African Americans were 13% of the electorate in 2012 and 10% in 2016, but the way to win is to nominate a guy who likes throwing them against walls and thinks the financial crisis happened because they were allowed to get mortgages. Got it.

I would credit Tom “Suck on this!” Friedman’s endorsement to Bloomberg’s donation to his wife’s museum (check out Blake Neff’s Twitter thread on this), but Friedman is oblivious enough to come to his ridiculous conclusions honestly.

But when Trump is giving his second inaugural about making toilets flush again and announcing Wayne Newton as the new Secretary of Commerce I’ll feel much better knowing that 54% the rich white boomers here in Chester County voted for Bloomberg.

So in our capitalist country where the economy is rolling along we should nominate an avowed socialist -- who honeymooned in the Soviet Union -- and who wants to take away the private health care coverage of some 150 million Americans and replace it with a gigantic, untested Medicare-for-All program, which he’d also extend to illegal immigrants and who is not even really a Democrat so is very unlikely to help us win control of the Senate and may cause us to lose control of the House. Got it.

When, with the consent of both Houses of Congress, Trump abolishes both the House and Senate I'll be happy that Millennials got a candidate who passed their purity test.

It's not hard to write a glib, sound bite reducing a candidate's career and accomplishments to a ridiculous cartoon but it does nothing to advance the argument of the person making it nor to shed any meaningful light on the best path forward.

I've read your posts before. You're a smart man, Augustus. Just because the Twitterverse has limits on characters doesn't mean we have to have limits on our thoughts and analysis.

Why should an "illegal immigrant" ,as you write, not receive healthcare

Mike Bloomberg would depress turnout in Reading by an insane amount.

"Bernie Sanders wants to take away your family's health insurance to create a one size fits all big government bureaucracy. He's going to raise your taxes by $X,000 a year, take away your trusted doctors, and even use your tax dollars to pay for healthcare for people in the country illegally."

I mean it's not rocket science. It's wildly unpopular shit.

Maybe it won't work. Maybe Bernie's immune to negative attacks because he's authentic or nothing matters or whatever the theory is. It'll probably work (though maybe not enough for Trump to overcome being Trump).

jerseyhoya wrote:"Bernie Sanders wants to take away your family's health insurance to create a one size fits all big government bureaucracy. He's going to raise your taxes by $X,000 a year, take away your trusted doctors, and even use your tax dollars to pay for healthcare for people in the country illegally."

I mean it's not rocket science. It's wildly unpopular shit.

Maybe it won't work. Maybe Bernie's immune to negative attacks because he's authentic or nothing matters or whatever the theory is. It'll probably work (though maybe not enough for Trump to overcome being Trump).

Kaiser had it at 56% favorability, with it being above water for both Democrats (77%) and Independents (61%). I know that polling on Medicare-for-All is tricky*, but it's hard to say it's wildly unpopular.

*Kaiser's question was "Do you favor or oppose having a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan?"

This poll was from Jan 16-22, 2020.

Kaiser also found that the terminology affected the polling, when it's called single-payer (49%) or socialized medicine (46%) it is underwater.

https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-op ... -coverage/

EDIT: Unless your argument is that pulling out the skewed attacks like with the ACA is what will tank its popularity.

really don't get this narrative bernie being an independent hurts down ballot. if bernie wins, that means the turnout exploded ergo we would take the house and senate. people aren't gonna just vote bernie and thats it. you just press a fucking button that votes for every democrat in most states i think.

jerseyhoya wrote:"Bernie Sanders wants to take away your family's health insurance to create a one size fits all big government bureaucracy. He's going to raise your taxes by $X,000 a year, take away your trusted doctors, and even use your tax dollars to pay for healthcare for people in the country illegally."

I mean it's not rocket science. It's wildly unpopular shit.

Maybe it won't work. Maybe Bernie's immune to negative attacks because he's authentic or nothing matters or whatever the theory is. It'll probably work (though maybe not enough for Trump to overcome being Trump).

this is operating on the assumption the path to victory is winning over people who are basically republicans. the dems have the blue no matter who base, and the bernie coalition which is the biggest tent among all candidates. nominating a moderate will depress turnout and trumps cult + normal republicans will win.

the reason obama won is precisely why bernie is winning right now. its the same energy. not to mention obama was smeared as a socialist, terrorist, not a citizen and still won because he had a diverse, excited coalition. the dems haven't been able to recapture that coalition because the establishment is actively trying to stop the one guy who can get it back together.

Any nominee will be labeled a socialist.

JFLNYC wrote:

Wolfgang622 wrote:

Woody wrote:My current thought is that there’s no way Trump doesn’t win 2020. A Bernie nomination is his team’s wet dream IMO. SORRY.

I have not particularly been a Bernie Bro, so I feel I speak with some authenticity when I say:

That last part is nonsense.

Think about this on a state-by-state basis. You need PA, MI, and WI.

Now ask yourself:

Why would PA vote for ________ instead of Trump?
Why would MI vote for ________ instead of Trump?
Why would WI vote for ________ instead of Trump?

The only candidate for whom there is clearly and simply articulatable answer for all three of those questions is Bernie Sanders, and it isn't close. And Bernie might put certain states in play, and won't lose you any states you won.

I guess we all exist in our own little echo chambers because based on everyone I’m speaking with and, not for nothing, editorials this week from Frank Bruni and Tom Friedman, the answer to all questions about beating Trump is definitely Bloomberg and definitely not Bernie — and it’s not even close.

As someone who voted for Bernie the only time I was given the opportunity to do so and did not vote for Bloomberg when given multiple opportunities to do so, I think I speak with some authenticity on the point.

I have no doubt Bernie will cost you the votes of people like the Bush family, for example, or my mother: well-to-do Republicans who find Trump repulsive on either moral or economic or both grounds, and who won’t vote for him, but *might* vote for Bloomberg. Of course I had hard left types tell me as recently as today that given the choice they would vote for Trump over Bloomberg, so convinced are they of Bloomberg’s commitment to hated neo-liberal global capitalism.

The four questions are: 1. Given his significant Republican leanings, particularly in the past, can Bloomberg even get out of a Democratic primary? (I say no, and he decidedly will NOT get my vote in any primary, even if he is a foregone conclusion by the time it gets to PA)

2. How many Republicans who voted for Hillary, or a third party candidate, or Trump in 2016, will vote for Bloomberg in 2020? Is that number greater or smaller than the number who will vote for Bernie if he is the nominee in 2020? I think this is much closer to a push than you seem to imagine, because working class Republicans in the populist bucket might well be drawn to Bernie, and I don’t think there are all that many Country club Republicans who are morally outraged by Trump, but let’s say there is an edge to Bloomberg here as Sanders is one notch too far for most Republicans looking for a Trump alternative.

3. How many Democrats who voted for Trump in 2016 will vote for Bloomberg in 2020? I imagine that number be vanishingly close to 0. How about if the candidate were Bernie? Perhaps not hordes, but Bernie is the obvious winner here.

4. How many people who didn’t vote at all in 2016 will vote for Bloomberg in 2020? Again, close to zero, outside of the newly eligible (turning 18, new citizens)
For Bernie? Way more than 0. He inspires.

This is all so obvious to me as to be alarming that anyone disagrees. Trump won largely because he won counties in PA, WI, and MI that Mitt Romney won 55-45 or 60-40 by margins like 75-25 and 80-20. You are going to invert that, but you MUST cut into it, and you MUST get new people voting. Bloomberg is the New York version of Mitt Romney. He’d fail on both counts.

pacino wrote:Why should an "illegal immigrant" ,as you write, not receive healthcare

You’ve proven the point.

Trump and his team succeed by appealing to people’s worst emotions. They do, and will continue to, use the most emotionally-charged terms to divide and conquer.

And you walked right into it.

The anger you feel when you see the term “illegal immigrant” cuts both ways. As much as it angers you it invigorates Trump and his supporters and the angrier you get the more sure they are they are right.

Stop letting your negative emotions overcome your reason and better angels. You can’t beat Trump playing his game on his home turf. He’s too good at it. And you’re better than that.

You literally have no clue what you're talking about

If Mike fucking Bloomberg is supposed to be an alternative to the Republicans then we’ve really lost the plot and nothing matters anymore.

In November, we’re going to end up with the president we deserve.

There is some crazy going on in here at the moment. Propaganda backed by self importance. Get over yourself.

Bloomberg is not getting the nomination. While any nominee might be labeled a socialist, there is only one who will yell damn right. Take it to the bank that reliable voters will "stay home" for Bernie and there is no reason to think the unreliable voters will bother to show up at the poll this time. Past performance and all that.

The one thing I will say about a potential Bernie candidacy that worries me a bit is:

Trump, as my wife points out, is, much as it is annoying, really quite good at pigeonholing his political opponents with little nicknames. He more or less took out Jeb Bush with "low energy," Marco Rubio with "Little Marco," he's put sticky labels on Elizabeth Warren (Pocahontas) and Joe Biden (Sleepy Joe). There's a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to his efforts.

Yet in five years of Bernie running for President, and even now that Bernie is the front runner, he's evidently used a coupe, but nothing that has gained any traction. Mostly because he hasn't beaten into the ground, as is his wont.

Makes me think the Trump campaign is playing rope-a-dope. Wonder what deluge they have planned. I mean, other than the weird rape article and the Sandanistas and the honeymoon in Moscow... the stuff we don't already know about.

trump doesn't want to run against bernie.

thephan wrote:There is some crazy going on in here at the moment. Propaganda backed by self importance. Get over yourself.

Bloomberg is not getting the nomination. While any nominee might be labeled a socialist, there is only one who will yell damn right. Take it to the bank that reliable voters will "stay home" for Bernie and there is no reason to think the unreliable voters will bother to show up at the poll this time. Past performance and all that.

what happened to party unity?

we MUST band together and defeat the most dangerous president in history...unless the guy running against him wants to expand social security

JFLNYC wrote:

pacino wrote:Why should an "illegal immigrant" ,as you write, not receive healthcare

You’ve proven the point.

Trump and his team succeed by appealing to people’s worst emotions. They do, and will continue to, use the most emotionally-charged terms to divide and conquer.

And you walked right into it.

The anger you feel when you see the term “illegal immigrant” cuts both ways. As much as it angers you it invigorates Trump and his supporters and the angrier you get the more sure they are they are right.

Stop letting your negative emotions overcome your reason and better angels. You can’t beat Trump playing his game on his home turf. He’s too good at it. And you’re better than that.

This is a strange post.