Michael Bloomberg 2020 campaign megathread

[GeneralMacArthur]

This isn't news, he did this five days ago...

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/tonydokoupil/status/1198940534661931015

But what is it for the typical Ugandan family?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can we bully him until he goes away

The Atlas strategy doesn't work in real life

[GeneralMacArthur]

you absolutely hate to see it

also lol @ 100 likes for a 1 minute old tweet

Norfolk is in SouthEastern Virginia though...

[GeneralMacArthur]

That intern was just fired via a snarky tweet and now #DropOutBloomberg is trending.

https://twitter.com/nickciarelli/status/1205597685845114881

I have a hard time believing this guy is a comms intern given that his Twitter prior to this event had no mention of Bloomberg and contained a lot of things that no self-respecting comms staff would leave up on Twitter (much less post on Twitter while employed as a comms intern).

The same goes for his buddy, Brad Evans, who also has Bloomberg campaign in his Twitter bio, but nothing about Bloomberg in his Twitter prior to this event.

The two are apparently comedians who have teamed up sketches and pranks in the past
https://www.fastcompany.com/90375605/these-two-comedians-are-destroying-internet-culture-and-its-hilarious

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/mike-bloomberg-viral-dance-video-comedy-buttigieg

I can't make a call one way or another, but it certainly seems like these guys are comedians who got a handful of friends together in a room to make a fake "Moves like BLOOMBERG" video, and now are stirring sh**t up on Twitter, probably as part of some future "Fired by Bloomberg" sketch.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/bradfordevans/status/1206701145449648129

Confirmed that the whole Moves Like Bloomberg + Fired Intern thing was a hoax.

Pretty sure the Mayor Pete thing is also a lie to try to be funny.  Based on this guy's videos he does a lot of that.

Also, dude has the longest face I've ever seen.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Everyone seems to think they can just say "Stop And Frisk" and black+hispanic voters will instantly hate Bloomberg.

Mike Bloomberg had a 55-37 approval split among blacks and 66-26 among hispanics in the most recent NYC polling I could find:  https://poll.qu.edu/new-york-city/release-detail?ReleaseID=1376

Even those who didn't like him personally thought he did a good job as mayor.  Those numbers both rise to the high 60s when asked that question.

Same for women and the Bloomberg Quote Book story that was already hashed out in the NYC elections.  NYC women approved of Bloomberg personally by 63-30.

It will be really difficult to characterize Bloomberg or drown him in negative advertising.  He is wealthy enough to own the airwaves and has a skilled enough team to come up with the correct response to any attempt.  Maybe you can get away with it on Twitter or social media, but those audiences were always going to be extremely hostile to any non-Sanders candidate anyway.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/theintercept/status/1225592540461772800

A handful of these seem like actual plagiarizing.  Most of them are obviously meant to be direct quotes, or are "plagiarized" from previous Bloomberg sources like his PlaNYC.

That said, none of them are actual policies, it's all just statistics and background stuff.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/1225277176745992195
Maybe I'm just some radical tranny, but hearing myself and other trans women being described as "some man in a dress" (or rather, some men in dresses) made my skin crawl. I guess I should just be glad the odds of him being the nominee are very slim, but...
Not to mention that it's a gruesome reminder that I may never be truly accepted by the world around me. Especially since I live in North Carolina, where they made trans people pissing an issue.

He's describing the way people in the midwest think, not the way he thinks.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/1225277176745992195
Maybe I'm just some radical tranny, but hearing myself and other trans women being described as "some man in a dress" (or rather, some men in dresses) made my skin crawl. I guess I should just be glad the odds of him being the nominee are very slim, but...
Not to mention that it's a gruesome reminder that I may never be truly accepted by the world around me. Especially since I live in North Carolina, where they made trans people pissing an issue.

He's describing the way people in the midwest think, not the way he thinks.

So...he's saying he's "the intelligentsia?"

He's not saying anything about himself at all.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/1225277176745992195
Maybe I'm just some radical tranny, but hearing myself and other trans women being described as "some man in a dress" (or rather, some men in dresses) made my skin crawl. I guess I should just be glad the odds of him being the nominee are very slim, but...
Not to mention that it's a gruesome reminder that I may never be truly accepted by the world around me. Especially since I live in North Carolina, where they made trans people pissing an issue.

He's describing the way people in the midwest think, not the way he thinks.

So...he's saying he's "the intelligentsia?"

He's not saying anything about himself at all.

Duh, he's saying something about trans people. Specifically that:

only the "intelligentsia" can understand why "some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter."

i.e. he is "the intelligentsia" or he can't understand trans rights (which, again, he phrases in a very callous way that's only not transphobic if you make it clear you don't think of trans women that way). Which is it?

He's talking about two different groups of people, how they perceive a political issue in different ways, and what that means for party messaging.  In my view this is pretty obvious and hard to justify interpreting any other way.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Why don’t people ever watch the videos attached to tweets? How hard is it to watch a short clip? He uses “man in a dress” to describe how people in the Midwest feel about the issue, not how he feels about it. However, he absolutely does say that he’s a part of the “intelligentsia” that is accepting of trans rights. He says “we the intelligentsia, people who could make it to this room.”

In my defense, I didn't realize it was a video.  For some reason Atlas removes the metadata from the embedding (1:52, 86K views) that shows up on Twitter to let you know it's a video.

All I had to go off of was the Tweet (from the detestable Walker Bragman) which makes it sound like he's talking about the intellegentsia in third person.

[GeneralMacArthur]

All I had to go off of was the Tweet (from the detestable Walker Bragman) which makes it sound like he's talking about the intellegentsia in third person.

Yeah same here, the tweet made it sound like he was positioning "real America" against "the intelligentsia and trans activists" and I'm so used to hearing Republicans say that I didn't question it.

That being said Bloomberg still isn't getting a pass from me. He's right you need to be a salesman, but I don't trust someone who instinctively refers to trans women as "men in dresses" to either sell it or even care about selling it.

And let's be clear: he was not quoting anyone. The full quote from Bloomberg: "if you want to know if somebody's a good salesman, give them the job of going to the Midwest, and picking a town, and selling to that town the concept that some man wearing a dress should be in the locker room with their daughter. If you can sell that you can sell anything."

He did not say "the concept that someone can identify as a gender other than their birth-assigned gender, and that's okay!" and then go on to say that Midwesterners will respond that they "don't want some man wearing a dress in the locker room with their daughter." That was *his wording.*

Why does he need to say all that?  Most people don't just automatically assume that Bloomberg hates trans people and demand that he clearly state otherwise in every single trans-related quote.  That would get incredibly tiresome.

You're laying all these interpretations on him that are based on nothing more than your own mistrust of him.  There's nothing in the video to make you believe that he "instinctively" refers to trans women that way.

Again, the quote is pretty simple and obvious and an incredibly common sentiment.  It's you who's trying to blow it up into something more than it is.  Well, you and half of the extreme-left internet, but I don't expect much from them.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Reminder that Walker Bragman is a spoiled trust fund brat from the Hamptons who LARPs as a socialist revolutionary because it's the only way he can hang out with his Brooklyn friends and not feel lame.

He regularly engages in disingenuous, conspiratorial or outright false "journalism" but gets away with it because when you're a socialist, they (The Intercept, HuffPo, Salon, The Hill) let you do it.

He's most well-known for writing "The Liberal Case for Donald Trump."

[GeneralMacArthur]

I still am not feeling as generous to his wording, but we can agree to disagree.

Anyway I don't know why people like the ex-Republican billionaire. If you want a moderate, Biden's better in basically every way, including his answers on trans issues. (I guess it's fine if you split the moderate vote, though, just don't accidentally give Bloomberg the nomination! )

Bloomberg's belonging to any particular political party has always been meaningless.  He was a Democrat his entire life, then switched to run as a Republican in 2001 because the Democratic mayoral primary was a bloodbath.  It's kind of like how Eisenhower chose the Republican Party in 1952, but in 1948 he and Truman had talked about running an Eisenhower/Truman Democratic ticket to stop none other than General Douglas MacArthur, then running in the Republican primary.

More than looking at what party he belonged to, you should look at Bloomberg's positions that he's held his entire life.  He has always been vocally pro-choice.  He has always supported stem-cell research.  He has always been aggressively in favor of gun control.  He has always been a huge environmental advocate and in favor of aggressive steps to combat climate change.

The point being, if you want to take Bloomberg seriously, don't just look at some caricature of him or "oh he was a Republican."  Go look at what he did when he was mayor of NYC, how he governed.  Look at it in the context of what NYC was in 2001 and how he left it in 2013.  Look at the complete package, not just picking out isolated things.  And decide whether that's what you want for the country.

[GeneralMacArthur]

His ads are effective, I consider myself to be pretty well-informed and they're even starting to sway me. If Biden/Klobuchar fail badly tomorrow, I think it'll be time for establishment Democrats to start rallying around Bloomberg. The question is...will Biden/Klobuchar and eventually Mayor Pete publicly back him over Sanders??

Way to early to start rallying.  We need to see him in action.

He can make a good ad, and he's running a very strong campaign.  He's done well in the few interviews he's done this far.  But for the most part he's been hiding from the fight.  He was a capable fighter when he was mayor, but then so was Biden back then.  If the establishment rallies to Bloomberg and then he gets cut to ribbons on the debate stage it's gonna be rough.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Just like the crime bill attacks on Clinton and the bussing attacks on Biden, this won't move any actual black voters, except for young black voters who have little-to-no context on actual inner city crime.

It will, however, move white voters who want to think of themselves as representing the interests of black voters.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Ugh, this all feels like Biden all over again.  A man can give extensive evidence that he's well-informed, intelligent and rational -- far more so than his rivals -- and it gets undermined by one casual quote taken out-of-context.

Meanwhile the populist candidates can say ignorant, ridiculous sh*t all day long and nobody cares.  I mean Sanders' answer to every foreign policy question is "I voted against the Iraq War" and Warren wants to have zero U.S. presence in the middle east.

[GeneralMacArthur]

By the way, was that CFR interview live?  If so, Bloomberg is far better informed than any of the other candidates including Biden.

I'm assuming it was a questionnaire and he had a bunch of aides fill it out and he rubber-stamped it, which is typically how these things go.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm not sure why Sanders dropped 6% overnight.  His result in New Hampshire is mediocre but it's in line with his polling numbers.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Sanders likely dropped because his victory is NH was not that impressive. He received over 60% of the vote in 2016. While no one expected him to do that in such a fractured field, 26% and winning by less than 2% was not impressive at all.

The results match the polls though.  The only difference is Warren and Biden both lost late support to Klobuchar, which is good for Sanders.

Basically, if the polls on February 10 said Sanders was going to get 26%, and on February 11 he got 26%, why would he not already have been at his current odds on February 10?

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bloomberg-wealth-tax-compare-sanders-buttigieg-warren-biden/
Bloomberg would pay $3 billion less under his wealth tax than under Sanders plan

Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg says he would pay more to Uncle Sam under his plan to raise taxes on wealthy Americans. What the former New York City mayor hasn't said: He'd pay as much as $3.5 billion less under his wealth tax than he would under similar proposals from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two of his rivals for the party's nomination. Bloomberg's plan would also generate far less government revenue.

Bloomberg, who released his tax plan last week, said the proposal targets the "very rich." That includes him: Bloomberg is worth an estimated $61 billion, according to Forbes.

Much of that fortune is tied to Bloomberg LLC, the global financial data and media empire he founded four decades ago. The candidate owns 88% of the company, which generated an estimated $3.8 billion in income last year alone, according to industry consultant Douglas Taylor. And his nearly 90% ownership stake in the media enterprise entitled him to about $3.3 billion of that income stream.

Outside his proposed wealth tax, Bloomberg's broader tax plan could save him and his company millions. For instance, he would maintain the corporate tax rate at 21%, which President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans lowered from as high as 35%. That 2017 change saved Bloomberg's company roughly $550 million last year. Both Sanders and Warren would roll back Mr. Trump's corporate tax cut. 

So Bloomberg can throw $3 billion to "stop" Bernie and still be financially better off.

Know how I know Bloomberg's a good candidate?  Cause a Republican is writing disingenuous stuff like this to turn people against him.

Bloomberg knows as well as anyone that Bernie's wealth tax is just virtue signaling and has zero chance of even being proposed, much less becoming law.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Anyone want to take a stab at explaining how endorsing Bush in '00 and '04 is consistent with the talking point that 'he's totally always been a liberal democrat guiz'

He didn't in 2000.

In 2004, he was the mayor of NYC post-9/11 and the RNC held the convention in NYC.  If you actually listen to his speech, it's 15 minutes long and the first 13 minutes are all talking about how great New York is and how the city is rebuilding itself after 9/11.  Then the last two minutes are him thanking Bush for support post-9/11 and for keeping America safe.

Given the unique circumstances under which their relationship developed I don't think it says much about his broad political views.  The Bush Administration's impact on him was 95% consumed by post-9/11 domestic response, and virtually everyone including most Democrats agree that the Bush admin did a good job there.

[GeneralMacArthur]

So the response to why endorsing Bush is progressive is ‘9/11 was bad’. Much as I thought. Bloomberg’s rise really shows how much the ‘Bernie’s not even a democrat’ critique was made in bad faith.

Bloomberg never attacked the Democratic Party as far as I know.  Bernie has been doing it his entire life.

Bloomberg has spent billions in recent years helping the Democratic Party.  His candidates got elected in 21/25 contests in 2018 and are a big reason why we have a House majority.  Meanwhile Bernie won't even share his fundraising list with the party (which all other candidates do) and his slate of candidates got humiliated and demolished in 2018.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/LEBassett/status/1228071578472263680

Dishonest hit piece.  He hasn't been accused of sexual harassment 40 times.

some 40 sex discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits brought against him and his organizations by 64 women over the past several decades.

He runs several huge organizations.  Harassment lawsuits are inevitable; bad people will get through no matter how thorough your screening is.   They aren't against him personally.

The best this article could come up with for linking to him personally is the "kill it" quote and the quote book.  Both of these issues were already hashed out in the NYC mayoral election.