Michael Bloomberg Reportedly Entering 2020 Democratic Primary
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons
Welp…Welp…Welp…
Former New York mayor and billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg is positioning himself to enter the Democratic presidential primary, a longtime Bloomberg adviser confirmed to NBC News Thursday.
“Yes and yes,” Kevin Sheekey wrote in an email response to the questions of whether Bloomberg was preparing to run and collecting signatures in Alabama, moves first reported by the New York Times on Thursday afternoon.
Bloomberg’s rationale for getting in the race now would be that the field of Democrats isn’t strong enough to beat President Donald Trump, according to spokesman Howard Wolfson, who noted that Bloomberg has helped fund Democratic congressional and state legislative campaigns.
“We now need to finish the job and ensure that Trump is defeated — but Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well-positioned to do that,” Wolfson said in a statement to NBC News. “If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.”
Bloomberg’s wealth would allow him to compete without having to worry about the fundraising challenges faced by other candidates — but if he were to formally launch a presidential bid, it would almost certainly be a target for progressive rivals such as Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who have been running populist campaigns that argue the rich should be paying more to underwrite programs for the rest.
Interesting.Report
If I was a Democratic billionaire, instead of appealing to my own ego, I’d spend tens of millions of dollars either on state legislature elections or at worst, a SuperPAC for say, a charismatic African American Senator who agrees with me on guns, but is fungible on economics.
Before you say that’s because I’m not a billionaire, plenty of Republican billionaires who I’m sure are all egotistic as hell have no problems dumping gobs of money into the campaigns of actual politicians.Report
Well, this is a bit unfair to Bloomberg, who has, in fact, held a significant public office before, and carried it off fairly well. Steyer isn’t really that.
It is also the case that Biden looks vulnerable because of his age.Report
I actually think Jesse is right on this. It would be money much better spent.
Of course, I would choose John McAfee…Report
Isn’t he wanted in like every country in Latin America?Report
Yes, but he has the best twitter feed
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Not as funny as the time he talked about how he tried to fuck a whale TBQH.Report
I mean Why Bloomie? Why??? Steyer is already doing this exact bloody dance and he’s getting nowhere. Entering at this stage you wouldn’t even get onto any of the debates. Buying those poll results and fund raising results takes time.
What the fish does he think he’d accomplish beyond slimming his wallet and fattening the wallets of whoever his political consultants are?Report
“Why? Why do you spend all this money when you already have everything you could want? What are you hoping to win?”
“The dick-measuring contest, Mr. Gittes. The dick-measuring contest!”Report
Bernie knows what’s up:
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I gotta say I agree with Bernie on this one.Report
I don’t think Bloomberg is even what Biden or Klobuchar voters want but they are scared of Warren and egomaniacs so…..Report
Ah yes, the solution no one was asking for.Report
OT but remember when every middle-aged dude was losing his mind over a bunch of students at one college, turns out it was largely based on willful bad-faith and the perverse incentives of the hate-click economy and lazy reporting:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/oberlin-bnh-m-protests-case-study-of-the-outrage-economy.htmlReport
I don’t recall a time in my life when middle aged dudes weren’t losing their shit over whatever These Kids Today were doing.
And today’s middle aged dudes were the ones I knew smoking weed and screwing in the back seats of Pintos with the 8-track blaring Foreigner.
But yeah, man, that woke culture is destroying Western Civ.Report
I’ve brought that up anytime gets all bestirred over “What’s happening in colleges today” or “What’s all over the [college-aged] Twitter crazies” and the response is always the same “This time it’s different”.
Yeah, that’s what every generation has said.
But you’re right, it is different — thanks to Twitter, there’s a better, more easily cherrypicked view of things.
Same crap, different day. Exact same claims and responses. “Kids these days” is apparently the one universal belief among human beings.Report
the thing that’s kind of hilarious to me about Bahn Mi Gate (or the allegations of such): when I was in college, it was considered great sport to dunk on the cafeteria food, about how it was barely FOOD, let alone being “authentic” to any culture it originated in.
“Meatless jambalaya” was a regular thing in my dorm cafe. We called it either “floor-sweeping stew” or “time to clean out the refrigerator!” Most of us wouldn’t eat it. (fortunately, salad, peanut butter, yogurt were always options). My dorm also hosted – ONCE – A “Black History Month” dinner that had the African American students in the dorm looking at each other and asking “Did your family ever eat like this? ‘Cos mine didn’t.” (it was very much a stereotype of the deep-South “soul food” menu, and most of the students at my university were from Michigan/Wisconsin/Illinois/Indiana and YES before you ask there are Black people in Wisconsin…)
But the late 1980s were in some ways a more innocent time. Though I bet there are plenty of college students now doing that exact same “dunking” on the poor quality and inauthenticity of the food.Report
I wholeheartedly support the Democrats adding a Republican to their ticket. (Bloomberg was one at least until very recently.) In fact, both parties should just run Republicans from now on.
But I think the big shake up will be when Democrats decide to go with Ivanka, which will save us all lots of money because everybody could use “Trump 2020” bumper stickers and yard signs, bought in bulk. Wouldn’t it be nice to flaunt political advertising without worrying about anyone judging you except for the crazy Libertarian and Green Party members? Ivanka Trump can give us that.Report
Nutso Keli Ward suggests an electoral college for the states to prevent blah people and (((people))) from every having a say, every again:
https://twitter.com/kelliwardaz/status/1192279093909192704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1192445683644747776&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefault%26f%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-com%26t_i%3D107436%2520http%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F%253Fp%253D107436%26t_u%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F2019%252F11%252Fcommander-stripes-and-the-cat-aristocracy-thursday-night-open-thread%26t_e%3DCommander%2520Stripes%2520and%2520the%2520Cat%2520Aristocracy%253A%2520Thursday%2520Night%2520Open%2520Thread%26t_d%3DCommander%2520Stripes%2520and%2520the%2520Cat%2520Aristocracy%253A%2520Thursday%2520Night%2520Open%2520Thread%26t_t%3DCommander%2520Stripes%2520and%2520the%2520Cat%2520Aristocracy%253A%2520Thursday%2520Night%2520Open%2520Thread%26s_o%3Ddefault%23version%3D4fd81c9e35c659f1046a0c8a1b32ae30Report
(((I))) think that is a great idea. I live in a state where one or two counties decide the politics, and the rest of the state hates their guts. It would be nice to have a bit more consensus when economic decisions are made.Report
Well there is your problem. Counties, for some unexplained reason, are making the decisions. You should have a method of aggregating vote counts to allow majorities to elect people to make decisions. It’s a democracy thing which far better then a….umm….countocracy?.Report
Allowing people to represent the area they live in would work even better. Reduce the Fed gov’t to the size you could drown in a bathtub, and reduce the powers of the states to the size you can drown in a teacup.
Voila!Report
What songs are popular? Is GWB president? Maybe Bill C is pres. All i know it’s like 20+ years ago with such fresh faced candy coated ideology. It’s like i’m just starting out on the web again. Shit i may still married to my first wife given the fossils you have produced. Lemme try to remember, next is TAXES ARE THEFT and republicans care about reducing spending and the deficit. Now i gotta take 20 minutes to download one picture on my phone modem and throw out 22 AOL disks.Report
I bet you are a big Brexit fan.
I mean, that is direct democracy in action, right?Report
Of course you think it is a good idea. I’m not surprised by this.Report
Ironically, one of the big features of the civil rights movement was to create legal structures that addressed the issue of protecting minority voices from what Aaron describes.
Things like at-large elections where a white majority swamped a black minority were countered by forcing elections by districts for example. Or forcing redistricting to prevent gerrymandering.
The thing is, in order to protect the rights of minority voices, government needs to outgrow the bathtub and become very activist.Report
Activist enough to allow to protect known pedophiles on both coasts.
I guess it is rights for everyone but the young.
Maybe we could up the age of abortion to 100 years and have a given abortion day and call it The Purge. All perfectly legal and sanctioned, plus equal opportunity.
Progs wanted to go screw around with peoples social norms, it’s not a accident that their social norms are getting hammered.
Even that leader of the statist mob Soros is admitting that the end effect of his control freak efforts is that the world is rejecting him and his poison.
MSM rating are tanking.
Modern liberalism has embraced statism and become a opponent of subjective values.
Even it’s chants of Free Stuff are becoming questioned, and eventually the new members of the church of needs will rage quit when the free stuff isn’t delivered as promised.Report
Did Andrew Yang say something? Why, yes he did!
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Hey, if you want to vote for a moderate Democrat who was born in 1942 and has a last name that begins with ‘B’, well, now you have some options!Report
@Pillsy,
The thing is that I don’t think even Biden fans want Bloomberg. What this seems to be about is that the really rich being nervous and/or just unhappy that they are not worshiped liked Gods.
I have a hard time wrapping myself around guys like Coopermen or Bloomberg and their thin skins. My guess is that they live in cocoons largely. For a good chunk of their lives, they constructed a world where no one challenged them ever because everyone around them was either a rare equal/competitor or a financially-dependent subordinate.Report
Crossover of multiple threads:
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I wonder if some of the procedures he put in place, and perhaps influence and control he had with the NYPD and the prisons, might have in some way contributed to the tragic lapses that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to commit suicide? Sure, people like the Soros, the Clintons, and Prince Andrew knew Epstein quite well, but they certainly weren’t the ones who’d been hiring narcoleptic prison guards or serving calcium deficient slop that could lead to brittle bones. At some point, someone pretty high up in New York’s government has to bear some responsibility.Report
Rudy Guiliani, former New York City Mayor, and Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and current personal attorney for friend of Epstein Donald Trump, was not available for comment.Report
Chip, do you think that a vigorous investigation into the Epstein story would end Donald Trump’s presidency?Report
Nope.
Even if there was video of him sodomizing a child.
Even if there was audio of Trump ordering the hit on Epstein.
Sort of Mitch and a handful of Senators reenacting the final scene of Reservoior Dogs, Trump can only be voted out of office.Report
I tend to disagree. I think that that would end his career overnight.
But I have a bit of insight now.
I mean, If *I* thought that Epstein revelations coming to light would not hurt my enemies, I would probably not be enthusiastic about talking about Epstein because what use would talking about Epstein be?
And if I thought that Epstein revelations coming to light would not only not hurt my enemies but would harm my allies, well…
I’d probably act the way the media is acting.Report
Makes you wonder if there are any pols repeatedly accused of overlooking sex abuse in the last couple days to see how this kind of thing is being treated now.Report
Or media organizations.Report
I see what you did thereReport
Well yeah, Epstein made sure to enmesh himself across the political spectrum, for that very reason.
Given the revelations of #MeToo, Epstein isn’t exactly a shocking outlier among the media people.
I don’t see any big top-down effort to protect Epstein or his guests, so much as I see a sort of self-censoring mindset among media people to be dismissive of the pain and suffering of those outside the club, but overly sensitive to the pain of those inside it.
Like the piece Heather MacDonald wrote about Placido Domingo, where she didn’t bother to deny the claims so much as she made the argument that their pain and suffering was not worth losing Domingo from the stage.
https://quillette.com/2019/10/18/the-defenestration-of-domingo/
I can easily imagine most editors and publishers feeling the same way in weighing the pain of Epstein’s teenage victims, to the careers of those who abused them.Report
So this is a case of Epstein making a large enough web that nobody in any media organization would be willing to bring him down because Epstein had a dozen (or more) Placido Domingos under his umbrella?
For me, that makes this that much more of a story that I would want uncovered.
(Triply so if there are any rumors of Epstein “belonging to intelligence”.)Report
One of the best things about #MeToo is to show how open and known a lot of this stuff was/ is.
As opposed to some Eyes Wide Shut sooper sekrit kind of thing.
Harvey Weinstein, Matt Laur, Bill Cosby…It was an open secret.
Or like how there are memoirs and stories about how common the abuse of groupies are in the rock world, from Bill Wyman to Ted Nugent.
Why, if all these things were open secrets that hundreds of people knew about, did nothing ever get done?
Because the victims were unpersons, peasants whose lives didn’t count for much, certainly not as much as an A list celebrity.
And the media people swim in this world, they feed off it. It pays their rent and puts their kids through college.
Nobody needs to put a horse’s head in the bed of a persistent reporter, they don’t need to because for a lot of them, dangling a tasty exclusive that will win the morning is enough to divert their attention away from ugly things anyway.Report
Well, I’m still going to call for Epstein to be investigated and I’m still going to assume that the reason that CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and affiliates aren’t covering it is because they, too, are compromised.
And they are compromised to the point where they are being told what *NOT* to cover from above.
(Edit: I mean, the Panama Papers could go in here too, right? Less salacious, though.)Report
I see the Epstein affair as less than salacious, bordering on banal.
The notion of rich powerful men playing with underage girls is a cliche. Its laughed off as a punchline, tittered over as gossip and racy humor, lustfully salivated over as male fantasy.
But it isn’t new or shocking or unbelievable.
This is part of why I am hesitant to assume dark top down conspiracies, because the conspiracy includes the whole of society.
They do these things with the winking and nodding of virtually all segments of society, especially the ones which were ostensibly intended to protect the innocent.Report
Wait, does that mean that you’re also going to wink and nod at it or that you’re not?Report
Epstein was in federal custody.Report
One (child prostitution)Ring to rule them all,
One (child prostitution)Ring to find them,
One (child prostitution)Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind themReport
If you still don’t know what to think about Bloomberg, Judge Judy has written an editorial that might help clarify your thoughts.Report
Wasn’t Bloomberg involved in banning large soda drinks and making it illegal to be homeless in NYC?
I think the Dems found their Stalin Man.
This stuff is about as predictable as clockwork.Report