# If Bloomberg gets the nomination, how do you vote? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 16, 2020, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001 "2020-02-16T01:07:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/41 "2020-02-16T15:08:26Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Not sure why you’d believe that he’d hesitate to imprison non-citizens, Children. (And that sort of cute-twist argumentation tastes like saccharine, and I wish you’d knock it off.) ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/42 "2020-02-16T15:12:40Z")
Bloomberg is flawed, but I’d still vote for him. Substitute “any Democrat”, or indeed “any human”, or even “a wet dog turd” for Bloomberg and I would still vote blue. Don Tweetosaurus is the biggest threat to democracy that the world has ever seen and he must be defeated. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/43 "2020-02-16T15:13:53Z")
I’ve only seen bits and pieces of _Casino_, but isn’t there a scene where the casino owners take a guy in the back room, hold him down, and force him to choose between having his hand cut off with a Skil saw or smashed with a hammer? I was just thinking of that. No reason really. ---
**Author:** ![Unreconstructed\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/76d3ee/32.png) [@Unreconstructed\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unreconstructed_Man)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/44 "2020-02-16T15:24:32Z")
If it were me, I’d vote Bloomberg. But I wouldn’t blame anyone who decided not to vote. People keep forgetting that Trump isn’t the problem. He’s a _symptom_ of the problem. The problem is money in politics, and it’s quite literally impossible to think of a more in-your-face demonstration of that problem than having a Johnny-Come-Lately Billionaire buy himself the Presidency. His slogan might as well be “Get fucked, peasants”. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/45 "2020-02-16T15:30:56Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > I’m not going to vote for a racist, authoritarian who is blatantly opposed to the rule of law when it applies to him. That describes both Bloomberg and Trump, so there’s no way I’d vote for either of them. If the country has really sunk so low that we end up with both major parties fielding candidates that belong in dystopian fiction, I’m not going to give it my endorsement. The fact that Bloomberg is even being seriously considered by anyone is a sick joke, it’s like the Democrats are thinking that doubling-down on ‘lesser of two evils’ rhetoric instead of nominating an even vaguely decent candidate. > > Not sure why you’d believe that he’d hesitate to imprison non-citizens, he was super fast to imprison Americans for the ‘crime’ of high melanin content, then coerce them into taking plea deals to avoid being kept in hellish prisons while a trial dragged on. Thank you. People don’t seem to know that stop-and-frisk had a huge impact on children. I’ve been reading some troubling accounts of teachers who witnessed their students (elementary school-aged) harassed by the police on their way to school. Trevor Noah talked about this the other day. Imagine being bullied by the police day after day. Eventually you’re going to do what all victims of bullying do–run away. Running away from the police earns you a trip to jail with a busted-up face. Or worse. And then white folks get to turn around and vilify black and brown people for not trusting the police. That’s white privilege for you, though. I am not sure who I would vote for between Trump and Bloomberg. From what I’ve read about the latter, he just seems like a richer, smarter, more sophisticated version of the former. That’s a scary proposition to me. Look, I care about the environment too. But I also care about civil liberties and having a president who doesn’t see people like me as [servants](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8008723/Lawsuit-claims-Mike-Bloomberg-told-employee-black-nanny.html) who are too irresponsible to be trusted with [home loans](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bloomberg-ending-redlining-caused-financial-crisis-952311/) or [guns](https://www.fitsnews.com/2015/02/17/michael-bloomberg-black-people-guns/). Those aren’t trivial things to me. I have learned from my fellow liberals that it would be stupid for me to vote against my own self-interest. So this is why I’m ambivalent. ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/46 "2020-02-16T15:32:22Z")
I’m cheering for Bloomberg to win over bernie in a contested convention. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/47 "2020-02-16T15:53:10Z")
[What are the psychological effects of stop-and-frisk?](https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/what-are-the-psychological-effects-of-stop-and-frisk.html) > [@](#): > > For a subset of the area’s residents, stop-and-frisk meant a seemingly never-ending stream of police stops, some of them a bit over-the-top. One evening, for example, “20 officers surrounded a man outside the Brownsville Houses after he would not let an officer smell the contents of his orange juice container.” Citizens who were just trying to live their lives had to adjust. “Young black men get stopped so often that a few years ago, Gus Cyrus, coach of the football team at nearby Thomas Jefferson High School, started letting his players leave practice with their bright orange helmets so the police would not confuse them with gang members,” the article notes. > > And while maybe these stops didn’t often lead to arrests, sometimes they did, and sometimes those arrests were questionable… > > Here, for example, is a story about a man in Crown Heights getting arrested for possession … of a straw for his soda. And here’s one about a guy named William D. Peppers who fell asleep on an empty, early-morning subway car on his way to work at a bakery in the Bronx and was woken up by a police officer: “Mr. Peppers had put his feet up on a subway seat,” the article explains, “and that, the officer informed him, was a crime — one that in his case would lead to his arrest. He spent 12 hours in jail before he saw a judge, and was released after pleading guilty.” I’m not cherry-picking: While the “crime” of putting one’s feet up on a subway seat can be dealt with via a ticket, the article notes, “roughly 1,600 people like Mr. Peppers were arrested [in 2011], sometimes waiting more than a day to be brought before a judge and released, according to statistics from district attorneys’ offices.” Peppers’s story is nothing compared to a case that yielded a court judgment against the city: “New York City paid $150,000 to Juan Castillo, a diabetic, who was arrested for putting his feet on a subway seat after he briefly lifted his leg to inject himself with insulin while riding a Manhattan-bound F train to work.” ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/48 "2020-02-16T16:23:11Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > How do you know this? > > And for the “certain sorts of people” whose lives were ruined over this policy, why do you think they should be comforted by this reasoning? Good points. I’m about to take a long car trip, and I will think hard about both these points. ---
**Author:** ![GreysonCarlisle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@GreysonCarlisle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreysonCarlisle)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/49 "2020-02-16T16:25:51Z")
I’d vote for Bloomberg in that case. Better an evil spirit than the devil, himself. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/50 "2020-02-16T16:35:57Z")
I will stab myself in the thigh while doing it but of course I’d vote for Bloomberg in those circumstances. Any other choice is a vote for Trump. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/51 "2020-02-16T16:42:44Z")
If the choice is between a generic fast food burger or a shit sandwich, I’m going to choose the fast food burger rather than throwing a fit because steak wasn’t on the menu. I’ll be voting Team Blue all the way, including Bloomberg. ---
**Author:** ![str8cashhomie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@str8cashhomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/str8cashhomie)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/52 "2020-02-16T16:45:47Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Thank you. > > People don’t seem to know that stop-and-frisk had a huge impact on children. I’ve been reading some troubling accounts of teachers who witnessed their students (elementary school-aged) harassed by the police on their way to school. Trevor Noah talked about this the other day. Imagine being bullied by the police day after day. Eventually you’re going to do what all victims of bullying do–run away. Running away from the police earns you a trip to jail with a busted-up face. Or worse. > > And then white folks get to turn around and vilify black and brown people for not trusting the police. That’s white privilege for you, though. > > I am not sure who I would vote for between Trump and Bloomberg. From what I’ve read about the latter, he just seems like a richer, smarter, more sophisticated version of the former. That’s a scary proposition to me. Look, I care about the environment too. But I also care about civil liberties and having a president who doesn’t see people like me as [servants](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8008723/Lawsuit-claims-Mike-Bloomberg-told-employee-black-nanny.html) who are too irresponsible to be trusted with [home loans](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bloomberg-ending-redlining-caused-financial-crisis-952311/) or [guns](https://www.fitsnews.com/2015/02/17/michael-bloomberg-black-people-guns/). Those aren’t trivial things to me. I have learned from my fellow liberals that it would be stupid for me to vote against my own self-interest. So this is why I’m ambivalent. I share your stop and frisk concerns as well as questions about Bloomberg’s character, but I don’t think you can discount Trump’s demagoguery. Bloomberg doesn’t have the same cult-like following and as a result wouldn’t be able to get away with whatever he wants without losing popularity. I’d basically look at a Bloomberg presidency as probably doing nothing about executive overreach and abuse of people’s rights generally, but at the same time not having the cover from his own supporters to be able to blatantly interfere in our electoral process or our international arrangements and hopefully curtailing the absolute worst (such as inhumane treatment of migrants). That and getting at least some liberal policy decisions and appointments makes him clearly better than Trump in my eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/53 "2020-02-16T18:37:30Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Children. > > (And that sort of cute-twist argumentation tastes like saccharine, and I wish you’d knock it off.) I’m not sure what you’re talking about as ‘cute-twist’ argumentation. Bloomberg was happy to imprison citizens, including CHILDREN, without any real cause while mayor of NYC, so I see no reason he would be at all hesitant to imprison non-citizens, including CHILDREN as president. Tossing in “including CHILDREN” doesn’t fundamentally change what I said. And specifically, I’d consider 16 year olds to still be children, and “Just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25.” certainly would include immigrant children. Stop and Frisk was not some minor policy that happened to coincide with his tenure, it was his policy and he’s been actively defending it right up until his presidential run when he suddenly switched positions. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/54 "2020-02-16T18:42:52Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > If the choice is between a generic fast food burger or a shit sandwich, I’m going to choose the fast food burger rather than throwing a fit because steak wasn’t on the menu. I’ll be voting Team Blue all the way, including Bloomberg. If the choice you’re trying to present is between an authoritarian shit sandwich and an authoritarian shit sandwich that has some lettuce on it, I’m not going to chose either one. At least if we do descend into the dystopian hell-hole that people like Bloomberg and Trump want for us, I will have the small comfort of knowing that I didn’t vote for one of the shit sandwiches. Also, I find the idea of “Team Blue” kind of odd here - Bloomberg was a Republican during his tenure as mayor, and spent 2000-2018 making large contributions to Republican governors and congressmen. Calling him “Team Blue” for making a last minute switch to a ‘D’ label and expecting him to fight hard against people that he helped bankroll into office seems a bit of a stretch. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/55 "2020-02-16T20:02:20Z")
I find the results a little surprising. I was expecting most people here to back Bloomberg, but I was expecting more third party votes or abstentions. I didn’t expect it to be so lopsided. Trump is a powerful uniter after all. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/56 "2020-02-16T20:08:30Z")
> [@Defensive\_Indifference](#): > > I find the results a little surprising. I was expecting most people here to back Bloomberg, but I was expecting more third party votes or abstentions. I didn’t expect it to be so lopsided. Trump is a powerful uniter after all. It’s not exactly a scientific sample, you know. No self-selected poll is. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/57 "2020-02-16T20:11:00Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > It’s not exactly a scientific sample, you know. No self-selected poll is. Fuck, now you tell me? I was going to use this in my dissertation. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/58 "2020-02-16T20:49:19Z")
> [@Defensive\_Indifference](#): > > I find the results a little surprising. I was expecting most people here to back Bloomberg, but I was expecting more third party votes or abstentions. I didn’t expect it to be so lopsided. Trump is a powerful uniter after all. Trump is right up there with Nixon for divisiveness and I would say Trump is worse than Nixon. Nixon did or at least signed into law some very good things. Trump, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/59 "2020-02-16T21:04:09Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Trump is right up there with Nixon for divisiveness and I would say Trump is worse than Nixon. Nixon did or at least signed into law some very good things. Trump, not so much. Agreed, definitely. I was just thinking since this is a pretty liberal leaning board, we’d get more respondents who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Bloomberg either. Which I could understand, even if I disagree with it. There’s a lot of talk online about Dem voters who will only vote for their preferred primary candidate in the general. I’m sure there are some voters like that, but I believe and hope that they’re relatively small in number. This came up in 2016 with the (largely fictitious as far as I can tell) Bernie-only and Clinton-only voting blocs. If even someone as distasteful as Bloomberg is getting support from Dems, maybe we’ll actually win this thing. I mean if Bloomberg were running as a Republican, I’d be asking “Seriously, you’re voting for that fucker?!” But as is, I’m like, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” My hope is that he fails to get the nomination but keeps cranking out anti-Trump ads. His ads have been pretty effective. I doubt he’ll be content playing attack dog for the Dem nominee, but maybe he’ll surprise me. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2020, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001/60 "2020-02-16T21:08:34Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > I’m not sure what you’re talking about as ‘cute-twist’ argumentation. Bloomberg was happy to imprison citizens, including CHILDREN, without any real cause while mayor of NYC, so I see no reason he would be at all hesitant to imprison non-citizens, including CHILDREN as president. Tossing in “including CHILDREN” doesn’t fundamentally change what I said. And specifically, I’d consider 16 year olds to still be children, and “Just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25.” certainly would include immigrant children. Stop and Frisk was not some minor policy that happened to coincide with his tenure, it was his policy and he’s been actively defending it right up until his presidential run when he suddenly switched positions. The cute switch is that I’m talking about[infants being put in concentration camps](https://psmag.com/news/the-number-of-babies-in-ice-detention-at-the-border-has-shot-upward-since-january), and you’re talking about teenagers being stopped and frisked\*. They’re both fucked up actions, but they’re not equivalent actions. - And yes, some of those teenagers were unjustly arrested. Still, not remotely equivalent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-bloomberg-gets-the-nomination-how-do-you-vote/848001.md?page=4)