A candidate of by and for the 0.01% — Bloomberg will lock-in President SANDERS

[nashville_brook]

Here's a short piece by Dave Lindorff over at This Can't Be Happening. He quickly gives his top observations on the wrong-headedness of an emergency Bloomberg candidacy, should Bernie get the party's nod. If you think about it for, oh, more than three seconds, it's obvious that a three-way race between two plutocrats and Sanders couldn't provide a better set-up for Bernie.

Split the neoliberal vote you say? Oh my, don't throw me in THAT briar patch!



http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/3007
by: Dave Lindorff

Even as Bernie Sanders’ insurgent “democratic socialist” campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination is really starting to look like it might actually succeed, with polls now showing him ahead of Hillary Clinton in both the earliest primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, and with Republicans engaged in a circular firing squad where all the people with guns are nut-jobs of one kind or another, making a Sanders presidency even seem possible, we read that former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is contemplating running for the White House as an independent candidate.

Now while the idea of a mega-billionaire as president may be a sick joke, Bloomberg’s running for president on his own tab (he’s ready to spend $1 billion of his own money) is no joke at all....It is hard to think of a worse idea than having a smug, self-congratulatory billionaire – someone not just from the top 1% of the population but the top 0.01% -- sitting at the top of government telling us all what to do, but I suppose in the interest of fairness we should tote up his pros and cons. So ... here’s my list of five good and five bad things about having Bloomberg join the race for president as an obscenely wealthy independent candidate:

(snip)

4. Bloomberg is 73 years old, just a year younger than Sanders, which should defuse the charge, made by mainstream pundits and no doubt soon by the 69-year-old died-blonde Trump, that that Sanders is too old to be president.

(snip)

2. Bloomberg treated the Occupy Wall Street abominably, no doubt because all his cronies are Wall Street bankers and investment bankers who were terrified by the rabble at their gates, and were annoyed at being discommoded by having to endure taunts from spikey-haired lip-ringed kids as they rode to “work” in their limos and by the need to cross police barricades that were blocking off the whole of Wall Street itself. This will give Sanders, who backed the Occupy movement, a great target. He’ll be able to rake Bloomberg, the uber-one-percenter, for calling out the NYPD thugs and loosing them on the protesting kids, for denying them portapotties near the Zuccotti Park occupation zone, and for finally crushing the movement with a night-time assault and police riot that featured clubs, tear gas, mace and mass arrests. (Bloomberg did the same thing earlier with protests against the Iraq invasion and with a march and demonstration against the Republican National Convention.)


1. Bloomberg has all the charm and easy folksiness of a... robber baron. Looking like he’s badly constipated and just ate something bad when he’s in a group of plebes, he makes Bernie Sanders look positively charismatic in comparison.

[libdem4life]

1. Speaking of age, Hillary is 68, I believe. I mean at this level...a 6 year span is kind of a

side note. I can say that because I'm near there myself.

ETA: I believe the oldest Boomer is now 70, give or take.

[nashville_brook]

2. i believe it's seriously ageist & vulgar for Team HRC to push the "old man" narrative

especially when she's so close in age had her own health issues. the point of that whole "release your records" song and dance was to make people think Bernie is old. it has nothing to do with his health.

speaking of records...i'd love for HRC to release the content of the speeches she gave to her Wall Street contributors.

just saying.

[Gothmog]

3. Why Michael Bloomberg Could Make Donald Trump President

I do not want Trump to become POTUS http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/01/michael_bloomberg_could_make_donald_trump_president.html

With that said, I think there’s more to the latest Bloomberg trial balloon than just amusement at its recurrence. Bloomberg’s conditions for entering the race—in short, Clinton must lose—reveals something important about the Democratic Party coalition and tells us the likely outcome of a Bloomberg candidacy: If Bloomberg runs, then the Republican, even if it’s Trump, wins.

First, on the Democratic coalition. For as much as pundits and observers describe the Democratic Party as “liberal,” that overstates the case. Yes, the party sits on the left side of the American political system, but Democratic voters aren’t a liberal monolith. Just 41 percent of self-identified Democrats claim the label. Thirty-five percent say they are “moderate,” and 21 percent say they are “conservative.” The number of liberal Democrats is growing, but it’s not a majority. Not yet, at least.

Who are those Democratic moderates and conservatives? Some of them are black American and Latino voters who don’t hold conventionally liberal beliefs but support the Democratic Party for a variety of other reasons. And some of them are the shrinking class of working-class white Democrats. But some are the suburban whites who help make or break Democrats in national elections in states like Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. They are college-educated and middle-class, or even affluent. They hold liberal views on issues like same-sex marriage, reproductive health, climate change, and gun control, and support core Democratic programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (although they’re reluctant to raise taxes to fund new programs).

But they differ with the most liberal Democrats over issues of race and racial inequality. They’re less likely to back affirmative action programs or to see racial discrimination in policing or housing as a pressing problem. It’s difficult to quantify this group, but it’s likely they are part of the 22 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of white college-educated Americans who—according to the Public Religious Research Institute’s American Values Survey—believe that minorities have the same opportunities as whites. Not only do they reject explicit racial politics, but they tend to push back against Democrats who are too closely identified to minority interests. It’s part of why Bill Clinton made a pivot away from black voters in the 1992 election and why Sen. Barack Obama downplayed the extent to which he was the black candidate in the 2008 one.

In 2016, against a Republican like Trump or Cruz, they will probably side with the Democratic candidate, whether it’s Clinton or Sanders. But Bloomberg complicates things. He governed New York as a business-friendly, socially liberal mayor, interested in gun control, public health, and public safety. And while he reached out to minority communities—winning 50 percent of black New Yorkers in his 2005 mayoral re-election race—he also resisted pressure from minority communities to end programs like “stop and frisk.” His final election victory reflected this: Bloomberg won 67 percent of whites, including 59 percent of white Democrats and 70 percent of white independents. Blacks, on the other hand, supported his opponent 76 percent to 23 percent, and Latinos rejected him 55 percent to 43 percent.

[nashville_brook]

4. that's fantasyland. but, either way...there's never going to be a Bloomberg presidency.

[GoneFishin]

5. Bloomberg will pull corporatist sympathizer voters from both sides. In a race between Trump and

Bernie that will include some Conservadems, but a much much larger number of Republicans who know that Trump is coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs.