Tonight’s MSNBC Democratic Las Vegas debate will be fascinating to watch as former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be tested for the first time in what is expected to be a spirited, confrontational event.
Bloomberg will be criticized for spending $400 million to “buy” the election, and it is expected he will come out sparring with all of his other five rivals, but particularly Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg.
Bloomberg’s controversial policies and statements on race, gender, and sexuality, in and out of office will be the hotbed of the debate, and it will easily be the most interesting debate held so far.
There are many skeptics of Bloomberg’s record and statements, and it will be interesting to see how well he does in defending himself.
While he is not on the ballot in Nevada or South Carolina, Bloomberg will certainly have an effect on the fortunes of his rivals, as how they do in the two weeks before Super Tuesday will have an impact on March 3 and beyond.
On Wednesday, February 19, 2020, “The Hill’s†“The Rising†review and discuss some new poll reports in the following video:
Between Bloomberg and Bernie, Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot.
Seconded, Rustbelt.
Democrats lost in 2016 because:
a) Succeeding a same-party president after 8 years is a difficult challenge (no Dem has done it since Van Buren in 1836)
b) Hillary, though highly capable, was a deeply unpopular candidate
c) The perfect storm (the Comey letter/October surprise, media malpractice that made emails a bigger scandal than Trump’s crimes, the complacency of thinking there was no way Trump could win)
d) The Electoral College (Dems lost by a slim margin in 3 or 4 states, despite a fairly significant national pop vote plurality)
Democrats in 2020 have another election challenge. In the past hundred years, no party has kicked a president of the other party out of the White House after just 4 years without the help of a bad or terrible economy. A lot of people hate Trump but a lot of people hated Nixon and Reagan and they both won landslide reelections. What may be different, and what gives the Dems a decent chance this time, is that Trump is deeply unpopular despite a good economy.
What to do? Dems can’t do anything about the headwinds of running against an incumbent or the Electoral College. But if they run a very capable yet more personally popular candidate, and avoid the “perfect storm” of ’16 (odds are they will), then Dems can and should win the election.
Hillary without her years of baggage and the perfect storm would have won. The midterms of 2018 proved the Democratic agenda is a winner against Trump and the Republicans. There is no evidence that the Democrats need to “lurch” to the left on healthcare and economic issues to win in 2020. That is the hype of spin doctors and a candidate or two, but not a good reading of the facts.
Win the suburbs and Dems will win the election. Sanders and Warren, whatever you may think of them personally, pose big risks because their agendas are far from the mainstream. Bloomberg poses a different set of risks. The regular Democratic candidates — Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar — would each have excellent chances of winning the burbs and the districts and states that Dems need to flip to win the election in November.
I have my own leanings on which of those three would do best. My fear is that none of them will make it to the Democratic nomination.
I disagree about Warren. I can see moderates getting behind her. She strikes me as more flexible in her thinking (i.e., open-minded) than St. Bernard.
I think she’s vastly better than Sanders in many ways. But all her plans have pricetags and in the general election a lot of the details will came back to bite her.
She might have trouble in the midwest more than others also.
You left out perhaps the most important element of the Perfect Storm of Multiple Black Swan Events:
e) Russian interference on behalf of Putin’s Puppet, perhaps even including direct hacking and changing of vote totals in the 3 key Rust Belt states.
Progress over the centuries has been undeniable. It doesn’t follow a straight line when it comes, but it doesn’t come all at once either. We see progress, followed by setbacks and consolidation, then the need for progress mounts again. It’s a process.
Lincoln freed the slaves but we still had a century of Jim Crow. FDR got us Social Security and the New Deal, but it was another 30 years’ wait for Medicare. Change happens when the time is ripe, and politicians then can take the country where it is already moving. They don’t force the issue against overwhelming resistance, not if they want to survive. No Democratic president up to Obama in 2008 would dare to be for gay marriage, and none after will ever be against it.
Sanders’s promises to deliver MFA, student debt forgiveness, free college, and more, may look moderate in a half-century, but it’s hard for me to see that the country is ready for them anytime soon. The transition from today’s healthcare to MFA is a monumental change. The resistance is enormous. It will likely take decades to achieve. You can’t make it happen now just because a lot of people under 35 want it to happen.
Long-term progress is the work of activists, many of whom never get to see the promised land during their own generation. Politicians, especially presidents, usually come late to the cause and then take credit. If Sanders were just an activist, he’d probably go down in history as a noble fighter for the cause. But he wants to be president, and he risks going down as a noble failure.
A so-called transformational president like Reagan had a big agenda. But he was careful about some of his more radical ambitions like privatizing Social Security and Medicare. He certainly didn’t write a “darned bill” to do that, or he would have been just another also-ran.
My guess is Sanders never thought he had a chance to be president but ran in ’16 so that Hillary would have somebody to run against in the primaries. It was a chance to promote his agenda and help move the party to the left. Now he is running again and has a real chance to be the nominee, since the “establishment” party is larger but divided (and without a strong candidate like HRC).
It’s a dilemma. Sanders as activist is a role he’s well suited for. Sanders as potential president is another thing. It takes a pragmatist and coalition builder to be president. Navigating from one role to the other will be one helluva a new trick for an old dog like him to learn.
In fifty years they’ll know whether Sanders was a successful “moderate” or the fool who bluffed his way to the nomination only to lose to the wannabe autocrat who got a second chance to destroy our democracy.
And we get to see it happen this year. Fun times!
Bernie and Bloomberg are both getting incoming in the debate tonight.
Nasty debate tonight. Liz viciously attacking Buttigieg and Klobuchar.
Warren’s harsh and brutal criticism of multiple candidates on healthcare (especially that Post-It snark directed at Klobuchar) shocked me. It made her sound very desperate.
This is not a debate. This is a pie fight. Blech. I’m tuning out and going to bed.
Warren taking on Bloomberg shows she can absolutely take on Trump. Bloomberg is going to be sorry he ever decided to tango with the Dems.
Agree with Rustbelt. This debate is a mess and not doing us any favors.
Bloomberg is one cold cold fish.. zero warmth. Zero.
Biggest loser, other than Bloomberg, is Chuck Todd.
Bloomberg is Trump’s Proxy in the Democratic Race.
I did not see any useful purpose for Bloomberg’s presence in this nomination battle, but I now see one. He is the Democrat Trump, alike in almost all essential details.
Want to see how your candidate will attack Trump in the general? Watch how they attack Bloomberg.
This guy has a good point. This major crisis of the republic is urgent: https://twitter.com/jcp717/status/1230330168729833473
Biggest winner of the debate tonight, Warren by a long mile. Biggest loser Bloomberg, just awful.
Klobucher also was awful tonight, her bumbling about Mexico looked utterly weak, and Pete piling on when he shoulda let it go also blew things for himself. Looked like a loser. Sanders has done good, and Biden has been serviceable in comparison to past debate performances.
I’ve been really surprised by Biden. Focused, specific, and none of this “we have to be friends with Republicans and backslap” stuff. It’s the only way he gets back into this thing.
Roger Stone has been sentenced to 40 months … start your pardon timers now.
It’s official. Russia is backing Trump for 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/us/politics/russian-interference-trump-democrats.html
Speaking of Russia, this is disturbing –
Putin’s Plain Sight Takeover of Our Government
Trump is replacing the Director of National Intelligence with folks who doubt Russia interfered in 2016.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/02/21/putins-plain-sight-takeover-of-our-government/
Breaking news is that, on the Democratic side, the Russians are trying to help Bernie’s campaign.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/bernie-sanders-briefed-by-us-officials-that-russia-is-trying-to-help-his-presidential-campaign/2020/02/21/5ad396a6-54bd-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html