insults! Bloomberg got defenestrated — AAAAIIIIEEEE, they should have gone after Trump! Bernie seemed lackluster–AAAAIIIIEEEE some pollster on the internet says he’s got a lock on the delegate count!
Can we all take a deep breath? If nothing else, can we remember there are other fish to fry in this election? Turning the Senate purple and solidifying our hold on the House is almost as important as getting Trump the hell out of the White House. A non-complicit Congress would go a long way towards neutering our current disaster. Pick your war and go fight!
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Morzer: Because there doesn’t have to be. The MAGAts are literally the only ones who still care. Warren can just sigh exasperatedly and say something along the lines of, “You’re just repeating the same grade-school insult ad nauseam because you don’t actually have an argument.” That’s it, attack deflected, and she can move on to actually answering whatever question the moderator asked – which we can completely guarantee Trump won’t and indeed can’t even do.
@Morzer: She has put an end to it! You’re literally the only person I’ve seen who isn’t: (a) a MAGAt, (b) a Russian troll, or (c) a Bernie Bro who still cares about it. At least, I assume you’re not. Are you? Because I haven’t seen a single story about it in the news in months. Trump would keep trying to make “fetch” happen, sure, but I don’t see why you’re so convinced he’d be able to make it happen. I don’t even think the vacuous likes of Chuck Todd would be drawn in (and this is a guy who just literally repeated a claim that Bernie was leading a bunch of brownshirts). Trump has kept repeating the taunt at his rallies, and I haven’t seen a single news story about Warren’s ancestry in months.
@OzarkHillbilly: I never wanted to drown!
But this is my obligatory “Adam Smith didn’t say that, or indeed anything remotely like that.” Of course, you’re just quoting some Republican jackass, but still, the only usage of “invisible hand” in Wealth of Nations refers to trade between nations, not the market as a whole: Smith was saying that consumers would prefer domestic goods to foreign-made goods for a number of reasons that were probably completely true in his day when shipping was much more expensive. He says nothing about markets as a whole with the “invisible hand” metaphor in any of his surviving writings (only two other uses of it appear, neither of which are in any way related to economics).
In fact, Wealth of Nations is actually full of quotes like, “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” So, y’know. My dude probably wouldn’t be a Republican in today’s America, is all I’m saying. (He’d probably have quite liked Abraham Lincoln, though, given that he was, among his many other virtues, an abolitionist.)
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
Morzer
I am going to say this one more time for the slow people at the back: I like Warren, I think she’s a good Senator, I think she would be a good president. I am not convinced that she’s the right candidate and I say this as someone who watched her Senate campaign against Scott Brown and has watched her campaign in this primary. I think her strategic judgment is questionable and I am not convinced she’s agile enough to turn back the slurs and lies that Trump is going to throw at her. Pocahontas as a slur has lingered on, long after it should have been disposed of. If you think that’s unfair, by all means fall in love and assume that this is best of all possible worlds and victory is inevitable. I don’t think that’s going to get you very far against Trump, but who knows, maybe blind optimism will carry the day.
zhena gogolia
@Morzer:
Who is your favored candidate?
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor: How was it?
zhena gogolia
@Emma from FL:
With Sanders we will not only lose the presidency but the House as well.
Betty Cracker
@Morzer: Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree; I think she has put an end to it for anyone who is gettable. Trump will keep lying about it, but he’ll lie about ANY candidate. I find it somewhat heartening that this absolute nothingburger is the only thing they’ve got on Warren.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Morzer: I already presented several reasons that 2016 was an anomalous election, and you haven’t attempted to counter any of them. In point of fact, despite the superficially decent-looking economic numbers, Trump has never enjoyed an approval rating above or indeed anywhere close to 50%. And I’m from a generation that would be perfectly happy to tell you that the economy is not fine.
In fact, a large percentage of my cohort can tell you that the economy is completely fucked for most people our age range. Hardly anyone our age graduates from college without crippling student loan debt; homes are prohibitively expensive; many of us may never be able to retire because we don’t actually make enough to save up money, and there’s nothing like the pension system our country used to have. I still live with my parents despite possessing one bachelor’s degree and being close to finishing a second. I’ve never made enough money to be able to live on my own.
But sure, the economy is ‘
doing well’. It seems like you’d rather piss on us and tell us it’s raining. At this point, I’m tempted to assume you are a troll, because you aren’t actually offering any solutions; you’re just insisting we’re doomed. I’m done here. I have better things to do with my time than continue this any further.Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
Immanentize
@Morzer:
Thank you for manspaini gvthis all to us. We now totally agree that you are soooo smart and right in your analysts that we capitulate to your manly insistence. We thank you, truly, for taking all this time to repeat yourself without really anything but the light of your wise hot take. Where would we be without your repeated insights?
With great humility in the light of your shining intellect. I thank you.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor:‘Cause of death: Elizabeth Warren’: Democratic debate’s brutality delights viewers
ETA:
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Morzer: There is no such thing as someone effectively responding to a bully’s lies. The bully will keep repeating them until someone literally beats his face in, his posse will keep howling in approval until he’s no longer the “tough guy” for them to follow.
The only thing you can do with a bully is make him target someone else.
Kraux Pas
Yeah, maybe, but I’m more into other dudes.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Immanentize: That certainly was a tell, wasn’t it? At this point I’m just gonna pie this jackass and move on. Not enough hours in the day.
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
Kraux Pas
Translation: I’m a condescending prick who’s just going to repeat him/herself because I don’t want to do the work of considering what other people are actually saying.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Morzer:
Bye, Eeyore.
Sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: OT. I downloaded a free story of yours from who knows where a while back. I read all twelve pages and liked it a lot. I wanted more. Since I was at that time misspelling your name I couldn’t find anything else when I shopped in my Nook. I was annoyed and disappointed.
Downloaded a book of yours last week, and read it this week. Turns out it was the book I had been searching for.
I liked it a lot. Thanks.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Going by the way everyone is talking it’s clear Warren is the one. Unlike the rest of them she willing be impolite to confront Trump on his weak spots and it sounds like she can take a beating and keep on going, which is what is going to happen to the nominee.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us
Well I’m glad Bloomberg took a beating, and glad Warren had a good night. I hope it propels her to the front of the pack. She seems to be the smartest person, most ethical person, and best campaigner amongst the candidates. I really don’t get why she’s not running away with the race other than that she’s a woman. Maybe being too inflexible on M4A at the start is literally the only things she has done wrong.
On Bloomberg – I just don’t trust him not to pick a Republican for the SCOTUS. The Senate will I guess be something of a backstop against that – even if R’s retain control it would be hard for Bloomberg to nominate someone that wouldn’t get support from within the party he ostensibly leads. I also don’t trust him not to raid Medicare and Social Security.
I really don’t get the press’s treatment of Warren. Part of it is misogyny but that’s not all of it. She finished third in Iowa and nobody talked about it. Then Klobuchar finished third in NH and suddenly she’s surging into the front in the moderate lane. Buttigieg finished basically tied for first in both of the first two primaries and even he didn’t get the level of praise Klobuchar got for finishing well behind him. He seems to be getting the same I’m invisible treatment as Warren despite being the frontrunner in the delegate count. All I hear is people hyperventilating over Bernie might actually win, even though he’s not actually winning. He’s at best tied…with a mid sized city mayor who has never run a Presidential campaign before.
I get that Mayor Pete is a little too…robotic? I don’t know, he’s like a focus group dreamed up a politician – it works in theory but is off putting to a lot of people in practice. He’s also inexperienced but have you seen who the POTUS is? He’d be far better than that guy. But…I have literally never seen the press ignore a candidate that was ahead in the delegate count after the first two primaries the way they’re ignoring him. He’s like an afterthought even though he’s winning. It’s more or less unprecedented in the history of political coverage IMO. Now if that gives Warren a chance to gain traction and clean up on super Tuesday, that’s all for the better as she is my fist choice. I hope she can capitalize.
Baud
I’m starting to rethink the decision to try to stop the coronovirus.
WaterGirl
Repeating the Thin Black Duke’s words of wisdom from a few weeks ago:
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I think it’s Dude unless the Queen did something I’m not aware of.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Sab: Thank you for telling me that. You honestly can’t know how much balm that is for my soul.
Sab
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us: The big money in this country can’t stand Warren because she has been dealing with them for decades and understands how they got to be so rich and powerful, and she wants to deal with their now legal corruption.
It is not an accident that they are sidelining her. They run big companies. They advertise a lot. Of course the media is ignoring her. The guys who pay the bills insist on it.
jonas
From what I gather, the so-called “climate resiliency” office has nothing to do with addressing climate change, but just doing stuff like building bigger drainage and levy systems along the coast to mitigate rising sea levels, etc.
Glad to hear about Utah, though. Many Mormons have spent time abroad during their mission year and have a more global outlook on things than the average conservative evangelical. It will be interesting to see if Idaho, whose ski and timber industries are also highly vulnerable to climate change (and has a large Mormon population), sees the light as well at some point.
zhena gogolia
I could only stand about 30 seconds of the clip at the top of Warren going after Bloomberg. Why hasn’t she been doing this to Sanders at every fucking debate? I really don’t get it. Sanders is the “front-runner” (although as someone just commented, he’s actually in a tie with Buttigieg). Why does she save her passion for Bloomberg?
And I’m sorry, watching her in these debates, I’m afraid she can’t win. I try to listen with the “average Amurrican” ear, and if they didn’t like H. Clinton, they’re not going to like this. Go ahead, pie me.
Kraux Pas
Wait, what are you doing to stop the corona virus?
Baud
@Sab:
The Today show did play her beat down of Bloomberg a good bit this morning.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: How was writer group or the Warren news? Writer group is always good. And the EW news is great!
@OzarkHillbilly: I saw that think about Warren being his cause of death! Wikipedia had to take his page down. Spoil sports.
Baud
@Kraux Pas:
Supervising, mostly.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Writers group. Glad to hear it.
OzarkHillbilly
I didn’t really think they would go that far, but hey, at least now they are acknowledging it’s existence. Next up: N Carolina. Baby steps, ya know?
Sab
@Baud: Those the same guys who ignored her in reporting the poll results earlier this week?
Shows that the debates do matter. Good candidates can rise above the CW expectations.
different-church-lady
@Morzer:
But she did find a way to beat Scott Brown.
Sab
@Baud: Don’t stop washing your hands.
JPL
Since I woke up early, I just dozed off for an hour, and read that we are talking about Christmas and Pocahontas. Let’s party like it’s 2016.
Baud
@Sab:
Never started.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh and
Somebody needs to take some basic lessons in geology. There is no levy system that will hold back rising sea levels in much/most of Florida because the limestone of which it is made is a very porous type and the water moves thru it as easily as it would a sponge.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I’m not sure if you’re serious or making joke. For years I thought his nym was the Thin Black Dude, so that’s how I pictured him.
At some point I realized it The Thin Black Duke, aka David Bowie.
What am I missing? Maybe I woke up stupid this morning?
JPL
@zhena gogolia: The thinking is that she can take on Bernie is she narrows the field. She has to wound the others, because she is never going to get Wilmar’s support from him.
OzarkHillbilly
She removed him from history too??? Damn, better not mess with her.
Kraux Pas
So…nothing. Keep up the good work, son, this is why they pay you the big bucks.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud:
It wasn’t my turn to read this week. Instead I critiqued others. That makes it easier. :-)
Sort of like politics.
Baud
@Kraux Pas:
Let’s just say I don’t use Turbo Tax to do my returns.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I hope you didn’t tell anyone to die in a fire.
Sab
@zhena gogolia: I will never pie you. Americans disliked Hilary Clinton because of twenty plus years of Whitewater lies about their corruption. There is absolutely nothing like that in Warren’s background.
I know the misogyny is real and out there, but with Clinton there was a lot of other stuff, thanks to the FNYT. I always saw the Methodist grandmother. My libertarian nutjob brother always saw the powermad warmonger.
Elizabeth Warren persistently worked her way up fom the lower middle class through state schools to a professorship at Harvard Law and a Senate seat. Even my nutjob brother admires her.
different-church-lady
@OzarkHillbilly:
Didn’t Bloomberg just pay $400 million for it?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud:
I was much more diplomatic
OzarkHillbilly
@different-church-lady: the Guardian:
different-church-lady
@Baud: A severe and random culling of the herd would probably do the planet some good.
different-church-lady
@Baud: I bet the Queen does a lot of things we’re not aware of…
different-church-lady
If the analogy to Hillary some of you are looking for is in Massachusetts, then the name isn’t Warren, it’s Coakley.
Kraux Pas
@different-church-lady: No, Hillary actually had things she wanted to accomplish as president. Coakley just seemed to want to hold the job as governor.
Tony Jay
The Guardian stans for Bernie because its coverage of American politics is firmly in the BBC correspondent mode of “Dash off a hasty precis of whatever the conventional wisdom coming out of the American networks is and don’t stint on your expenses“, with a bias towards whatever candidate is judged to be the most left-wing, because that’s what its readership expect. They don’t know or care to know anything more than the bare minimum, but since it’s not going to impact on the tax-rate of its senior editors, playing at being a fiery supporter of democratic-socialism is a consequence free action, and they can respond to evidence based criticism of their domestic ‘political news’ product by playing the “But we backed Bernie!” card for all it’s worth.
OTOH, even typing a sentence that comes within a million miles of implying that the Guardian’s attitude to and agenda towards Corbyn was ever anything other than 110% acidic hatred should cause the offending keyboard to melt into a puddle and burn through the Earth’s mantle with the heat of its shame. They ‘supported’ him in much the same way that the NYT ‘supported’ Hillary Clinton, if the NYT had also spearheaded a campaign to undermine and denigrate Clinton by smearing her as an anti-Semitic racist for three years.
Old news now, except they’re going to do exactly the same thing to the next Labour leader if they ever dare to utter a word that goes against the Blessed Narrative, and that makes me a little bit…. peeved.
piratedan
perhaps what we consider a good response to the schoolyard threat and what Morzer considers a good response to the taunt aren’t the same thing…. like maybe maybe calling him Putin’s Tonto or some idiocy would fit the bill.. I don’t know, perhaps it all comes back that to the idea of if you’re ‘splaining, you’re losing… if there’s isn’t the type of quality pushback that you desire, when Warren has already done that which seems reasonable, proven her ancestry, reached out to those who could or would feel rightly outraged if she really did culturally misappropriate them and since you can’t fit that shit on a pithy fucking bumper sticker, I think its time to simply let that shit be and either reconcile yourself to the fact that it really doesn’t fucking matter what the transgression is, perceived or real, the GOP will say it, use it and weaponize it regardless of the truth or context or what have you.. it simply doesn’t matter who the nominee is, Trump and the GOP will do SOMETHING vile, cruel and most likely untruthful. All we know with Warren is that they’ve telegraphed their play and for the overwhelming majority of us who can read and can be bothered to pay attention, it is a weak sauce.
If you’re concerned about that, its gonna be hard watching the media go on the hunt for this one out to the reservations that are spread across the country looking for outrage, I would welcome them to do so or they could just simply lie about it, like some of them are wont to do by recycling the old shit and putting a new gloss on it.
different-church-lady
@Kraux Pas: The “if” in my statement was doing a heavy lift.
Chris Johnson
Huh.
First of all, Warren BEAT Scott Brown, while Brown was being backed by… Bloomberg.
Secondly: if you have the facts, bang the facts. If you have the law, bang the law. If you don’t have the facts or the law, bang the table: and that’s where our official Warren antagonists are at. Expecting ’em to stop is pointless: that’s not their job.
Only thing we DON’T know is whether they’re coming from Trump land, or are being paid by Bloomberg, or are just out of the Village/MSM somewhere and going ‘ohhhh fuck no’ and counting their stock market investments and believing she will obliterate their whole worlds. We’ve got lawyers, we’ve got rich people here on Balloon Juice all in for Warren, for coherent and sensible reasons (exactly why our people tend NOT to be into Bernie, despite similar base ideology). We’ve also got people whose job it appears to be, to trash Dem candidates.
It’s always useful to keep an eye on how often the poster uses the rhetorical trick, “I really like candidate X, BUT“ (insert complete groundless garbage here, or simply insist “she is unelectable and can’t possibly win ever” with absolutely no reasoning beside circular reasoning. The discipline with which some people stick to that formulation is telling. It’s like they’ve been through basic training: follow these rhetorical angles, where possible take on the protective coloration of a class or subgroup you can identify as ‘un-challengeable’, and never stop posting.
Neldob
Maybe she needs to point out the huge national debt and how the liar in chief wants to cut social security and Medicare. Hasn’t he already cut food stamps?
artem1s
@(((CassandraLeo))):
Oh mine includes many, many people beyond the family.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@artem1s: So does mine. It’s probably hundreds of names long by this point. Not to mention… well, just throw my Latin closer for all my comments into Google Translate if you can’t puzzle it out.
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
Villago Delenda Est
Has Wilmer fired his shistain Sarah Fuckabee Slanders wanabee press secretary yet? Then his statement that he “disowned” his more extreme cultists are worthless.
Fuck Wilmer. With a rusty, unlubed chainsaw.