The Bloomberg Debate

Tonight at 9pm ET on NBC from the Paris Theater in Las Vegas, we find out if Mike Bloomberg beyond his TV ads has the right stuff.

New Thread coming tonight for debate watch. This one could be a game changer.

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Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

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patd
5 years ago

“This one could be a game changer.” 

like a game of musical chairs.

or even more like the mad hatter’s tea party.

patd
5 years ago

march hare & mad hatter dunking dormouse in teapot,

a preview of tonight’s debate with mike, bernie & joe – guess who is who.

 

patd
5 years ago

Alice: But I don’t want to go among mad people.
The Cat: Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.
Alice: How do you know I’m mad?
The Cat: You must be. Or you wouldn’t have come here.

Pogo
5 years ago

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small,
And the one that Mother gives you doesn’t do anything at all,
Remember what the dormouse said,
Feed your head, Feed your head. 

patd
5 years ago

pogo, a variation on that: one poll makes you win, one poll makes you lose.

latest californy poll according to mercury news puts Bernie at 32, biden 14, warren 13.    that’s a lotta delegates so you ain’t seen the last of lizzie yet .

patd
5 years ago

from same link above:

… former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 12 percent.
Trailing behind the pack, Sen. Amy Klobuchar was at 5 percent, former San Francisco hedge fund chief Tom Steyer at 3 percent and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard at 1 percent, the poll found.

blueINdallas
5 years ago

I predict Amy will come out in top.  Tonight, what happens in Vegas goes to DC.  
I’m sure the high-profile pardons by SFB were meant to distract.   If he thought Blago’s sentence was so terrible, why did he let it go on for the 3-plus years he’s been in office?   No, this is all meant to outrage folks and control the news cycle.   He doesn’t want anyone to pay attention to the smarter, more mentally stable, and, slimmer Democratic candidates.   His dwindling but rabid base won’t watch, so this debate is important for everyone else, especially since Bloomie will be there.   He doesn’t want folks to pay attention to it.   He’s always working an angle.  He’s always lying.   He is a walking, talking turd of a man.   

patd
5 years ago

last straw perhaps?

NYTimes:

Mr. Barr was especially irritated by the president’s tweet on Tuesday morning denigrating Judge Amy Berman Jackson shortly before she was to hold a conference call with lawyers in Mr. Stone’s case. Mr. Trump insisted in his tweet that she order a new trial for Mr. Stone but the Justice Department then disclosed that it opposed just such a retrial, a position personally approved by Mr. Barr.

Pogo
5 years ago

From WaPo coverage of the latest NBC/WSJ poll:

If he (Sanders) were to become the nominee, about half of all Americans say it makes no difference in their vote that Sanders is a socialist, including about 7 in 10 Democrats. But nearly 4 in 10 adults say that fact makes them more likely to oppose him, including 37 percent of independents and 79 percent of Republicans. Just under 1 in 10 adults say it makes them more likely to support him. Views of Sanders’s identification as a democratic socialist are slightly less negative.

Not a winning prospect. 

Jamie44
5 years ago

Most Americans like Social Security so the Socialism isn’t a really big thing.  OTOH, being a fraud and liar is another matter.  Latest thing with Sanders is his promised medical records while the Bros are yakking about Bloomberg’s stents which is a procedure to prevent heart attacks.

They are both elderly and not in the best of health.

Tonight’s debate could be interesting.  Early voting in NV was 70 K with the caucus still to go.  Total turnout in 2016 was about 80K so lots of excitement.

 

patd
5 years ago

louisville courier journal:

FRANKFORT — “Bad actors” from hostile countries are continuing their attempts to exploit the Kentucky election system, the executive director of the State Board of Elections told legislators Tuesday.
Jared Dearing told a state House budget subcommittee that a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official meets with the board every week to go over every scan against Kentucky’s system, which gives him “sleepless nights.”
“We are routinely scanned by Venezuela, by North Korea, by Russia on a regular basis,” Dearing said. “This is not something that is in the past, that happened in 2016. It happens on a weekly basis.”
[…]
In addition to finding vulnerabilities in Kentucky’s election system, Dearing said another possible reason why foreign actors would scan the state’s system could be related to McConnell, who is up for reelection this year
“Regardless of whether we’re a swing state or not,” Dearing said, “I would posit the fact that one of the most powerful politicians in the country resides in the state and will be on the ballot in the next election.”

Blue Bronc
5 years ago

Mike the billionaire old fart with heart disease is not on my list of people to vote for.  Just another racist, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe greedy old pervert republican.

Sturgeone
5 years ago

Democrats need to start defining “socialism” and point out where exactly they stand on it.   Point out to the Pipples what so-called socialism means in THEIR lives, how it affects their quality of life.  Socialism has become a huge catch-word buggaboo and needs to be defused.
Make plain the difference between “socialism” and socialistic policies. They’re also worried about their taxes rising drastically and that needs to be defused as well.

Sturgeone
5 years ago

Saw some Ohio goomers yesterday and all they could say was, “We don’t need no socialism”, “We ain’t gonna vote for no socialist” etc.  

Katherine Graham Cracker
5 years ago

Pretty much everyone in Cal is voting by mail this primary that should help with the counting.  And people are already voting here. We got our ballots last week.

patd
5 years ago

what does a candidate do when she’s against PACs but one insists on promoting her and running ads like this?

https://youtu.be/Lx5vfntf4iE

Paid for by Persist PAC. http://www.persistpac2020.org. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Jamie
5 years ago

Will Democrats Stand Up to the Bully On Their Own Side?  Good WaPo editorial.

Also I do wish CNN & MSNBC would stop asking if a woman can win the election.  One already did.  Hillary beat Trump fair and square by several million votes.  It took 30 years of lies, Russian propaganda, all of GOP and rampant racism to lose the Electoral College.

Now the question should be, can a woman win the states lost in the EC?

 

patd
5 years ago

https://www.newsweek.com/whereswarren-trends-after-nbc-wsj-poll-leaves-elizabeth-warren-out-hypothetical-matchups-1487903

#WheresWarren” became a trending topic on social media Tuesday after a poll from NBC and The Wall Street Journal omitted results pitting Senator Elizabeth Warren against President Donald Trump in a hypothetical match-up in the November 2020 presidential election.
Five other candidates were included in the question, but those who agreed to be polled were reportedly not even asked Warren’s chances against the president.
Warren’s absence from that survey follows a poll sponsored by the same outlets which show Warren in fourth place overall with 14 percent of national Democratic support. That ranking ties her with former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, but places her behind former Vice President Joe Biden with 15 percent and front runner Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who ended up with 27 percent.

[continues]

patd
5 years ago

query:  if lizzie is tied with Bloomberg in a poll mentioned above, why is she but not he considered to be in 4th place?

Katherine Graham Cracker
5 years ago

Looks like you are correct Craig.  not only vote by mail problems but same day registration and new voting centers.  Could be a couple of weeks.  Hopefully before the convention

blueINdallas
5 years ago

Bloomberg a) hates Trumpsky, b) wants to re-brand himself as kinder-than-he-was/a philanthropist giving away “all” of his money, c) Daddy Warbucks coming to save all of us orphans.  
I hope Amy Klobuchar has as fine a night as she did in the previous debate.  I’ll be voting this week.  Unless something dramatic happens tonight, she’s got my vote.  

Bink
5 years ago

…must admit i wasn’t a Bloomberg expert before this month, but the more i read, the less enthusiastic i am about him- he’s a straight up Republican running for the Democratic nomination- and people complain about Bernie running as a Democrat?

patd
5 years ago

craig, something else that unfortunately plays to his strength is the stop n frisk charge.  many a hard core law & order conservative will use that as a good alternative and an excuse to dump trump. 

patd
5 years ago

a big OMG hitting other news media

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/19/donald-trump-offered-julian-assange-pardon-russia-hack-wikileaks

Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic party emails, a court in London has been told.
The extraordinary claim was made at Westminster magistrates court before the opening next week of Assange’s legal battle to block attempts to extradite him to the US.
[…]
A statement from Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson shows “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC [Democratic National Committee] leaks”, Fitzgerald told Westminster magistrates court.

[continues]

patd
5 years ago

note date was 3 months after mueller appointed special counsel

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/lawyer-assange-offered-us-pardon-cleared-russia-69075408

At a preliminary hearing held Wednesday in London, lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said that now-former Republican congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in August 2017.
Fitzgerald said a statement from another Assange lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, recounted “Mr. Rohrabacher going to see Mr. Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr. Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”

Bink
5 years ago

btw patd i’ve always assumed your “AiW” quote, above, was the reason you use the Cheshire Cat as your avatar, in that “we’re all mad, here”

Bink
5 years ago

”I actually think there are plenty of black voters in crime ridden communities who see it differently“
 
why?  how many did you talk to?

Bink
5 years ago

you could just say “good point bink, i’m talking out of my ass”

Bink
5 years ago

Alrighty, then.  Maybe you can ask them specifically about S&F and report back!  Eagerly awaiting.

Bink
5 years ago

Bloomberg should have to earn the nomination, we don’t have to just hand it to him because we are afraid of trump.

xrepublican
5 years ago

I have several black friends and scores of black pals and former neighbors. They tend to be of two minds regarding “stop & frisk,” and sometimes both simultaneously. Seeing everything through the lens of white oppression, they conclude that stop and frisk is white oppression. Seeing through the lens of vulnerability to violence, they conclude that those hoodlums have to be caught. The younger Blacks tend to lean toward the former view, probably because they are more likely to be stopped and frisked. The older Blacks tend to lean toward the latter view, probably because they feel their age and vulnerability. The answer may also vary with the color or age of the person asking the question. My dear friend Stan is the elderly and infirm, inner-city black uncle of a black suburban policeman. He’ll give you multiple views on policing and race relations in the same sentence. 

Bink
5 years ago

Ai yai yai.. buncha whites speaking for blacks.  i do it, too, since there it seems there are zero people of color that participate, here, but i don’t presume to be able to read their minds. 
 
The only reason one, here, might defend S&F is to try to help shield Bloomberg from criticism in an effort to help his bid for the Democratic nomination, and i question the wisdom of that, at this point.
 
If he can buy the nom then let him, but like i said, he should be made to earn it- and who’s gonna make him?  Liz, tonight, because she is a bad-ass and cares more about this country than the viability of her candidacy.
 
*raises sword to Liz*

Pogo
5 years ago

Can’t really opine on S&F  – never having lived anywhere the policy existed.  I could talk out of my ass (which I generally enjoy and would be nothing new) but I won’t.
 
I don’t think anyone has handed or could hand Bloomberg the nomination.  He’s getting favorable press treatment based on his ads and his desire (and financial wherewithal)to take it to SFB, but so far he doesn’t have anything but rising poll numbers.  I seldom agree with Henry Olsen, but he’s got a few good points in his Wapo op-ed about Biden’s run not being dead yet – and I’d say that to the extent there is any validity to the knowing when to hold ’em point he makes, it would apply in the adverse to those who seem to be shooting stars (i.e. Bernie and Bloomberg, at least today).  It’s easy to count chickens before they hatch and to prematurely declare this or that candidate out of it, but so far all’s we got is IA & NH and a slew of polls.  But I digress.  If Bloomberg is going to be a factor he’s got a lot of convincing to do, otherwise he won’t get the VOTES that he needs in enough states to get enough delegates to have a shot at the convention.  We won’t necessarily know who the nominee will be after Super Tuesday results are in, but I’d wager to say the field will be winnowed down to 3 or 4 going into the mid-late March primaries, and by April 28 we’ll know whether we’re in for a shit show or not.

Katherine Graham Cracker
5 years ago

5,000,000 stop and frisk occurrences. Many folks stopped repeatedly   How many were white?

xrepublican
5 years ago

Another pal’s son was killed a few days ago : Black and 19 years old. Maybe a ‘stop and frisk’ law would have saved him, but probably not. However, that mom must surely be in the mood to support ‘stop & frisk’.
 
I think Black people’s answers on stop and frisk are all over the map, depending on the age and mood of the person asked, the tone and color of the questioner, the setting and the audience, if any. 

xrepublican
5 years ago

I have put another topic proposal in for your review, Mr C. I hope it meets with your approval.

Jamie
5 years ago

There are lots of ways to attack Bernie if anyone on the stage has the courage to attack his lifelong list of frauds:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1218996067871576064.html

My favorite being calling a female opponent:  “Too brassy, too bitchy, too loudmouthed.”

 

Jamie
5 years ago

Craig

Have you watched the History Channel’s three part “Washington”.  It’s an excellent warts and all biography.

 

Jamie
5 years ago

XR

You still have incidents like the recent one of the Swim Team black member who was thrown to the ground with a gun to his head and held in the cop car even after his coach had identified him.  

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-college-swimmer-team-trip-had-gun-pointed-his-head-n1137126

 

Bink
5 years ago

…his parents must have been so grateful, just assuming🤷‍♂️

blueINdallas
5 years ago

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/19/politics/bloomberg-debate-2020-las-vegas-bernie-sanders/index.html
How has Bloomberg handled the debate stage in the past?  Apparently, with some lies.   A mild-mannered scorpion.

Jamie
5 years ago

Stephanie Grisham being unusually dense about history today:

“It takes compassion and care from families, communities, places of worship and schools, all coming together to give our children the very best future.” –  Flotus, speaking to women at annual Women of Distinction luncheon hosted by PBA Univerrsity 

 
Who knew Melania was in favor of Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes A Village”
 
xrepublican
5 years ago

Well hell, it hadda be a lie, acuz ev’one knows black folks cain’t swim.

Bink
5 years ago

*cringes*

(at xrep not glorious slave-exploiting George Washington)

xrepublican
5 years ago

Cringe-shared.  
 
I hope that they had fallen out naturally, at least.  

Jamie44
5 years ago

Classic movie quote:  “Freedom is a luxury no king can afford.” -Louis Calhern as King of Karlsberg in The Student Prince

And since tonight’s debate may require imbibing, a song to go with it.

 

 

Bink
5 years ago

“he had healthy slave teeth pulled for his dentures“
 
Thank you for elaborating on that, sincerely- i was curious.
 
That’s something straight out of a horror movie.

Jamie44
5 years ago

George and Martha rotated their slaves because PA had a law that any slave in the state more than six months was declared free.  

Washington remained dependent on slave labor, and by the time of his death in 1799 he owned 124 slaves, whom he freed in his will, and controlled another 193, most of whom remained enslaved. Washington expected his slaves to work diligently from dawn to dusk, six days per week, and be kept busy year round.

blueINdallas
5 years ago

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/02/15/opinions/presidents-day-george-washington-real-story-coe-carr/index.html
 
“(According to Abigail Adams, Martha emancipated Washington’s slaves a year after he died because she was terrified for her life. She sent several frightened pleas to family members when she thought that slaves were going to burn down her house.)“

blueINdallas
5 years ago

Bloomberg isn’t going to apologize for being rich.  He didn’t come from wealth, but he built it.   Poverty is not a badge of honor.   I think Bloomberg might knock Bernie on  his behind.   Hoping for another great night for Amy.

Bink
5 years ago

”Poverty is not a badge of honor.“
 
It can be.