From Politico today:
Of all the Democratic candidates, Michael Bloomberg has the worst record on education. His education policies mirrored George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind. He was fully invested in high-stakes testing, data-based decision-making, closing schools with low scores instead of helping them, opening new schools and then closing those schools, creating selective schools that chose students based on test scores, and opening scores of charter schools. He had sole control of the “Panel on Education Policy,” and warned its members that if they disagreed with him, they would be fired. When some disagreed about his blanket prohibition of “social promotion,” he summarily fired them. He hired three non-educators as chancellor to lead the system (one of them last 95 days). He tried and failed to hire business people and people from other other fields as principals. He stands for testing and privatization of public education. He has funded pro-privatization candidates in local and state school board races around the country.
SCOOP … MIKE BLOOMBERG is airing another national TV ad tying himself to closely BARACK OBAMA. This one is a 30-second spot entitled “Difference,” and it’s chock-full of imagery of BLOOMBERGand OBAMA. The timing of this ad is quite interesting, as it comes in the middle of a massive intraparty squabble between BLOOMBERGand Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (more about that in a second). BLOOMBERG has found plenty of ways to tie himself to OBAMA, the most popular Democrat in America. The 30-second ad
— SCRIPT: “[NARRATOR]: A great president and an effective mayor. Leadership that makes a difference. [OBAMA SPEAKING]: He’s been a leader throughout the country for the past 12 years, Mr. Michael Bloomberg is here. [NARRATOR]: Together they worked to combat gun violence, and again to improve education for every child. [OBAMA]: And I want to thank the mayor of this great city, Mayor Bloomberg, for his extraordinary leadership. And I share your determination to bring this country together to finally make progress for the American people.”
BLOOMBERG also has a new 30-second spot with Judge Judy. …
— LAT WITH THE NUMBERS: “Democratic presidential candidate Michael R. Bloomberg has spent more than $124 million on advertising in the 14 Super Tuesday states, well over 10 times what his top rivals have put into the contests that yield the biggest trove of delegates in a single day. The only other candidate to advertise across most of those states so far is Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has spent just under $10 million on ads for the March 3 primaries.”
NEWS: BLOOMBERG has qualified for the NBC/MSNBC/Nevada Independent debate Wednesday night in Las Vegas. He’s indicated that he’ll do it, and a brand-new poll suggests that his advertising and publicity blitz has vaulted him into second place nationally.
THE POLL: SANDERS, 31 … BLOOMBERG, 19 … JOE BIDEN, 15 … ELIZABETH WARREN, 12 … AMY KLOBUCHAR, 9 … PETE BUTTIGIEG, 8. NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll
— BLOOMBERG’S DEBATE PREP, via Chris Cadelago and Sally Goldenberg: “Howard Wolfson, the veteran Democratic strategist who joined Bloomberg’s orbit in 2009 after working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential race, is playing the role of Bernie Sanders; Julie Wood, Bloomberg’s national press secretary, is depicting Elizabeth Warren; and senior advisers Marc La Vorgna and Marcia Hale are stand-ins for Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, respectively. …
“Bloomberg is trying to hone a crisp and energetic appeal to voters that will contrast with Biden — another white, male septuagenarian on stage, according to advisers.”
THE BRAWL right now between BLOOMBERG and SANDERS seems to be the rare internecine fight that benefits everyone involved. It goes something like this: BLOOMBERG whacks BERNIE, delighting the Democratic Party’s large anti-Bernie wing. BERNIE then blasts out a fundraising email to his list of millions. He reminds his supporters that BLOOMBERG is a billionaire who palled around with TRUMP,and the left goes wild, but so do BLOOMBERG supporters, who say only a deep-pocketed billionaire willing to punch can take on the president.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Most people only know Mr. Bloomberg based upon his ads. When they get the real scoop, he will drop out for lack of support.
I don’t know that most voters will bother to learn more than the ads.
“THE POLL: SANDERS, 31 … BLOOMBERG, 19 … JOE BIDEN, 15 … ELIZABETH WARREN, 12 … AMY KLOBUCHAR, 9 … PETE BUTTIGIEG, 8. NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll”
So Sanders has the progressive left (31), Bloomberg has the neolib/conservative right (19), and Biden, Warren, Klobuchar, and Buttiegieg (44) have the middle…
I’m not sure I would characterize things quite this way myself, but it is what I am hearing.
Yeah, not sure I’d agree with that characterization either.
I think Warren is quite progressive.
I do, too. I wish the media would lay off the predictions. Too often, I think their commentary influences thinking on the fitness of candidates. I need more specifics about what candidates have accomplished and how they did it.
I third that on Warren.
The whole prediction thing is just vacuous nonsense perpetrated by statisticians like Nate Silver (who was trained as an economist at the Milton Friedman school of Freemarket Idiocy at U of Chicago)
And ufortunately, most of the media pundits are just idiots who lap it up — and ironically believe they are smarter than everyone else.
That should be (was) spelled “statustician”, but self correct changed it.
Silver is ALL about status.
He was predicting Clinton would win on the day of the election .
To be making any predictions at all this far out is just stupid
Diane: FYI, that Obama ad has been running here in California (near LA) for several weeks. CBK
I will leave my ballot blank, paving the way for Trump if the establishment slams us with Bloomberg, and I don’t wish to hear the sanctimonious BS of “Blue no matter who.” That is asking me to vote for someone who continuously beats, belittles, and marginalizes me.
The crux of the situation for the majority of workers may be found here. It’s a longish read, but well worth it:
The New Rules of the Game by Chris Hedges https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-new-rules-of-the-game/
“The Democrats have, once again, offered us their preselected corporate candidates. We can vote for a candidate who serves oligarchic power, albeit with more decorum than Trump, or we can see Trump shoved down our throats. That is the choice. It exposes the least worst option as a con, a mechanism used repeatedly to buttress corporate power. The elites know they would be safe in the hands of a Hillary Clinton, a Barack Obama or a John Kerry, but not a Bernie Sanders — which is a credit to Sanders.
The surrender to the “least worst” mantra in presidential election after presidential election has neutered the demands of labor, along with those organizations and groups fighting poverty, mass incarceration and police violence. The civil rights, women’s rights, environment justice and consumer rights movements, forced to back Democrats whose rhetoric is palatable but whose actions are inimical to their causes, get tossed overboard. Political leverage, in election after election, is surrendered without a fight. We are all made to kneel before the altar of the least worst. We get nothing in return. The least worst option has proved to be a recipe for steady decay.
The Democrats, especially after Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential run, have erected numerous obstacles to block progressives inside and outside the party. They make ballot access difficult or impossible for people of color. They lock third-party candidates and often progressives in the Democratic Party, such as Dennis Kucinich, out of the presidential campaign debates. They turn campaigns into two-year-long spectacles that cost billions of dollars. They use superdelegates to fix the nominating process. They employ scare tactics to co-op those who should be the natural allies of third parties and progressive political movements.
The repeated cowardice of the liberal class, which backs a Democratic Party that in Europe would be considered a far-right party, saw it squander its credibility. Its rhetoric proved empty. Its moral posturing was a farce. It fought for nothing. In assault after assault on the working class it was complicit. If liberals — supposedly backers of parties and institutions that defend the interests of the working class — had abandoned the Democratic Party after President Bill Clinton pushed through the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump would not be in the White House.
…
The last desperate gasp of the Democratic Party establishment is to buy the election. Bloomberg is ready to oblige. After all, Bloomberg’s money worked miracles in amassing allies to overturn New York City term limits so he could serve a third term as mayor.
By surrendering every election cycle to the least worst, liberals proved they have no breaking point. There never has been a line in the sand. They have stood for nothing.”
Seriously, sometimes I wish Chris Hedges would just shut up. So it’s Bernie (who I voted for in 2016 and will vote for in 2020) or nobody? Geeeeeeezus, here we go again, getting preached to by an ideological purist. I like Hedges on so many things but this crap on voting purity is clap trap. Hey, did you know that Hedges has even criticized Bernie, as well. Now he’s a fan of Bernie? I will vote for ANY damn Democrat to get rid of Trump. At least the Ds will not stack the courts with far right wing libertarians, are not climate change deniers, are for abortion rights and are usually socially liberal. According to the Hedgers, you should never vote because elections are always between the Ds and the Rs. I think (hope) that Bloomberg will flop and all his millions will be for naught.
Agreed about Hedges.
And conservatives have now moved so far to the right that government intrusion into the relationship between doctor and patient is considered conservative, and foreign policy is just another word for promulgation of American interests.
Carrie,
Civilized countries –e.g. Spain, Chile, Germany, Argentina –became places where the government tortured and killed people of the Left like you and me. If Trump keeps winning, that could very well be where we’re headed. When paramilitaries start killing journalists and labor leaders, and torturing activists, you and I are going long for the days when we were just “belittled” by centrist Democrats. People like you don’t seem to understand that there are far, far, far worse fates than neo-liberal government. This kind of myopia on the Left may be the death of our republic.
I will vote for any other neoliberal if I have to, but draw the line at Bloomberg. I teach history, my dear, and don’t appreciate being talked down to. I am well aware of what fascists can do. Thanks.
New York City survived 12 years of Bloomberg’s my-way-or-the-highway autocracy, then elected the most progressive candidate in the field.
The U.S. would survive Bloomberg.
I am not sure our democracy will survive eight years of Trump, naming as many far-right extremist judges to lifetime appointments as fast as Mitch McConnell can push them through.
Carrie, I apologize for the condescending tone. I still don’t understand why you would not vote for Bloomberg over trump. Do you really think Trump would be no worse? Or is it just spite?
This piece gives me new doubts about Bloomberg:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-02-18/op-ed-bloomberg-is-not-the-candidate-to-take-on-trump-heres-why
Carrie: Would you consider Bloomberg a patriot? CBK
Mate
The enormous (unlimited if Congress chooses not to exercise a check) power vested in the Presidency was/is a major (perhaps fatal) flaw in the US Constitution.
And the argument that “Yes, but the framers could not have known” doesn’t wash. The Constitution was supposed to provide for a way of dealing with eventualities that could not be foreseen. That was one of it’s primary purposes.
Given what the framers knew about Kings, it was actually very foolish (,stupid, really) to vest so much power in one individual.
My guess is that the Founders did not envision a corrupt and supine Senate.
Most (if not all) of the very worst things that have been done over the centuries by our government were caused and/or made worse by the President’s enormous power.
One individual should simply not be vested with so much power.
That’s just common sense and one would think that people who had just fought a revolution to get rid of the rule of a king would have recognized it.
But then one would be wrong.
“One individual should simply not be vested with so much power. That’s just common sense”
Well, even of those who oppose Trump, I think very few would have this common sense. And the Constitution was written 200 years ago. And the 20th century had the worst dictators ever. And billionaires have powers greater than most kings of history.
People love heroes, single individuals who save the world, so I think by nature, people seek out single individuals to look up to, to lead them. I think it’s time to make a difference between fairy tales and politics.
Impeachment is actually an exceedingly weak check on the power of the Presidency.
I suspect that at least some of the framers recognized that (probably the ones like Hamilton who wanted a very powerful President)
At least some of them had to know that it would be all but impossible to get a 2/3 majority for conviction which I suspect is actually the reason those calling for a “powerful executive” agreed to include the clause.
What does it take to get a “no confidence” vote in the British parliament?
And putting the Attorney General and US Justice Department under the President was a mistake of mammoth proportions.
It would have been much better if it had been a completely separate branch of government. Inefficient perhaps but that would undoubtedly have been a good thing.
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, most of the people who wrote the Constitution had actually NOT rejected the idea of an individual with supreme power.
The next Constitution should not assume anything good or noble about the president or any individual taking a public office.
A slow-moving, “inefficient” government is good: in most policies, we need careful debate and examination before accepted for the whole country. The only time when speedy decisions are to be made are when the country is attacked by a foreign country or inside forces.
My father was always comfortable as long as one party did not control all three branches of government. He was particularly happy to see the Congress split because it would take a lot of work to craft something that enough people could agree on and therefore less likely to be shortsighted. My father made his living in the financial industry, but one thing I know–he NEVER would have voted for Trump.
“I teach history, my dear, and don’t appreciate being talked down to. I am well aware of what fascists can do.”
Aware is not enough, and by a long shot. I think it’s a great idea to reduce the power of the president (or any individual) to nothing and if,sometimes in the future, only 1% of the population would go voting, it would show that people just wouldn’t find the post of the president important. But staying away from the polls now is simply a vote for Trump.
Just because we turn our backs to a speeding train doesn’t prevent the collision.
Bloomberg is proof of what Warren is trying to get through people’s thick heads. We have become a banana republic. Our politics are bought and sold. It’s all about the art of the corrupt deal.
So true.
And, of course, in Bloomberg the DNC has its DINO to the rescue.
BTW, another reason why we need Medicare for All. Thirty-six percent of American workers work in the gig economy and thus do not have healthcare through employers. Another 17.4 percent are part-time workers and also do not have healthcare through their employers. These include substitute teachers and adjunct faculty. But those part-time workers, as Lucy Ellmann’s character points out in the brilliant new novel Ducks, New Hampshire, don’t have part-time bodies.
I sometimes wonder how many people are holding onto their jobs (or shards of jobs) just to preserve some semblance of health insurance?
If we had some reliable safety net of health care for all, people might flee their jobs in waves… they’d head to the tree line and freedom.
And, maybe start innovative, small businesses or create amazing new inventions or write a great American novel….
Funny how business education has been starved or just plain eliminated in our high schools at the same time these alleged business masters of the universe have come to be handed the reins of power in our society.
I don’t think this era is so much about capitalism and business…it’s really about corporate control…huge corporations. And, technocracy.
Small towns, small businesses, small schools, really, individuals with minds and souls that are unique, we’re all in the cross hairs.
As I write this there’s a Mike Bloomberg ad playing on the TV behind me. MAS*H reruns and Mike, supposedly caring for us all.
Yeah, right.
My salary in the Buffalo Public Schools was 20% lower than the surrounding suburbs, but our one perk was inexpensive health insurance when we retired. If I lose my Blue Cross Blue Shield for a lesser plan, then all my financial sacrifice in working for thirty years in an urban area with disadvantaged children is just a joke. (I already had to live through four years of a frozen salary with no step increases and fifteen years of no raises).
“I sometimes wonder how many people are holding onto their jobs (or shards of jobs) just to preserve some semblance of health insurance?”
This is why many college profs don’t retire.
John Oliver thinks, no alternative to Medicare for all will work:
‘It would definitely be an improvement over what we have now. The problem is it would leave so much of our current insurance infrastructure, with all of its problems, intact. So that’s kind of like being offered either a shit sandwich or a slightly smaller shit sandwich with guac….frankly, the lack of guac wasn’t my main concern’
Obamacare was doomed from the start. (Doomed for the public, not the insurance and pharma industry which made out like banditos
It was written for — and in many cases BY — the insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry.
Everything after that is just window dressing.
SomeDAM Poet: WellPoint’s headquarters are in Indianapolis. I joined a protest, years ago. WellPoint was kicking off patients who had pre-existing conditions.
…………………..
It’s unsurprising that large health insurance companies are enjoying the fruits of mandatory Obamacare regulations, since they helped write them in the first place.
WellPoint’s performance will surely be celebrated by its former Vice President Liz Fowler, who wrote the 87-page white paper that was the foundation of Obamacare. After it was passed, Senator Max Baucus profusely thanked Fowler for being personally responsible for crafting the Affordable Health Care Act. Politico described her as a “major player” in getting the bill through Congress.
Look at Bloomberg’sFamily philanthropies. His “non-profit” education policies are not different from Bill and Melinda Gates. In fact they collaborate Bill send Mike big chunks of money. Both support the relining activities of GreatSchool.org. Mike supports mayoral control of education. This commentary is from his website
“Mike Bloomberg supports education reform throughout the United States. He personally backs pro-reform public officials who work to enact meaningful policy changes that will ensure accountability and high standards in schools. This work is grounded in the belief that the solutions required to improve education need broad coalitions that put students’ interests first.
To measure progress, this work focuses on increasing high school graduation and college enrollment rates as well as improving academic achievement. The work has been focused in states like Tennessee and Louisiana, cities like Washington, DC, and Indianapolis, Indiana, and other communities across the country. ”
If, in the last two decades, you have paying attention to educational policies and grants for FAILED reforms, you can see that Bloomberg is a seriously deep-pocketed disrupter, not a reformer. Bloomberg supports Achieve, the College Board, the Aspen Institute, Chiefs for Change among other organizations.
You can find an overview of his policy here.https://www.bloomberg.org/program/education/education-policy/
See also https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/bloomberg-family-foundation-bloomberg-philanthropies/
Bloomberg also proposed he would fire half of the teachers in NYC. He’s an authoritarian, autocrat with a smoother delivery as Trump
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/12/01/bloomberg-if-i-had-it-my-way-id-dump-half-of-nycs-teachers/
If we psych ourselves up so much against Bloomberg, how are we going to vote for him, if he becomes the alternative to emperor Trump?
Máté Wierdl: “…how are we going to vote for him, if he becomes the alternative to emperor Trump?”
That would be a case of voting for the lesser of two evils. There is a chance that Bloomberg would do some good but we know Trump does nothing but destroy. He is pure evil.
We learn to hold our nose
“We learn to hold our nose”
That’s what Chomsky says, at about 3 min into the video, too: no matter what, we need to vote even if we have to hold our noses, because voting against Trump matters.
We need to make every effort NOW to ensure that Bloomberg does not get the nomination.
If that involves psyching ourselves up against Bloomberg, so be it.
Frankly, in think psyching ourselves up FOR someone like Sanders is much better, at any rate.
Bloomberg owns a data collection and analynics company. He and Gates are of the same mind.
cx:analytics
Maybe he will see the error of his ways if he will let us educate him.
Nah. He’s a true believer. He recites each and every slogan with perfect fidelity. I had forgotten some of the older ones. They’re vintage 1990’s.
We’re just going to start at 2000 and play the two decades of ed reform over again. By the time he’s in his second term Michelle Rhee will be back, but this time, with vouchers!
Super exciting for public school students. They can now spend 4 years being unfavorably compared to children who attend private schools, instead of children who attend charter schools, so in that way it’s innovative.
I’m always an optimist. Believe it or not, when Trump was elected I was hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as it sounded. Unfortunately, it was even worse than I could imagine.
Don’t count on that! Bloomberg thinks because he invented Bloomberg terminals that he knows everything about everything- especially education. There is no way this pompous .01%er will admit a mistake. In his mind he’s the smartest guy in the room.
He also blamed the 2008 financial crisis on the end of redlining in which the banks were not allowed to refuse mortgages based on race. In Bloomberg’s world the banks weren’t racist enough!
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bloomberg-ending-redlining-caused-financial-crisis-952311/
Bloomberg has a terrible record. His positions on some issues (not all) are so far from the moderate Democratic mainstream that he would not have any chance to win the primary if voters were voting for the candidate they preferred to be the next president. Bloomberg’s candidacy would be treated as a bigger joke than de Blasio’s (who actually did embrace policies that most Americans from progressive to moderates actually like).
But I feel as if this outcome is blowback from 2017 in which the false propaganda that embraced the idiotic idea that the democrat lost to Trump because “only XXX” can defeat Trump became completely legitimized both in the media and by some both in the left and right. I thought it was very dangerous when it was repeated all during 2017 and I thought it would come back to haunt those who embraced it on the left.
Polls before a candidate is victimized by all the lies and false characterizations meted out by people who have no problem lying to win are nonsensical. They are meaningless. According the same polls that now say that Bloomberg is a great candidate to defeat Trump, Trump was going down to defeat against she who must not be named. But then she who must not be named was the victim of months of smears and attacks from the right that were legitimized by those on the left. And every single poll taken by actual voters confirmed that most of them had embraced the “corrupt” and “dishonest” democrat meme and Trump won. That right wing propaganda was legitimized because it was being repeated not just by the far right but by people on the left and moderates.
That is going to happen again, no matter who the candidate is.
I wish there was a way for progressive voters and moderate voters and all voters who embrace honest debate to shut down this propaganda to de-legitimize those attacks. I despise Cory Booker’s policies, but I thought during the debates he made an effort to talk about that whenever the moderator asked questions designed to reinforce the right wing talking points and have the candidate’s primary opponents reinforce those right wing talking points by repeating them. To their credit, most of the candidates were quite good about avoiding that. (And one reason I started disliking Klobuchar more is that I heard her repeating some of those right wing talking points when criticizing another candidate and giving those right wing talking points full legitimacy since “even Klobuchar”, a democrat, knew they were true.)
If all voters in the Democratic primary vote for the candidate they WANT to be the Democratic nominee to take on Trump, that candidate will defeat Trump if they aren’t smeared with lies. The only reason to vote for Mike Bloomberg is because you like Bloomberg’s policies more than any other candidate’s policies. And very few Democrat primary voters do.
National polls are somewhat flawed, which I hope has inflated Bloomberg’s potential. Pollsters often use land lines to conduct their surveys since it costs less to call, and they tend reach older people. I hope Michael Moore and Cornel West are getting Bernie “rumble ready.”
Bernie has amazing energy and stamina, but he’s an older guy. At some point, this pace is going to hurt him. I’m worried for him. And for my country.
Feel the Bern.
I share your concern.
I’m far more concerned about something else.
The billionaires despise him and will presumably go to pretty much any length to ensure he never sets foot in the White House.
YUP. See my note below about how the DNC is trying, again, to fix the election.
Personnel IS policy, If Bernie can rebuild our government institutions & public systems in one term & doesn’t need congress approval for cabinet positions. I don’t care how old he is- he can do quite a lot that shifts the policy agenda to serve the public good.
Think of the types of appointments he would make to DoEd, Treasury, EPA, NIH, all of the agencies that are in place to help average citizens. He’s not going to allow our institutions to be captured by industry.
Every president needs Senate approval for Cabinet officers.
“I’m worried for him. ”
Don’t. Is it useful at this point? If we worry, other people will worry too. Let’s think about good stuff. Like who is going to be Bernie’s VP choice?
Good advice, Mate!
I wonder if he’ll resurrect Michelle Rhee. We can play the whole 2000 to 2010 ed reform decade over again. It shouldn’t be hard to get the gang back together. They all play musical chairs going from ed reform lobbying and think tanking to government and then back again. Bring back Duncan, and Rhee and Campbell Brown – is the Edison guy still around? He’s probably looking for work.
I hope they’ll spare public school students the massive budget cuts they favor this time, however. None of them noticed, public school students always being the dead last priority in this “movement”, but public schools never fully recovered from their last round of innovative disruption.
Can we skip putting students on a plane while they’re building the plane this time? They started the Common Core, put every public school student in the country on it, then abandoned it to all chase vouchers. The public school students were left only with the testing. They can come back and get that. We could have accomplished their goal by just moving the pass score up 20 points.
So, the difficult issue here is, does “Blue no matter who” cover purple DINOs as well? I suppose it does. Aie yie yie. Sickening.
Personally, I think all the “Blue no matter who” talk is a complete waste.
First, it’s completely speculative that Bloomberg will win. Based on what? A couple looks that he came in second on, far behind Sanders, I might add.
Second, it does NOT convince people on the sidelines to vote Blue no matter who”. In fact, I would say it has just the opposite effect. People do not like it when pundits and other “omniscient geniuses” tell them how they “must” vote. It smacks of hubris to the high heavens and is extremely undemocratic.
This Blue no matter who ” stuff is enough to give one the blues.
A couple POLLS
Not “looks”
Right now, we are applying the expression “Blue no matter who” to Bloomberg, but in the past, we have used it, perhaps less vehemently, to discourage a repeat of 2016 where we lost because people stayed home (one of many reasons). We now know how incompetent and corrupt Trump is. To stay home because our “favorite son” doesn’t win the nomination would be more than shooting ourselves in the foot. Heck, we would be forming a circular firing squad.
True enough, but telling people they must vote Blue no matter who,” is surely not the way to convince them.
As I said, it is far more likely to have the opposite effect.
And it really is a complete waste of time to be speculating about a Bloomberg win of the nomination at this point.
In fact, I d have to call it what it is: dumb
One of things that got Trump elected was the smug “you are not smart enough to decide whom to vote for so I am going to tell you” attitude displayed by so many media pundits and others.
And the media pundits (some of the dumbest people on the planet, at Fox, MSNBC, CNN, NpR, NY Tiimes , Washington Post,etc)are all hard at work telling us again whom to vote for (often couched in “who is most electable” bs based on idiotic polls)
It it did not have such serious ramifications, it would’ve hilarious.
Dumb and dumber: Sean Enmity, Rachel Madcow, Chris Hachoos, Upchuck Todd, etc, etc
And then of course, we have Thomas Treedman at the Ny Times, who is always good for a few laughs (like a cat up a tree who can’t get down)
After the democratic nominee has been chosen, “blue no matter what” is appropriate. If we want to dress it “vote against Trump”, fine, but it needs to be done, imo.
Mate
There are multiple ways that one can address the subject.
One can argue quite rationally and convincingly that one should vote for the Democratic nominee who is better than Trump but one should base the comparison on facts about the candidate running against Trump.
But that is quite different from TELLING someone that they should “vote Blue. No matter who”
What does that even mean? If another Adolf Hitler won the “Blue” nomination, should I vote Blue , no matter who? (And no, I don’t believe Trump is as bad as Adolf Hitler)
And to repeat the Vote blue no matter who mantra this far out in the nomination process is not just ridiculous but counterproductive because as I indicated , it just turns people off and tunes them out.
Quite frankly, I can’t blame them for their response.
Of course, I am not telling anybody to vote blue. But, when the time comes (and Hitler is not the blue candidate), one can say something along the lines of ” Trump needs to be voted out of office”.
Too bad. He’s the worst candidate by far but the most likely to beat Trump.😪😥😥
Sent from my iPhone
>
I don’t agree. What happened in the last election is that a LOT of Democrats stayed home because they weren’t interested in voting for a DINO. And some even crossed over because they were suckered by the Trump/Bannon fake populism (the “We’re going to create a 2-trillion dollar infrastructure program to employ forgotten Americans” line of bs). If the DNC forces another DINO on the electorate, people will stay home again. We need a freaking actual Democrat for a change.
Mike, take off the Democrat costume and go run against Trump in the Repugnican primate-aries, where you belong.
Spot on, Bob Shepherd.
If it’s Bloomberg, then the base will not show up in strength.
Why bother?
“What happened in the last election is that a LOT of Democrats stayed home because they weren’t interested in voting for a DINO.”
No, this is not true. If anything, HRC was one of the most progressive general election Democratic candidates that I got to vote for since I was old enough to vote, and that includes Jimmy Carter, who embraced a far more conservative platform and world view than HRC.
What happened in the last election is that a LOT of Democrats stayed home because they were fooled by right wing propaganda that was given a legitimacy it should not have been given by those in the media and on the left that HRC was the most corrupt and right wing DINO candidate in history. (Plus an abhorrent effort to disenfranchise traditional democratic voters by striking them off the rolls that was ignored by moderates and progressives in their rush to place the blame entirely on the losing candidate while ignoring everything else going on.)
And that dishonest right wing propaganda is going to be directed at every single candidate from Bernie Sanders through Mike Bloomberg as soon as the Republicans decide a candidate is dangerous to Trump’s re-election.
The only question that remains is will the Democrats help the republicans do their dirty work. And that means repeating the smears against whoever wins the nomination and giving it legitimacy because you preferred another candidate.
HRC’s supporters did not jump on the bandwagon to reinforce all those anti-Obama memes that the right wing used to try to smear him and those anti-Obama memes got no traction when they were pushed ONLY by Republicans and discredited by all Democrats. If the supporters of the losing primary candidates begin repeating those right wing memes and giving them legitimacy, then whoever does win the primary will lose the general election. It doesn’t matter whether that candidate is Bernie or Biden or Bloomberg or Warren.
That’s why everyone should ignore the pundits and just vote and work hard for which primary candidate you prefer. Ignore those telling you that XXX or YYY can’t win, but only ZZZ can defeat Trump. Vote on the issues, not on fear. But no matter who wins the primary, don’t help the Republicans do their dirty work by repeating their dishonest propaganda.
Those who are rightly upset at the nasty and dishonest coverage that Bernie Sanders gets from mainstream media should be sympathetic to the way that HRC supporters felt in 2016 when she was victimized by the same thing. Bernie can easily win the general election, but NOT if he is subject to the same attacks that HRC got and if supporters of losing primary candidates help legitimize those lies by repeating them.
What we also saw in the last election was the failure of the electoral college. Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million votes—that’s 4.5% of the total number of ballots for Trump and Hillary.
I only listen to NPR, and they seem to take every opportunity to criticize Sanders.
Mate About your NPR comment: Are you suspicious of that? CBK
Sometimes they are outright antagonistic towards Sanders. They emphasize “people’s worries” about his “socialist” problems. They do attach the socialist adjective to him.
I would not call a candidate who supported the Iraq War and surrounds herself with advisors from Goldman, Sachs “progressive.” I would call her a supporter of the status quo wearing a progressive suit.
Bob, “progressive” is always relative to the surroundings. I am not sure even Sanders would be called progressive in some European countries.
Traditional Democratic voters stayed home in 2016: https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2016/11/17/the-non-voters-who-decided-the-election-trump-won-because-of-lower-democratic-turnout/#4a3777f453ab
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/registered-voters-who-stayed-home-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/
See that stats in the two articles I posted.
“I would not call a candidate who supported the Iraq War progressive”.
Really, it seems beneath you to mischaracterize this.
HRC voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. She was wrong. She admitted she was wrong. But a UN Report had blamed the deaths of 500,000 children in Iraq on economic sanctions. 500,000 children! It’s so easy with 20/20 hindsight to judge. If the removal of Hussein had led to a real democracy in Iraq, that would have been good decision.
FDR could have stayed out of WW II and “saved” important white American lives. Hindsight is 20/20. Maybe Charles Lindbergh would have been better and instead of the New Deal, we became the American of “white people uber alles” like Lindbergh wanted. Like Trump wants.
Judging candidates on decisions when there is NO decision that was good instead of the entirety of the progressive things they support seems really off.
It’s no different than that dishonest attack on Bernie Sanders about his support of foreign leaders who have caused the deaths of so many people in their country. It is no different than the attack on John Kerry who also was portrayed incorrectly as an evil warmonger who wanted to kill as many foreign children as possible and that’s why he voted for the Iraqi War.
If you don’t allow any nuance for John Kerry or HRC, then you should expect no nuance for Bernie Sanders. If you judge a candidate not on their entire record but on what the right wing is smearing him as, then you should expect the blowback when it hits your own candidate.
Why is it so hard to debate the issues without trying to attack other Democratic candidates with smears that are dishonest and simply help the right wing win.
Ah, now I am dishonest. Nice.
Traditional Democratic voters are the ones who would have been MOST likely to vote for HRC if she had not been smeared by the right, with lots of help from the left who gave those smears a legitimacy they should not have had.
They will stay home again if Bernie gets smeared the same way and those smears are given legitimacy because “even Democrats” acknowledge those smears are true. Just like the mischaracterization of HRC I just saw as some right wing DINO and warmonger. They will also stay home if the far right is able to disenfranchise most of those traditional democratic voters!!!
There is a double standard where a candidate who was victimized by terrible smears gets blamed for her own defeat and another candidate who gets victimized by terrible smears claims the election was stolen from him and doesn’t get attacked and demeaned and told it was all his fault for supporting those evil things he supported.
Sorry, but HRC was offering some of the most progressive policies of any candidate since I voted. Period. LBJ was wrong about Viet Nam but had he been defeated by Goldwater, this country would have been much less progressive.
The young and black voters didn’t come out for Clinton. She still won the popular vote. But that doesn’t change the fact that if turnouts in those groups had been what they were for Obama, she would have won the Electoral College too.
NPR definitely has it in for Sanders and has had it in for him for a long time (going back to 2016)
At one point, Sanders pointed out that the Washington Post was running lots of antiSanders articles and indicated that might have something to do with the fact that Jeff Bezos (whom Sanders has been critical of and whom Sanders pretty much singlehandedly forced to raise his Amazon workers pay to $15 an hour) owns the Post.
NPR s Domenico Montanaro compared what Sanders was doing (quite legitimately) to what Trump does when he calls the Post fake news.
That’s just one example.
Before the latest Marist poll which has Sanders ahead by so much that even Montanaro can’t deny it, Montanaro was consistently downplaying Sanders showing in polls. Montanaro would play the dishonest game of quoting the poll result without mentioning the margin of error. If the latter wasn’t taken into account, Sanders was even with Biden for some time on many polls but you would never have known it by listening to NPR.
At any rate, NPR should not be in the business of choosing our candidates for us because they also have some of the dumbest people on the planet working for them.
Congress dramatically cut funding for CPB, NPR, and PBS. They are, more than ever, dependent upon large corporate donors. And that’s why their coverage of Education Deform/Distruption tends to be on the side of the Deformers/Disrupters. And that’s also why they consistently bash Sanders.
Here, in Memphis, which is on the TN-AR border, the Waltons are named every single day on NPR as their supporter. Gates is also a supporter—at least here.
Bob Shepherd,
I am not calling you dishonest, as I am a big admirer. I was incredibly disappointed to read a post where you repeated dishonest attacks on HRC.
Just like I assume you would be incredibly disappointed if I started posting the kind of attacks that Megan McArdle posted about Bernie Sanders embracing horrible foreign leaders and using that “honest fact” to imply something incredibly DIShonest about Bernie.
We should be better than this. I support Bernie because of his policies. I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primary because I liked his policies a little better, but I still recognized that HRC was running on a very progressive platform and I was excited to support her when she won in what was a primary that was just as “fair” as the 6 previous Democratic primaries where sometimes my favorite candidate won and sometimes my favorite candidate did not win.
This attempt to demonize candidates in the democratic primary this year should be beneath all of us. There is plenty of legitimize criticism to be made. But saying that HRC was some DINO warmonger is like claiming Bernie is some dictator-loving Commie. It isn’t true.
I despise Bloomberg and there is plenty of legitimate criticism of his policies to make. I have advocated over and over on this blog that we should all shut down the idea that voting for anyone “because he is the only candidate who can defeat Trump” is ridiculous. We should vote for the candidate whose policies we like better and make an argument for those policies. And “Elizabeth Warren is a fake progressive” or “HRC is and always was a DINO” are – to me – just as wrong as claiming that Bernie’s support of some horrible foreign leader justify a smear about Bernie’s entire character and what he believes.
I voted for Secretary Clinton. I was not happy about this, but I did. I suspect that you saw tonight’s debate. Mayor Mike got a lesson or two. He was savaged. This does not bode will for his viability in the general election.
Fingers crossed that the debate makes it impossible for MB to buy the election with saturation of TV and slick ads
This seems likely. The bloom is off the Bloomberg. LOL.
I like many of Clinton’s social policy stances, but she’s always sounded to me like a neoliberal when it comes to economic policy. This was the woman who would not support a federal minimum wage of $15.00 an hour but who came around to saying, OK, $12.00 an hour, but localities should be able to raise it to $15.00. She’s an incredibly smart and capable person. Unlike the buffoon in office right now, she really knows her stuff. But she’s right of center economically, and she’s a hawk. Neither is attractive to me.
But water under the bridge now. Going forward, I agree with you. We have to unite behind the Democratic candidate to defeat Trump and McConnell and their ilk (by flipping the Senate). But right now, we’re in the primaries, battling for the soul of the Democratic Party.
“The young and black voters didn’t come out for Clinton. ”
Yes, and African-American did not come out for Bernie in the primaries in 2016. Not sure what your point is. That they would have come out in the general election for him?
Those voters didn’t come out because they were targeted by right wing propaganda and victimized by a concerted effort to disenfranchise them.
That is going to happen again in 2020 no matter who the candidate is. The so-called “smears” that Bernie Sanders has experienced so far are nothing to what he is going to get because he will get the same treatment that Gore, Kerry, and HRC got and that has not even begun yet! It is going to paint Bernie as a racist to African-Americans and as a dictator-loving woman-hating candidate to women, as a Commie to moderates, etc. etc. etc.
I agree about the propaganda. This worked very well–Putin and Trump’s coordinating disinformation campaign.
Bob
NPR went to the dark side decades ago.
Read Matthew Murray’s now defunct blog NPRCheck, which acted to check their increasingly right wing BS (at least on the most important matters like war).
What bugs me more than anything else is that the NPR “hosts” (makes them sound like they have parasites) are so smug and condescending, even toward their listeners.
They used to allow comments on their website but disallowed them when too many of them were pointing out their lies and omissions.
I doubt that Trump has read a book in his entire adult life. The man is PROFOUNDLY ignorant.
People like Scott “The Warmonger” Simon whose calls for “Humanitarian Bombing” of Iraq were just grotesque.
Simon never did apologize for being read wrong about his cheerleading for Bush and Cheney.
I doubt be even. Insiders that he was.
The man is insufferably smug.
I hope his daughters discover some day what a Faker Quaker he is.
Humanitarian bombing. Quite the expression, that one.
And Domenico Montanaro is definitely one of the prominent smug nitwits on NPR.
He does not even try to hide his anti-Sanders bent.
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/19/807047941/poll-sanders-rises-but-socialism-isnt-popular-with-most-americans
Montanaro just cant let his listeners decide for themselves.
Like so many others at nPR, Montannaro just HAS to tell them what to think, who is electable and how to vote.
Pathetic.
It really is sad. It must drive these people crazy to have Amy Goodman still doing her thing on NPR.
Here’s more on Scott Simon
https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/04/scott-simon-npr-the-empire/
But you’re right, Ms. Gross. He’s the worst candidate by far on the Democratic side.
Republicans gave their party to Donald Trump and now Democrats will sell theirs to Michael Bloomberg.
I suppose that’s smarter, right? You’d think voters would at least get some small token out of the deal. Maybe there will be hats, but blue instead of the Trump red ones. Does he have a slogan and more importantly does it fit on a ball cap?
I read this in an article on AlterNet:
In a legal complaint against Bloomberg, one employee said that Bloomberg, upon hearing that a female employee was having trouble finding child care, yelled, “It’s a fking baby! All it does is eat and st! It doesn’t know the difference between you and anyone else! All you need is some black who doesn’t even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building!”
It strikes me that the support of Bernie and Warren might force the national committee in the direction away from school reform if it will help elect the candidate. A progressive agenda will probably not go through right now in the divided electorate, but some planks that move the needle in that direction might help. What if the Bloomberg campaign was made to see the power in a declaration of opposition to the practice of standardized testing? He cannot really get much done one way or another about this, but he can get some votes by talking bad about it. There are votes also for a political leader who will come out for health care. Perhaps there are not the needed votes for change in congress, but these votes will be brought to the polls with certain stances that will land power in the hands of democrats. This is the first step.
What if the Bloomberg campaign was made to see the power in a declaration of opposition to the practice of standardized testing?
Bloomberg is Mr. Standardized Testing. It is more likely that Trump would reverse himself on immigration policy, announce an aid package for resettlement of asylum seekers in the U.S. and a path to citizenship for all undocumented workers here. It is probably equally likely that my neighbor’s bulldog would start reciting long passages from Dante.
Brilliant bulldog!
The Democratic National Committee (the DNC) set rules for the minimal amount of grassroots fundraising support that a candidate would have to get in order to qualify to participate in its debates. Their stated reasoning was that only candidates who were supported by large numbers of people should be allowed to debate. This rule, they said, makes the process democratic.
But their preferred candidate–the one supported by wealthy Democratic donors–Status Quo Joe Biden–lost in two primaries, and they needed another DINOcrat to run in his place. SO, THEY JUST SUSPENDED THEIR OWN RULE TO ALLOW MIKE BLOOMBERG TO PARTICIPATE IN THE DEBATES.
This is the same kind of crap that they pulled to ensure that another right-of-center Democrat, Hillary Clinton, would win the nomination. THEY ARE DOING EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO FIX THE ELECTION TO PLEASE RICH DONORS, who are terrified of Sanders and of Warren.
This is not Democracy. It shows what many of us have decided to be the truth about the United States today, that “the fix is in.” A thousand curses upon these people! They are subverting our Democratic system and do not deserve to be called Democrats. “Democracy” is Greek for “rule by the people,” not for “rule by the rich people.”
Trump does not even need to subvert the democratic (and Democratic) process because Democratic party officials do it for him.
Bob . . . and Bernie is oh-so aware of it. CBK
I think it is important for Bloomberg to be in the debates. He SHOULD have to defend his reprehensible record and he has been given a very soft pass by the media. It will be great if the other candidates are prepared to make good arguments for why Bloomberg is unsuitable and force him to defend it.
I wish all the other candidates would turn to Bloomberg and say “the only thing you keep saying is vote for me because I can defeat Trump, but that’s what the same experts said about Hillary Clinton and if that’s the only reason to vote for you, it’s a bad one.”
This is a chance for Bernie to remind primary voters to ignore the pundits just like Trump voters ignored the pundits in 2016.
I wonder how much debates matter in changing voters’ minds.
But what of the DNC changing its rules to accommodate Bloomberg? Isn’t that reprehensible?
Bob,
Has Bernie Sanders objected to that rule change? Maybe the DNC got the approval of the other candidates? I have not heard any of them objecting although I admit that I could have missed it.
If Bernie Sanders isn’t objecting, then why do people assume it was for some nefarious purpose instead of intended to HELP the real Democratic candidates who have not had a chance to challenge any of Bloomberg’s policies and force him to defend them.
I suspect that Bernie and Elizabeth Warren wanted him up there.
How big is bloomberg’s ego, including his capacity for disdain…..hoI can imagine Bernie winning the nomination, but being given a scary chase by Bloomberg…..who will size up the situation and decide….since there is no way this socialist will be able to beat Trump…..It is his duty to jump in as a third party candidate….and in November…..just as the polls will be predicting……..the 20th amendment will come into play, because none of the three will have a majority of the electors……a new congress supposedly will be in place by January 4th…..but there is a sentence in the 20th amendment allowing the date to be changed…..somehow, each state will be allowed 1 vote……It might take 26 votes to elect a new president, or re-elect trump. Double check me on these details, please…. try to convince me that Bloomberg will opt to support Bernie instead of trying to run as a third party —keeping in mind how big an ego he has.
What a horrifying prospect!
The DNC chant
Bloomberg is our guy
And Sanders should just die
Cuz Michael is our man
And Bernie is a sham
Orrrr, SomeDAM:
&–suggested ending for your poem (which doesn’t rhyme, but then nothing these days makes sense, eh?):
Four more years! Four more years!
While this year I am prepared to not only hold my nose, but use a clothespin on it (truly “the lesser of 2 evils?”), I am absolutely CERTAIN that the majority/die-hard Berners will either–
1. Write in his name if Bloomberg’s the candidate or
2. Not vote at all.
&…that’s an AWFUL lot of people (or an awful LOT of people, dependent upon which word would best be emphasized).
I will cite a million reasons why Bloomberg should not be the Democratic candidate.
He was the Republican mayor of NYC for 12 years.
He is an autocrat.
He is a plutocrat.
He has no idea how the 99% live or what they do.
He lacks empathy.
His record on policing, sexism, racism, and education are awful.
He buys whatever and whoever he wants; most of his endorsements will come from people who got money from him in one way or another.
But if he is the candidate, I will vote for him.
Whew! Ok Trump is so bad (rotten to the core bad) someone else has to take the presidency from him. Your last line is not your best in my view. America vote for someone that can topple him because the world needs a balanced voice as wealth transitions to China and India. (Both flawed but a balanced stance from America is more necessary than ever. Humankind must find intelligent giants as leaders instead of nationalistic xenophobes.)
What do you want to balance? Sanders’ plan simply wants to balance out the social differences between Europe and the US.
Many Trump supporters I’ve talked to cite Trump’s business acumen as their reason for supporting him. Business has huge prestige in this country; government service has little. Bloomberg has Trump beat on this count. I think he’d grab a huge chunk of the Independent vote and win.
I once taught two kids who were very close to Mike Bloomberg. He’s crass but he has a soul. He’s light years from Trump’s level of malevolence.
It’s truly astonishing, given the actual record, that people would be impressed by Trump’s “business acumen.” Multiple bankruptcies, multiple complete business failures, a long history of skirting the law and dealing with mobsters. If he had simply invested money Daddy left him in an index fund, he would be worth far more than he is today.
“I’m not a businessman, but I play one on TV” is more like it.
My husband found this web site that perhaps explains Trump’s appeal:
https://www.theauthoritarians.org/
Well, this guy pretty much nails it, doesn’t he? Authoritarian following is FEAR BASED. These people want a strongman because they are afraid. And this need is so strong that they will attach even to a pretty obviously fake strongman, like Trump. And almost all the strongmen are, in fact, fake strongmen. They are the schoolyard bully who goes whimpering home to Mommy the first time someone actually stands up to him. Putin is the real deal. A classic strongman. Trump, as in everything else, is a fake version of the type.
Bob Shepherd: Authoritarian following is FEAR BASED.
I’ve figured that out just by the things my brother believes. President Trump is the best president this country has ever had.
Gays are an abomination to God. The military is saving canned goods so that one day they will come and start killing Americans. He keeps a gun to protect his family against the military that will come to destroy his home. Obama was the anti-Christ who will destroy the U.S. Obama was killing Americans in FEMA camps. Pope Francis is in league with the devil to rule the world. The head of the UN is in league with Satan to create a one world order run by Satan. Jesus will come a second time and pull Christians like him back to heaven while everyone else will burn in hell for an eternity. Poor people should not get free Medicaid because Jesus wants them to get a job. Liberals kill people.
I am supposed to listen to Hannity and Rush L to ‘learn something’.
His beliefs are pure FEAR. Rush L spouts anger and hatred. I can’t imagine carrying all of that around and still functioning.
Carol, your brother needs help. I have a crazy brother but not that crazy.
dianeravitch: It is hard for me to understand why he is so far off on on many things. He lives in a different state from me and currently isn’t responding to emails or contact unless it is for an emergency. He got fed up with the fake news that I was sending him.
I spoke to him fairly recently on one sort of ’emergency’ topic and he came across as nice as always.
How can two people raised in the same home be as far apart? I left home in 1967 to travel the world in the Peace Corps. I came back for a few months and then left to go to the Chicagoland area.
I have no idea how he picked up all of these thoughts. I think the internet is to blame. He is a Baptist but said that members of his church don’t believe what he does.
I continue to be shocked at his beliefs.
What a catalog!!! It must be terrible to live with those fears!!!
The quintessential fake strongman is the Wizard of Oz
Pay no attention to that serial predator and money launderer behind the curtain! LMAO!!!
speduktr: Thanks for the article. I passed it on to my friends who can’t stand the Orange Moron.
Not only does it explain Trump’s staying power, but it says something about how all of us tend to choose our “truth.”
I agree with you, Ponderosa, that Bloomberg, unlike Trumpty Dumpty, is not an incompetent. Wrong about a lot of things. But not incompetent. Not a moron, like Trump.
“SCOOP … MIKE BLOOMBERG is airing another national TV ad tying himself to closely BARACK OBAMA.”
Yup. After all, back in 2008 a Broad Foundation report quoted Eli Broad having said:
“With the election of Barack Obama, our stars have aligned.”
Slow and steady wins the race. Lost in the Bloomberg surge—has any candidate other than Bernie not had a brief rise and fall?— is the fact that Sanders now has a lead, a double digit lead in the polls. Joe Bye-den? Mayor Pete StillCan’tPronounceHisLastName? Amy OneGoodDebate? Now it’s Mayor Mikey StopNFrisk, Mayor CommonCore? Another billionaire? Ha!
We’ll see him attempting to defend his sexism, his racism, maybe his bald faced hatred of organized labor, maybe his desire to fire half of teachers, maybe even his autocratic rule on Big Gulp sodas on the debate stage tomorrow night. Mayor Mike hates the 99%, and no amount of ad spending will hide it in the long run, when he runs for the highest office in the land. Bloomberg is a talking pineapple, all the flash in the pan hares are going to eat him, and the thoughtfully, carefully planning Senator Bernie Sanders will win the race.
Every billionaire is feeling the Bern today.
LeftCoastTeacher: Mayor Mike hates the 99%, and no amount of ad spending will hide it in the long run,
You have more faith in the intelligence of people than I do. I’ve been reading comments on other sites and a number of them, including from the NYT, talk about how good Bloomberg would be as president.
If the DNC promotes Biden or Bloomberg how many people will be intelligent enough to know and vote better? Feel the BERN.
If people were innately intelligent, we wouldn’t have an idiot as president, nor would he have ratings in the mid-40s after all the horrible things he has said and done.
I’ve met many people, including some of my middle school students affected by Instagram, who are swayed by the Bloomberg ads, but I keep in mind that only a fraction of citizens vote. There are many people who eat junk food because they’re swayed by ads, but do those people read about nutrition much? Voters invest more than the average American. Bernie has built a very solid grassroots campaign since 2015. He can and likely will win.
I must also argue that 2020 is different than 2016.
Trump is a lot of things but an idiot assuredly is not one of them.
That is a HUGE mistake people made and keep making and is one of the reasons Trump managed to go from Reality TV host to President.
The DNC and main stream media built him up as a buffoon, thinking be would easily be defeated.
Obviously, did not work out the way they planned.
An idiot would not have been able to accomplish the dismantlement of government agencies in such short order. That’s something smart Republicans have been trying — and failed — to do for decades.
If one wants to see real idiots, just turn on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, etc or watch DNC head Perez or former head Debbie Wasserman Shultz for five minutes.
Perez is so stupid that he doesn’t even know climate change is something most Democrats care about
Mother Jones on Perez and climate change
When members of the Democratic National Committee meet in San Francisco later this month, they will likely consider a resolution introduced by DNC Chair Tom Perez this week that activists say would kill chances of a formal, DNC-sponsored debate devoted to climate change.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/tom-perez-introduced-a-resolution-that-could-kill-a-climate-debate/
SomeDAM: Trump is not an idiot? This is the man who thought that Belgium was a city. The one who thought that Alabama was on the coast. The one who says that climate change is just weather and that his intuition is better than science. The guy whom Mattis described as having the undertanding of a fifth- or sixth-grader. The one Tillerson called “a ****ing moron.” The one who had to ask an aide what happened at Pearl Harbor. The one who thinks that China pays the tariffs we place on Chinese goods. The one whom staffers brief using pictures because he doesn’t listen or read. The one who refers to the “Prince of Whales.” The guy who inherited tons of money, ran his businesses into bankruptcy, and then had to turn to money laundering for Russian mobsters to dig himself out. The one for whom Nunberg and Stone had to cook up the idea of the wall because he couldn’t remember to talk about immigration in his speeches. The one who can’t speak his own freaking language grammatically. The one whose speeches have a fourth grade reading level. I’m with Tillerson on this. The guy is a moron. But he’s a useful moron to the rapacious folks gathered around him.
“Trump is not an idiot?”
He is street smart, and he has practiced his craft all his life. He is very good at self-promoting and convincing people to do his bidding. He is uneducated but in his “profession”, education in the arts or sciences is not needed.
Actually, Trump is the perfect example for what the disruptors want out of education and how much of that is against of what we view as the purpose of education. Disruptors are strict pragmatists who want to equip students with “life-skills” starting at age 3, while we think of basic education as a route to get to know the world around us.
There are always much more people who want to be happy than people who want power over others. But the happiness seeking people need to learn how to fend off the power hungry ones. Our main weapon is democracy and we should not underestimate the other side’s skills to take our weapon away. In our battle, Shakespeare, da Vinci or Galileo play no role, imo, Once we won, we need to make sure, we protect our weapon much better.
Agree about protection of that weapon!!! Well said, Mate! Though I will quibble about the Shakespeare, da Vinci, and Galileo. Those models of defiance and subterfuge. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/06/tyrant-shakespeare-on-power-stephen-greenblatt-review
“Though I will quibble about the Shakespeare, da Vinci, and Galileo. Those models of defiance and subterfuge. ”
My impression is that few people in the business or political circles would say “I got my inspiration from da Vinci” or “I learnt to be defiant from reading about Galileo.” or “I’d never want to be a rich and powerful sob as described by Shakespeare”.
As I said, I think the destructors want to convince the masses that their survival is at stake, and education is an important tool for survival. Of course, when you are in survival mode, you rarely think about art, scientific theories, dramas. You want to learn about tools which clearly help you to get a good job and avoid unemployment.
Makes sense
We don’t need another billionaire president who hates Muslims and loves Rudy Giuliani. [He gave money to Rudy’s presidential campaign.] Bloomberg buys what he wants. This is not Democracy.
…………………………………………………..
Mike Bloomberg has a terrible past. Will his money stop scrutiny of it? | Zaid Jilani
The former New York mayor championed stop and frisk as well as Muslim surveillance programs
During his tenure as mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg oversaw one of the most discriminatory surveillance programs in our nation’s history. His police department’s “Demographics Unit” mapped out Muslim American communities and infiltrated and spied on everything from kebab shops to Muslim student whitewater rafting trips.
Not only was the program offensive to American values – even the then New Jersey Republican governor, Chris Christie, an ally of President Trump’s, was outraged upon learning of it – it did nothing to keep New Yorkers safe. The Demographics Unit’s work did not generate a single terror lead.
But Bloomberg himself has always been unapologetic, insisting the program was justified…
There’s plenty of other reasons for Democrats to be skeptical of Bloomberg. For one, he is only a part-time member of their party, having served as a Republican mayor of New York City. He endorsed George W Bush and the Iraq war, and gave money to Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. He tried to keep Elizabeth Warren out of the Senate by supporting the Republican senator Scott Brown. He spent millions of dollars re-electing Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, who oversaw the state’s failed response to the Flint water crisis. As recently as 2018, he was funding some GOP congressional campaigns…
If he became president, he would not only control the world’s most powerful government office, he would be able to tap into a $50bn fortune to bend both major parties to his will…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/18/michael-bloomberg-civil-rights-record-is-atrocious?CMP=share_btn_link
Regarding the Bloomberg ads, I have one word: saturation. He’s approaching it here in California. Advertising too much turns people away from the product.
Goliath is Bloomberg. David is us.
I will be writing Bernie another check now. Not him, us.
Should Bloomberg succeed in buying his nomination we may be faced with another rich tyrannical candidate. Although his history dictates otherwise, it is possible that Bloomberg may rise to the Office. The future is uncertain. What we are sure of is the most eminent threat is the current tyrant. The reason the GOP has been so successful is because they are united. We cannot afford to let nationalism/fascism to spread in the US. Those who disagreed with Hitler either failed to unite or waited until it was too late to unite and fascism grew. Our democracy is at stake, our courts, our unions, women’s rights, the environment, Social Security and Medicare, and the perversion of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution is happening at the highest level and impacting our schools as well as the perversion of testing and choice. The horrid agenda of the current administration is endless and must be stopped immediately. Unification against Trump is imperative. We cannot afford to NOT to vote or to SPLIT the vote. The stakes are ridiculously high. Ideally, Bloomberg will be exposed by the other candidates in the upcoming debates but should Bloomberg win the nomination, I will hold my nose and vote for him because we can always deal with him later. Eminent threat, Trump, and the GOP have wreaked havoc in the US and abroad and it simply cannot continue. Today, POTUS released felons from jail. What’s next? United we stand, divided we fall.
Our democracy is at stake . . . . Unification against Trump is imperative.
I completely agree, Ms. Bishop!
however, I’m sick of settling for the less bad
Bloomberg wants to destroy public schools.
Bloomberg’s plan for higher ed.
Candidate for Democratic presidential nomination proposes limited debt cancellation, tuition-free four-year college for low-income students, doubling Pell and an end to legacy admissions.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/02/19/bloomberg-plan-brings-contrast-warren-and-sanders-differs-other-moderates
This is off topic, but one that is of great concern. The US ranks lower than 38 other countries on children’s well-being.
“I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their personal agendas before the national good. I have no patience for injustice.”
—Donald Trump
Quote: “No country is in the right place with adequately making children flourish today and in the future.”
—Dr. Stefan Peterson, chief of health at UNICEF and author of a new report that ranks countries on children’s well-being. The US ranks lower than 38 other countries, according to the report.
WaPo:
Sanders surges into double-digit lead nationwide in new Post-ABC poll
A Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has surged nationally on the strength of his performances in Iowa and New Hampshire and now holds a sizable lead over all his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In the battle for second place, former vice president Joe Biden, who led Sanders in a Post-ABC poll in January, former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) are all within four percentage points of each other.
Trump pardons criminals who are just like him. Is there anything this vile creature does that is any good?
……………………………….
Bernie Kerik Was as Corrupt as They Come—Just Like Trump
Is it any wonder the president doesn’t care about Kerik’s history of lying, evading taxes, and ginning up charitable contributions?
Michael Daly
Special Correspondent
Published Feb. 19, 2020 4:39AM ET
To be fair to President Trump, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik did not do anything he himself has not long been accused of doing as a matter of routine. All Kerik did was lie, evade taxes, consort with organized-crime types, use public office to seek financial reward, make false statements to banks, gin up charitable contributions, and obstruct justice.
Why shouldn’t Trump pardon Kerik.?
Melania’s Be Best is a waste of energy. She cares about children? I’m sure the US still has 38 countries that treat children better than the US. She downgraded my already low respect for her when she put the Medal of Freedom around Rush L’s neck. Being pretty on the outside does not translate into beauty on the inside, which is what matters. Always being dressed properly has no meaning when millions are starving and living on the streets.
……………………………………………
This was posted from the WH:
“First Lady Melania Trump will be in Palm Beach Wednesday to accept a major honor. She has been named Palm Beach Atlantic University’s 2020 Woman of Distinction. She’s specifically being recognized for her contributions to the community and issues affecting children,” Victoria Lewis reports for WPTV.
Oh, and, hey, all you kids in the Trump/Miller concentration camps–the ones being sexually abused, the ones separated from their parents: Be Best!
What a sick, sad, ugly joke. This is the woman who married Jabba the Trump. That says it all.
I hope everyone who tried to bash the DNC for allowing Mayor Bloomberg into the debate admits how wrong they are.
I absolutely suspected that Bernie Sanders and others were happy to have Bloomberg on the stage with him. That is the BEST way to defeat Bloomberg — to be able to confront him directly in the way the media will not.
Having Bloomberg up on stage with the other candidates is incredibly important because it shows how unsuitable he is.
Looks like the Dem candidates are piling it on against Bloomberg.
……………………………………..
It took less than 10 minutes for Mr. Bloomberg’s opponents to take the multibillionaire to task, with Mr. Sanders questioning stop-and-frisk, Ms. Warren eviscerating him as a sexist, Ms. Klobuchar complaining of his campaign’s calls for her to quit and Mr. Biden saying he did not actually manage New York City very well.
“In order to beat Donald Trump we’re going to need the largest voter turnout in the history of the United States. Mr. Bloomberg had policies in New York City of stop and frisk, which went after African-American and Latino people in an outrageous way. That is not a way you’re going to grow voter turnout,” Mr. Sanders said.
Mr. Bloomberg replied by stating flatly that Mr. Sanders would lose to President Trump.“You don’t start out by saying I’ve got 160 million people I’m going to take away the insurance plan that they love. That’s just not a way that you go and start building the coalition that the Sanders camp thinks they can do,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
Ms. Warren piled on Mr. Bloomberg even more aggressively.“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg,” she said.She was just getting started.“Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of supporting racist polls like redlining and stop-and-frisk. I’ll support whoever the democratic nominee is. But understand this, Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another,” Ms. Warren said.
Ms. Klobuchar expressed outrage at the suggestion from the Bloomberg campaign that she and other centrist candidates should step aside for him. “I think we need something different from Donald Trump,” she said. “I don’t think we look at Donald Trump and say we need someone richer in the White House.
”Mr. Biden offered his two cents: “The mayor says he has a great record, that he’s done these wonderful things. The fact of the matter is he has not managed his city very well when he was there.”
The candidates are taking the stage.The six Democratic candidates walked out single file to audience applause. The newcomer onstage, Mr. Bloomberg, smiled tightly and waved a few times; by contrast, the other candidates grinned far more and waved enthusiastically. Mr. Bloomberg stood next to Ms. Warren, who has been a sharp critic of his campaign; they did not appear to engage with each other at any length.
I think the DNC showed that the decision to allow Bloomberg on stage was something that HELPED the real Democrats and progressives.
Just watching them holding Bloomberg’s feet to the fire is a good demonstration of how absolutely co-opted the media has been in allowing Bloomberg to get away with spouting his pablum with the media breathlessly acting as stenographers and writing every word down.
The media has been giving Bloomberg a pass even if they earn the occasionally story which they never force Bloomberg to have to address. It is exactly what they did to Trump.
And it is only when other candidates face off and ask Bloomberg the questions he doesn’t want to answer that the media is far too cowardly to ask that voters can see how little Bloomberg has to offer.
Well, Bloomberg was savaged in tonight’s debate. What this debate showed is that he can buy all the commercials he wants, but he cannot survive debates regarding a) his stop and frisk policy, b) his opposition to a federal minimum wage, and c) his nondisclosure agreements with people who have charged him with sexual harassment. He got a BIG lesson tonight.
: )
That was what I was trying to say earlier (probably in an incoherent fashion) when you posted that allowing Bloomberg into the debates was a big conspiracy by the corrupt DNC to hurt all the real Democratic candidates and promote Bloomberg.
I really wish there wasn’t so much cynicism about the supposedly corrupt Democrats who run the DNC and who are supposedly only interested in pleasing their oligarch overlords. It feeds right into the right wing propaganda that made African-American voters stay home and that led other voters to decide that Trump was less corrupt than any Democrat. It fed into the right wing propaganda that got so many right wing Senators elected over very good progressive Democrats in 2016 who should have beaten those Republicans except for the constant drumbeat that the DNC and “the Democrats” are all corrupt anyway.
There are real people who work at the DNC who are trying their best to have a fair primary. I bet if you polled the people who actually work at the DNC, you would find that their primary favorites range from Biden to Bernie.
And I thought it was a brilliant move to get Bloomberg on the stage with them. I thought Bernie and Warren and others probably approved of it. The media has given Bloomberg a complete pass — their interviews are where they ask a question and then carefully write down his response and treat it as the gospel truth.
But the other candidates on that stage didn’t let Bloomberg get away with that and because being asked a follow up question had never before happened in his life because the media was too scared of him, Bloomberg looked like a liar covering up his payoffs of women to keep their mouths shut.
I really despised Pete Buttigieg tonight but he really lit into Bloomberg and that was a good thing, too. It is even better if the criticism of Bloomberg comes from the most conservative candidates as well as from Bernie and Warren.
PS — Bob I’m a huge fan of yours!
^^^Apologies for beating a dead horse and writing 3 posts that are saying the same thing. I forget about my earlier posts that get held up in moderation and end up posting again. I sincerely apologize for that.
NYC public school parent: Posting something more than once because it gets caught up in moderation..or completely disappears…happens to all of us who post comments regularly.
NYC, what you say makes sense to me.
The Prognosis for Poetry in the Age of Tan in a Can | Bob Shepherd
If I could speak
If I could speak in these lines
If I could speak in these lines in the old, high manner,
Austere and pure as a mountain spring
Before the days of polyvinal chloride,
If I could speke with the tungis of aungels,
If I could conjure King David, Orpheus, Taliesin, Oisin, or Shakespeare to speak for me,
If I could speak as even these never spoke,
Still, my voice would be as that of the shade of Willie Yeats, in a crowd of thousands at a Maga rally,
Reciting in that one small human voice some ancient fragment—“Ich Am of Irlonde” or “Westron Wind,”
Into the uncomprehending blare of rock music and lies from the main stage.
No Muse is equal to the news,
To the pee tape, to the Black Friday sale on smart speakers,
To the trailer for Venom, to Stormy and the Bunny
And Cheez Whiz now in a convenient aerosol spray.
How, exactly, is one to make poetry of such tatter?
How does one speak to such an age, in its language,
And call this poetry?
The rhythms from the drum machine, though crude and mechanical, are more insistent, easier to remember,
Than were those danced around ancient campfires.
They are designed, in fact, scientifically, to persist in memory,
Like scars on the tissues of the brain,
Making it impossible even to hear
A melody in Chopin or Liszt.
If I could speak true in such an age, my voice would be that of one who has awakened during surgery, paralyzed,
Who sees and hears and feels it all–
The surgeon’s saw parting flesh and bone–
And screams and screams but cannot be heard,
Who looks, to the one taking her apart, as oblivious as a chump before Trump on a stump.
Oh, yes, I could make poems.
I could make this, for example.
But if a poem is spoken where no one hears it, is it spoken at all?
Suppose one with greater powers than I wrote a true poem today.
Would it be a ridiculous anachronism,
Like an Apple watch on the wrist of an extra playing a gladiator in Avengers 18?
It seems that way. It seems that a poet, today
Is like a moth that has flown through a door left open by a cook who stepped into the alley for a smoke,
A moth who has gotten treacle on a wing from the pear flambé
And is stuck and circling madly on the edge of a plate in the servers’ window.
However much you might shout at the fellow at the Genius Station in the Apple Store,
There are some things that, once broken, cannot be fixed.
Does she know this, that moth?
That some broken things cannot be mended?
I think, sometimes, that poetry has had its run.
The greatest ever written are now as unknown
As the child who dies crossing the desert at the border of the Untied States of America.
All the poems? All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
But then, a child is born,
And her breathing, her inspiration and expiration,
Her beating heart, systole and diastole,
Synchronizes with the voice of a mother who remembers some lullaby her mother’s mother sang,
And I think of the monks at Skellig Michael,
In the times we are not now supposed to call the Dark Ages,
The monks in their stone hovels by the cruel North Sea,
Copying manuscripts by flickering candlelight,
With hands raw from the cold,
And holy, holy, holy,
Keeping learning alive
Until a better time.
Copyright 2018, Robert D. Shepherd. All rights reserved. This may be freely shared, but please acknowledge its source. Thanks!
Everyone has the right to criticize candidates running for president. I do not think that any of the candidates have good ideas about maintaining strong public schools. Perhaps due to the mistakes Bloomberg made in the past and listening to advisors on public/private schools he recognizes how important public schools are and knows there is no easy fix. NYC and New York state suffers under educational programs including CCSS. I think we need to give Bloomberg a chance to explain policies and plans for public education. He cannot be written off as the white racist billionaire. He has apologized for past mistakes and errors in judgement. Everyone has the ability to evolve, learn about new ideas, and also people deserve to be forgiven and to be given a chance to explain the new platform they are standing on. They cannot be forever punished when they have changed their minds on a topic.
brbrowsk: It’s also easy for a politician to ‘change his mind’ until he/she gets elected. Bernie is one who has been stating the same policies, except for his new statements on public schools, for 40 years. I’d trust him over someone who has made so many mistakes in the past.
Lets just say that I do not trust billionaires. Their lifestyle is so different from mine that they can’t possibly understand. They definitely have never walked in the shoes of someone who is poor. The greed factor influences too many who are wealthy and they never get enough. They crave the attention, money and the power. The Orange One is a dire example of never having enough and doing nothing for the working person.
He is a huge supporter of charter schools; his record on education stinks. He has meddled in school board elections across the country to stack the deck toward charters.
So, brbrowsk, does Bloomberg have a plan for public schools other than privatize them?
Sanders does have a good plan: he will push to stop federal support for any form of school privatization and standardized testing, he’ll make teachers’ lives better by supporting unions (and free them from teaching to the test), he’ll allow teacher trainees to devote all their time to their studies instead of working full time to pay for health insurance and college tuition, and he’ll increase the minimum wage to a living wage so that custodians don’t have to work other jobs to make ends meet and hence will devote all their time and energy to maintain the school building.
In short, teacher autonomy and elimination of poverty will begin—the two basic ingredients needed for a better education system.
Bloomberg quotes on education. Anything new?
https://www.ontheissues.org/2020/Mike_Bloomberg_Education.htm
Bernie Sanders speaks out on the wealth of Bloomberg:
“Mike Bloomberg owns more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans,” said Senator Bernie Sanders. “That’s wrong. That’s immoral. That should not be the case when we got half a million people sleeping out on the street. When we have kids who cannot afford to go to college. When we have 45 million people dealing with student debt.”
“We cannot continue seeing a situation where in the last three years, billionaires in this country saw an $850 billion increase in their wealth—congratulations, Mr. Bloomberg—but the average American last year saw less than a 1% increase. That’s wrong.””
Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and eighth-richest person in America with a net worth of $64.2 billion, responded that he got “very lucky” but said he should have made that much money because he “worked very hard for it.”
“And I’m giving it away,” said Bloomberg, who has spent more than $400 million on advertising in the Democratic presidential primary race.
Hey, I know lots of people who have worked very hard. If that were the criteria for becoming wealthy, there would be a lot more wealthy people. I also wonder how much of the money he has “given away” had strings attached.
speduktr: “…he [Blooomberg] should have made that much money because he “worked very hard for it.”
I worked my @$$ off when I was teaching for 20 years in Illinois and only managed to save $50.00 ONE YEAR. I was a struggling single parent.
How many teachers today are working full time as a teacher plus 2-3 other jobs just to barely make ends meet?
How many poor people are barely surviving when the minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour? How many jobs do they have to work?
Working hard to be a billionaire means nothing and certainly isn’t something to be applauded. Being greedy and using that money to buy loyalty or buy the presidency is not something to be admired.
Exactly.
When I retire as a college prof, I would have earned a total of $2 million. $2 million is 0.003% of Bloomberg’s hard earned money. This means that Bloomberg worked 30 thousand times harder than me, or, put it differently, I’d have to work 1.2 million years to make as much as Bloomberg has now.
Btw, the highest paid, Nobel prize winning physicist in the US makes $500K. His total earnings when he retires will be $10 million, which translates to him working for 60 thousand years to make as much as Bloomberg has now.
Máté Wierdl: “I’d have to work 1.2 million years to make as much as Bloomberg has now.”
I have faith in you. Keep focused on the positive and you can do it!!
There’s always a catch.
Actually, I need to refine my comment a bit. When I was married we had two teacher salaries. He made slightly more than I did.
After the divorce, I thought about money probably 95% of the time. It was a miserable existence.
I remember one Halloween in which I had purchased some chocolates that were wrapped and in a bag. Some of the bags weren’t opened and I had to return them to the grocery store. I couldn’t afford to keep them. I heard the cashier make a snarky comment as I walked away.
One other time, it was pay day and I was totally out of money. I was close to running out of gas so I stopped and put in $.75 of gas. It was enough to get me to school.
I’ve made comments such as this on other sites, and some commenters didn’t believe me. “Nobody has to live like that was the belief.” Really?