What a remarkably stupid statement.
I think there is a **very **large difference in policy between Sanders and (most of) the Republicans.
A centrist candidate in a Sanders-Cruz matchup, say, would potentially appeal to folks left of center who aren’t ready for, or interested in, Sanders’s brand of democratic socialism, all the way to folks right of center who are unwilling to accept Cruz-style rhetoric about dismantling every vestige of a welfare state. To me that covers a very wiiiiiiiiiide range of opinions and in theory, anyway, an awful lot of people. (Again, this is the case IF the nominee is Sanders, who would be moving the Democrats toward positions they have not taken in recent years, and IF the Republican nominee is someone whose rhetoric is exceptionally conservative.)
Perhaps even more significant than policy, though, is style. I’m thinking here especially of Sanders vs Trump. I would, as I said above, absolutely vote for Sanders if it came down to these two (as I would vote for Sanders over any Republican); but I grow weary just thinking about it. I would like to have a candidate in the race who doesn’t oversimplify complicated issues again and again, doesn’t see virtually everything in black and white, doesn’t think that the answer to every problem is (for BS) “tax Wall Street and break up the banks” or (for DT) “build a wall and kick out the Muslims.” In this particular matchup, I think there is a big potential opening for a candidate who recognizes that things are more complicated than Bernie and Donald think.
I don’t know that Michael Bloomberg is or could be that candidate. I’d say there’s a good chance he isn’t. I’d say there’s a good chance, party structure being what it is, that no one could mount a successful campaign from the center. But in a Sanders-Trump matchup, I’m not convinced that it’s impossible. There’s a lot of territory in there.
Really there are not too many policies that Sanders espouses that are positions very extreme for Democrats. Many would prefer single-payor … most of us are just accepting of reality and unwilling to throw our baby out with the bathwater. Most want a raise in minimum wage with debates on how much or how to peg it, controls on Wall Street excesses, some more progressive taxation, sentencing and police reform, affordable college education … the differences are to what degrees and how to attempt to accomplish it and who we believe can get some actual progress done. But the overall goals he promotes? Honestly please share with what you think is so extreme to most Democrats other than the word “socialist”?
Yes the gulf between Bernie and the GOP field is wide but the gulf between Bernie’s positions and the center? Not as wide as his bombast superficially makes it seem.
He’s willing to outspend everyone. And he has more name recognition than Ross Perot did, and Perot actually led in the spring until he self-destructed. Perot also wasn’t willing to spend as much as Bloomberg.
Bloomberg also has government experience and executive experience, so he’s no gadfly.
As for Krugman seeing a path to victory for Trump, Bloomberg gives REpublicans who can’t stand Trump a place to go. My own vote in that 3-way race would be for Bloomberg.
Secondly, Trump-Sanders would be a path to victory for Trump once those tax rates Vox listed became widely known to American voters.
This. Sanders only sounds so unhingedly extreme because he’s trying to stop the rightward drift of the Democrats. There’s a lot of inertia to overcome. He’s also being tarred by the media “equivalency” brush that he’s the D equivalent revolutionary to the R’s Trump/Cruz.
As a thinking observer I’m getting real tired of the criminal laziness hiding behind this equivalency doctrine the mainstream media has embraced as more than an article of faith; they’re treating it as if it was an immutable physical law.
I think the real reason a Sanders v Trump election would go to Trump is simply that for all practical purposes Sanders wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgewise.
Any D candidate will struggle against the certitude and simplicity of the R narrative, especially as (re-)played in the dedicated R media. But Sanders’ ideas and approach will play especially softly & therefore not be heard at all over the R din.
Okay, so it would be like the Rubio/Crist/Democrat Senate race in Florida. Bloomberg would emerge as the Democrat, while Sanders would be basically the Green party guy. Democrats put most of their chips on Crist in that race. Perhaps a lot of prominent Democrats would decide that Bloomberg was the horse to back?
If they are utterly retarded and complete cucks comparable to this dysgenic degenerate, sure.
…and yet in the center I lump him in with Trump, Cruz, and Carson in my Four Horsemen of the Voting Booth Apoplexy.
Sanders gets my vote against the rest of the four without a third party. I consider him less awful for my criteria and weightings. You ideas of where he appeals to the center mostly miss issues I personally weight higher. I care a lot more about keeping deficit (as % of GDP) lower than GDP growth rate than I do about making our federal tax base more progressive than it already is, as an example. Not being a trade protectionist is pretty heavily weighted on my list of evaluation criteria. He also tends too go to far on some of those areas than my idea of optimal. Just because we might generally agree on moving the same direction doesn’t mean I don’t consider his positions as worse than the status quo.
I would seriously look at Bloomberg. I don’t want to vote for any of the Four Horsemen.
It’s funny how so many people flipped their gourds over the attempted Big Gulp ban, but nobody gets outraged over Bloomberg’s ban on trans fat and his huge taxes on tobacco products.
I don’t want him to run as in independent, but if he was in the democratic race I’d choose him over Clinton or Sanders. There are some things I don’t like about him, but I think he was one of the best mayors in NYC history. Far better than Koch or Guiliani.
Maybe because it’s so laughably petty and wouldn’t have changed anything?
I don’t think Bloomberg was a bad mayor, but he shouldn’t be holding any national office. Why is he better then Clinton or Sanders?
I’m not sure what your point is beside “I think your argument is stupid.” Please don’t fall into the trap of thinking shitty words can make an argument for you.
Use your adult words. Why would Democrats not vote for Bloomberg?
And what in the world does being a “beta-male” have to do with it?
It’s a little strange to say that the Democrats are “drifting rightward.” They certainly have not been “drifting rightward” on gay rights, to name one very big issue on which the Democratic Party has shifted pretty dramatically (and successfully) **leftward **in the past twenty years. Nor have they “drifted rightward” on issues such as guns or reproductive rights, though they have not been as successful in implementing what they’d like in these areas. Equal pay, social security–the *country *may be moving rightward on issues like these, but the Democratic Party is not. And reforming health care–and defending it against repeated attacks–is an achievement that no previous Democratic administration was able to accomplish.
Perhaps you mean that from a purely economic standpoint the Dems are becoming more conservative? That might be correct–closer ties to Wall Street, a less progressive tax system; that could certainly be happening. But the drift hasn’t been very far. Look at Sanders himself. When was he in the Democratic mainstream economically, or close to it? Well, pretty clearly, never. He has never (until now) called himself a Democrat; he’s always seen such a gap between his own policies and those of the Democratic Party that he hasn’t wanted to be associated with the Dems. He’s not trying to pull the Dems “back” to a place where they once were; he’s trying to bring them to a place where he has been for a long time and where relatively few Democrats joined him.
I think this is what I meant when I said his positions are pretty far from the center, though **Dino **said it better than I could. It is not that any one position of his is way out of line with the Democratic tradition, rather it is that he emphasizes a whole bunch of positions in ways that even a lot of relatively liberal people don’t.
And to ask what makes Sanders seem way out of the center of the political spectrum “besides describing himself as a socialist,” as somebody did upthread, is kind of silly. Few voters, even Democrats, see themselves as socialists. A lot of Americans are solidly against having a socialist in the White House. “Besides being a socialist” is a little bit like “Besides the fact that it’s located at over 5,000 feet elevation, why are so many home runs hit at Coors Field in Denver?” If you’re going to describe yourself using words that imply you’re out of the mainstream, you might expect people to see you that way.
Despite that, I haven’t seen Sanders being victimized by some kind of “equivalency brush.” I think he’s gotten very fair and indeed quite favorable coverage in the mainstream media so far. Who do you hear/read saying that he is the leftist equivalent of Trump? I’m really curious to know.
TL;DR: I agree that Sanders is not nearly as far left of center as a Ted Cruz is to the right of center. But he’s still kind of out there.
If Democrats would vote for Bloomberg, he would have run in the Democratic primary.
Policing, ideological unreliability and even the nanny state stuff are all millstones around Bloomberg’s neck. Also, it’s lame to have a perfectly fine primary, then turn around and endorse Bloomberg.
I say this as someone who actually doesn’t have too much problem with the guy.
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Maybe because it’s so laughably petty and wouldn’t have changed anything?
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Generally speaking, I disagree. Within democratic systems, progress happens mostly at the margins generally speaking. There are exceptions such as health care reform and the stimulus package. But mostly the best we can hope for is something like Dodd Frank, which turned out better than expected. We know this because GE et al have been busy divesting to avoid the Too Big To Fail moniker.
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Who do you hear/read saying that he is the leftist equivalent of Trump? I’m really curious to know.
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Thanks for the cites. I appreciate it.
Maybe my reaction to them just shows my own blind spots, or maybe I misinterpreted what LSLGuy was saying. But…
The first cite, I think, is accurate. Sanders, in my opinion, DOES offer very simple solutions to complex problems. Free tuition at public colleges? Sure, you bet! How to pay for it? Make Wall Street pay for it! You’re right that the cite does equate Sanders’s simple, even simplistic solutions to Trump’s so-simple-as-to-be-completely-insane ones, but there’s more than a grain of truth there.
The third one also strikes me as more or less correct in drawing connections between the two candidates. I think Sanders would describe himself as “tapping into anti-establishment, pro-outsider sentiment” and “a potent force.” I also think he’d describe himself as meeting “a thirst for authenticity in politics.” Wouldn’t he?
I’ve seen plenty of mainstream media coverage of Trump that has been very negative. I guess from the tone of the LSLGuy’s comment, I was expecting cites that would talk about how awful Trump was and then talk about how Sanders was equally bad–which I haven’t seen much of. My mistake if that wasn’t what was meant.
Thanks again for the info.
Well since you were putatively agreeing with me I should explain that we don’t quite.
My point is that he sounds “unhingedly extreme” only because of how he has chosen to market himself over the years. Call yourself a “socialist” and you are evoking particular associations; speak in the rhetoric of “revolution” and you appeal to a certain demographic more than others. Those were packaging choices he made years ago and has stuck with but the content of what he says has become pretty mainstream … because the party not IMHO lurched rightward but quite otherwise has instead evolved progressively such that his once perceived as more extreme positions are now well within the pack for the party and not so far off from the center.
Sanders packaging is as a populist of course and that means that he does go to to same playbook as other populists. Like the comparison or not, Sanders and Trump use similar techniques. A successful populist needs an “other” to demonize. Trump of course uses whoever he can bully at the moment; Sanders uses “corporate America”/“Wall Street.” Both appeal to those angry and frustrated with the status quo. No question that Sanders goes at it from a deeper place, in a very consistent manner and without appealing to hate, but they are travelling their messaging in broadly overlapping lanes.
Bloomberg OTOH is in a completely different lane, more pro status quo, economically at least.
I’m assuming that if he runs that means that Sanders won the Democratic nomination and Trump or Cruz the Republican nomination. In this scenario I think that Trump/Crus would win easily. The overall impact on the total vote would probably be something like 40 to 45 percent for Trump/Cruz, with the remainder being split not evenly, but enough so that Sanders wouldn’t win. I think Trump/Cruz would carry all the traditionally red states. Sanders would win in highly liberal states like Vermont and Hawaii, while Bloomberg might win in places like New York and New Jersey.
I listen to Michael Smerconish’s show every morning. Today he had a caller named Brad from California. Brad said that he has voted Democratic his whole life. He also said that in a 3 way race between Trump, Sanders, and Bloomberg that he would vote for Bloomberg. Their is probably millions of people like him around the country. What their isn’t a lot of is far right / angry White guy / evangelical types who would vote for either Bloomberg or Sanders. I think Trump would win in a landslide with these voters. Sanders would get the college educated White liberals. Bloomberg would get the Wall Street Republicans who might have otherwise held their noses and voted for Bernie. And we would all be looking at 4 years of the Donald as leader of the free world :eek:
I think people underestimate the number of Republicans who would oppose Trump. 47% of Republicans want policies to combat climate change. 36% want stricter gun laws. 38% oppose Trump’s proposed Muslim ban. Who would these voters be more likely to support: Trump or Bloomberg? My guess is a third of the Republican voters would be up for grabs if Bloomberg ran.
Though, you realize, that the system is based on getting to a majority of the Electoral vote. If Trump can only get 40/45%, the election will be thrown to the House of Representatives, who can really do anything they want. If it’s Cruz in that position, he’d easily win in the House - I’m not so sure on Trump.
An interesting scenario advanced by Vox:
You may have met one of his predecessors, Fiorello LaGuardia, who was 5’2". But he was big enough to have an airport named after him, among other things.