"Mike" Bloomberg Presidential campaign, 2020

Politics & Elections
281

Banquet Bear, since you believe I quoted you devoid of context, I’ll respond to the post fully quoted.

Maybe we can stop with the calling Bloomberg a Hitler or a Trump and stick with actual discussion, to start.

Let me agree with you: he should get the same scrutiny that Harris got for “being a cop” and Warren got on “how to pay”. Harris was not hurt by that (her otherwise horrible campaign destroyed her). Warren was IMHO hurt by the “how to pay” because she mishandled dealing with the scrutiny. How Bloomberg’s dealing with this scrutiny is responded to by Black voters in particular will be the important thing. If they overwhelmingly reject him, then he has no path to becoming the nominee. By the time my state comes up their voices will have been expressed in the voting booths. There is no question that his record on Stop and Frisk would be weaponized at some point and seeing if the attack has legs is vitally important to find out now.

I’ve made my arguments as to why I think it won’t.

Let me disagree with you: there is no reason to believe that he will govern as a racist or misogynistic asshole. I know you do not care about intent but intent does matter to that prediction and most believe that his intent was to reduce gun deaths and that he was, unlike many other politicians, not ignoring the harms of guns causing deaths of Blacks in poor Black neighborhoods. How he approached it was a mistake that caused harms and little goods. How he’s approached it, and racial inequity issues in general since, have not been mistakes. There is good reason to believe that his more recent approaches are more predictive than the horrible mistake of Stop and Frisk is. Many American Black leaders and voters seem to think so. And some, maybe many, don’t.

Let me agree with you some again: while I think considerations of who is more likely to win and who has a better chance to pull the Senate along matters, we should also be voting for who we think would be the best president. I think Sanders would be a very ineffective president (ineffective, not malignant - that is Trump). Based on the what I know at this point in time, I think Bloomberg OTOH would be a very effective one. I think our best shot at getting meaningful progress on climate change issues, on expanding much farther to universal coverage, on reasonable gun control implementation, at repair of our standing in the world, at reducing many items of racial inequities, even on reducing wealth inequality (!), and more, is having him over the other choices currently running. YMMV. And I have time to change my mind as I see him on the debate stage and as I see how Black voters respond to him in the polling booths on Super Tuesday.

SmartAleq represents the views of some non-zero number of voters who see class warfare as THE issue. Climate change, healthcare, SCOTUS nominations and all the rights that being destroyed and to be destroyed by an increasingly conservative tilted court … they don’t matter. Revolution or nothing! They are non-zero in number but they are pretty close to it and were not more than usually switch after a primary favorite loses. Most understand what is at stake for the country and the world. As a group the SmartAleqs have an amusingly inflated sense of self-importance. Their votes matter but there is no reason to think they matter more than winning the suburbs does, or increased urban turn out, or even winning over disaffected Republicans (some of whom last time voted for Clinton, some of who went third party last time, and some of whom voted Trump but would like to not do so again if they feel they have a reasonable option). They very likely matter less.

282

I don’t know if Bloomberg has atoned for Stop and Frisk. He has sure apologized for it a bunch, but any politician’s apology could always be a political ploy (of course that point of view makes politicians less willing to apologise for anything). But, I do respect Henry Louis Gates’ and Bobby Rush’s opinions and if they are good with Bloomberg then I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt until something happens for me to believe he’s been insincere.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

283

Quoting for truth:

Thank you, Happy Lendervedder. There are several Dopers who need to enlarge this, print it out, tape it to their mirrors, and get some sense pounded into their heads.

I am a little worried about his electability: He’s only half a year younger than Sanders, he’s more Jewish, and would be the shortest President since William McKinley. (Does tallness or going to synagogue matter? American voters are not very smart.)

Am I correct that MSNBC and the liberal media are zestfully attacking Bloomberg? I’d like to hear Bernie supporters who complain about Ds attacking Ds, also disapprove of the attacks against Bloomberg. And vice versa.

284

…the comparison to Hitler has been blown out of proportion. It was a mere analogy regarding motivation, I escalated to Hitler when the original analogy (regarding Duterte) was ignored. As for the comparison to Trump: I stand by that comparison. Bloomberg is a more intelligent Trump with a filter. He would obviously be better than Trump and if he is the nominee then everyone should get out to vote for him. What is there to disagree about there?

Of course Harris was hurt by that. It was one of many different factors for why she withdrew. I don’t think her campaign was that horrible at all.

She was hurt because she was treated to a different standard. Bernie won’t release how he is going to pay for medicare4all. Nobody gives a fuck. Warren got grief when she didn’t release the numbers and she got grief when she did. She got grief when she did an “about turn” but Bernie did almost the very same thing and nobody gave a fuck.

This election is going to be mired by misinformation, propaganda, sloppy and lazy reporting, all of it forming a narrative that will be micro-targeted at very specific audiences. I don’t accept it when people say “he or she ran a bad campaign” or this will affect this" or "this person is electable and this person isn’t. There is too much going and these simplistic narratives don’t tell the whole story.

I have no interest in how Bloomberg deals with the scrutiny. His record on stop and frisk absolutely should be weaponized along with every other problematic thing that he has done.

I’ve made my arguments on why we should continue to care.

You don’t excuse fascism because of intent. They were stopping people on the street for the colour of their skin. They were pointing guns at peoples heads, throwing them on the ground, threatening to kill them, handcuffing them, then letting them go. Almost everyone that was stopped were innocent. Hundreds of thousands of people.

You might be prepared to forgive someone who defended this right up until it became politically inconvenient to do so. I cannot.

What are those good reasons? What do you tell the people I’ve cited in this thread, the many different reports on the impact that stop and frisk had on communities of colour, what good reasons are those?

And we know that Bloomberg is throwing millions of dollars at people for endorsements. We all know that he is doing his best to literally buy his way to the nomination. I’m taking all endorsements with a huge grain of salt.

You’ve got this habit of talking about someone else in the abstract as if they aren’t here taking part in the discussion. You’ve done this to me before. If you have issues SmartAleq then take it up with them. If you want to accuse groups of people like SmartAleq of “having an amusingly inflated sense of self-importance” then talk to them about it. Don’t lecture me.

285

You don’t get it, but I’m not surprised. What YOU don’t get is that yes, all those things matter and matter a LOT but that class warfare and the systematic capture of every facet of our society by the 1% IS the central problem. You can go play whack-a-mole with this issue and that issue all you want but you’ll be playing the game by the oligarchy’s rules and you will get nowhere, as we’ve gotten nowhere for decades because that is how that game is rigged and nothing will get done. Strip the oligarchs and plutocrats of their ill-gotten rent money and close the loopholes that allow people to amass such a disproportionate percentage of the planetary resources and you free up enough resources to begin to address those extremely important issues AS SYSTEMIC PROBLEMS rather than trying to deal with them in the scattershot manner that the resource starved are forced into employing.

The fact that over 20% of children in this country live in chronic poverty and food insecurity means there will be generations of adults who are, by the necessities of their lives, short sighted and unaware of ways to address the systemic problems in their day to day existence. When over 50% of the people in this country do not have the resources to cope with a $400 emergency there’s a big fucking problem and the problem is that too few people have too much of EVERYTHING that people need to be successful and comfortable and secure. That means an entire population that’s operating from a standpoint of fear and insecurity and reaction rather than action. Fear makes people easy to control, poverty makes them easy to control, excessive debt makes them easy to control and watching those in power do everything they can possibly do to keep people afraid and poor and indebted year after year after year–well, it takes impressive powers of self delusion to convince yourself that this isn’t happening and even if it is, it’s not intentional. Riiiiiight.

286

That is pretty hilarious. I bet some of those influencer meme developers are pissed they didn’t think of it. Bloomberg would have paid for that.

287

Is he a rapist or just a serial molester using his power?

I’ll do some googling and see.

But why go with such a racist, abusive, billionaire?

288

After doing some research, in the words of Bloom himself:

Kill it! Kill it!

289

IOW, you’ve got nothing.

290

Y’know, if we were able to fix all that over the course of the next decade, but didn’t do jack shit about climate change, we’d just change the way the poor are screwed, only now it would be global rather than merely the U.S.

291

Actually, let me sum up for you:

Because you support Bernie who’s got a Green New Deal plan which he won’t be able to pass on account of the filibuster which his scruples tell him is even more important than saving the planet, you’re justified in not voting for Bloomberg (who is equally concerned about global warming but isn’t likely to share Bernie’s concern about the filibuster) if it comes down to Bloomberg v. Trump.

If your guy gets the nomination, win or lose we get untrammeled global warming because however disastrous global warming would be, preserving the filibuster is apparently even more essential to the fate of humanity.

If Bloomberg gets the nomination, you’ll stay on the sidelines, and do nothing to keep us from untrammeled global warming.

IOW, you oppose doing anything about global warming. Your words say one thing, but your declared choices say the opposite.

292

Manwich, you are not participating in the thread in any constructive way.

Hence, you are banned from the thread for the next week. You may return to it on February 22, 2020.

293

It’s a bit of a digression but the activist scrutiny of Harris and her record as a prosecutor was consistent. It did not get in the way of her rise and did not cause her drop. And we can disagree about Warren. The point we can agree on is that yes, like them, Bloomberg should be scrutinized.

Yes we’ve each made our arguments.

Regarding forgiveness - I am reminded of what came up in a thread in which one of our more infamous posters stated an apology to those who he had offended on this board: as I was not the target it is not up to me to accept or reject the apology. Still I noted that one of the most important parts of an effective apology is the expressed plan to make amends, and then doing it. The poster was not doing that. In regards to Bloomberg and Black and LatinX Americans, I respect their decision on forgiveness as expressed in the voting both. Clearly some “people of color” will find it disqualifying and you have quoted some of them. Some do not … and they are not all bought off. If I was of the group I’d be offended by portraying me someone whose price was so low. This was the opinion among Black voters all along, before the apology, before he did things that can be counted as making amends -

Poll from 2012, pretty much height of Stop and Frisk controversy, clearly the plan having racial impacts, Blooomberg still fully defending it, clearly a majority of Black New Yorkers against the policy. Still 25% of Black New Yorkers approved of the policy, and a majority of Hispanics did (also a targeted population). The POV expressed as below:

As to the comment about the other poster - that was addressed less to you than to other thread participants.

Yes, sometimes I will talk about a poster’s position than engage with them as it is clear to me that engagement with with them will be nonproductive. I am not arguing with that poster over their position. There is no clarification needed. My comment is to discuss how *the rest of us *consider and respond to that sort of comment. Personally from here I can scroll past.

294

Oooh, it must be so INTERESTING to be able to prognosticate the future with such accuracy! Why aren’t you rich then?

295

…was this poster responsible for a racist fascist policy that terrorised hundreds of thousands of people of colour? I know that people criticised my Hitler analogy, but this is going **way **over the top of that.

Do you really think that a “lack of an apology” is the real problem here? If Bloomberg just somehow found a way to really make amends that would suddenly make him an acceptable candidate to those who find him unacceptable now?

President Trump currently has a 49% approval rate. Millions of people support his policies. Millions of people think indiscriminate ICE raids, separating families, banning Muslim countries, reducing immigration to a trickle (and only from white countries) and essentially closing the borders to refugees is a good thing.

So stop using black people as a shield to your own opinions. The US constitution shouldn’t be up for a popularity contest. That many black people supported a racist destructive unconstitutional policy is neither surprising or relevant. Once again I’ll go back to my original post:

The policy was unconstitutional. Black and brown people were stopped on the streets, guns put to their heads, thrown against walls. If this were happening in white neighbourhoods we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. If the police acted like this in the Hamptons then there would have been riots. Trevor Noah says it eloquently here.

The policy is indefensible. No matter how many people you can find who “supported it.” No matter how much you want to give Bloomberg credit because “he wanted to save lives.”

If you want to talk to me then talk to me. I was reading what you wrote and wondered "why are you telling me this? What does SmartAleq’s opinion have to do with anything I said? How do you expect me to respond to this? So it turns out you weren’t even talking to me at all.

Its like you are gossiping behind someone else’s back but they can hear everything that you are saying. If you want to rant about someone else I would appreciate that you don’t use me as a platform to do so.

296

I watched Heathers last night. Uncanny resemblances abounded.

297

Okay, so one candidate made a mistake in his Mayor past, there’s nothing we can do to look beyond that. No point in listening to an apology and some people may not forgive him. That, case in point, is the reason he shouldn’t be a candidate, what he did was unforgivable and people we know nothing about will never change their minds anyway.

Is this about right?

298

…no it isn’t “about right”.

Stop and frisk wasn’t a mistake. You can’t characterise 10 years of unconstitutional racist policies as a “mistake.” Stop and frisk didn’t accidentally happen. It wasn’t just a big giant misunderstanding. It wasn’t an episode of “Three’s Company.”

Ya’ll want me to stop talking about this. But new people continue to keep making my point.

299

Talk all you like but if you just keep making the same point repeatedly and come off like you’re browbeating us into agreement, expect people to talk around you without directly addressing you. Because directly addressing your ranty point by point posts tends to get real tiresome, real quick.

300

…if people feel they are being “browbeaten” into agreement then maybe their position wasn’t that strong to begin with.