Michael Bloomberg 2020 campaign megathread

[Donerail]

I've watched some footage/videos of his events, and the crowds are larger and more energized/excited than Joe Biden's ones.

Yes, you can do that when you offer free booze. The average frat party is also larger and more energized than the average lecture.

[Vaccinated Russian Bear]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/michael-bloomberg-women/
Mike Bloomberg for years has battled women’s allegations of profane, sexist comments

As Mike Bloomberg celebrated his 48th birthday in 1990, a top aide at the company he founded presented him with a booklet of profane, sexist quotes she attributed to him.

A good salesperson is like a man who tries to pick up women at a bar by saying, “Do you want to f---? He gets turned down a lot — but he gets f----- a lot, too!” Bloomberg was quoted in the booklet as saying. Bloomberg also allegedly said that his company’s financial information computers “will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”

At the time, some Bloomberg staffers said, they laughed off the comments in the 32-page booklet, “The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg,” as a macho side of one of the nerdiest men on Wall Street.

Garrison complaint

89. On April 11, 1995 at approximately 11:20 a.m., Bloomberg was having a photograph taken with two female Company salespeople and a group of N.Y.U. Business School students, in the company snack area. When Bloomberg noticed Garrison standing nearby, he asked, “Why didn’t they ask you to be in the picture? I guess they saw your face.” Continuing his penchant for ridiculing recently married women in his employ, Bloomberg asked plaintiff, “How’s married life? You married?” Plaintiff responded that her marriage was great and was going to get better in a few months: that she was pregnant, and the baby was due the following September. He responded to her “Kill it!” Plaintiff asked Bloomberg to repeat himself, and again he said, “Kill it!” and muttered, “Great! Number 16!” suggesting to plaintiff his unhappiness that sixteen women in the Company had maternity-related status. Then he walked away.

Kill it! He is definitely not pro-Life, FWIW.

In the most high-profile example, a top saleswoman, Sekiko Sakai Garrison, alleged that Bloomberg told female salespeople about a male colleague getting married: “All of you girls line up to give him [oral sex] as a wedding present.” And, the lawsuit said, when Bloomberg saw certain women, he said, “I’d f--- that in a second.”

Will he get endorsed by Bill Clinton?  

Garrison alleged that Bloomberg berated female employees who got pregnant. “What the hell did you do a thing like that for?” Bloomberg allegedly told one pregnant employee. On another occasion, the lawsuit said, Bloomberg berated a female employee who had trouble finding a nanny. “It’s a f------ baby! . . . All you need is some black who doesn’t have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building.”

After Olszewski allegedly was raped by a supervisor in a Chicago hotel room, Bloomberg was informed. He later described his response in a deposition, an excerpt of which was first published by the Village Voice in 2001. The full deposition has never been made public. Olszewski could not be reached for comment.

Bloomberg was asked in the deposition what would constitute “satisfactory proof” that one of his employees had been raped by another.

“I guess an unimpeachable third-party witness,” he responded.

The lawyer seemed stunned. In what kind of rape, he asked Bloomberg, would there be a third-party witness?

“There are times when three people are together,” Bloomberg responded.

But, Bloomberg said, if there were only two people present, and they gave conflicting accounts, there would be no way to know who is telling the truth and “all we can do is provide separate working environments for the two.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/the-portable-bloomberg-the-wit-wisdom-of-michael-bloomberg/ba5281b4-886d-42dc-a28d-e67eceb60719/
The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit & Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg
https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/724c2901-a509-4ae8-ac09-58e6f8ac025e/note/1ed4db4a-0c8b-49e7-a6b9-eee5e090584c.pdf#page=1

Some journos think that Mike leaked Hillary VP to move focus from this article!

NyT journo:
https://twitter.com/adamnagourney/status/1228755378122285056
Nate Silver (538) calls this strategy Trumpian!
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1228710121821347842

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/1228705577678716929

*Yawn* Wake me when you find a remotely credible source that isn’t obviously making up it’s “story.”

[Santander]

https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/1228705577678716929

*Yawn* Wake me when you find a remotely credible source that isn’t obviously making up it’s “story.”

Bloomberg resigns after 2 years, paving the way for Clinton to reign for 10...

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

https://twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/1228796583715667970?s=20
Like many of the leaks intended to discredit Bloomberg, it's easy to see this coming across as "tells it like it is" to someone primed by half a dozen of his ads.

I think one could characterize some things Bloomberg has said recently as constituting just as much if not more of an apology tour as Biden.  Spot on remark about Beto though.

[Senator Spark]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/michael-bloomberg-women/
Mike Bloomberg for years has battled women’s allegations of profane, sexist comments

As Mike Bloomberg celebrated his 48th birthday in 1990, a top aide at the company he founded presented him with a booklet of profane, sexist quotes she attributed to him.

A good salesperson is like a man who tries to pick up women at a bar by saying, “Do you want to f---? He gets turned down a lot — but he gets f----- a lot, too!” Bloomberg was quoted in the booklet as saying. Bloomberg also allegedly said that his company’s financial information computers “will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”

At the time, some Bloomberg staffers said, they laughed off the comments in the 32-page booklet, “The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg,” as a macho side of one of the nerdiest men on Wall Street.

Garrison complaint

89. On April 11, 1995 at approximately 11:20 a.m., Bloomberg was having a photograph taken with two female Company salespeople and a group of N.Y.U. Business School students, in the company snack area. When Bloomberg noticed Garrison standing nearby, he asked, “Why didn’t they ask you to be in the picture? I guess they saw your face.” Continuing his penchant for ridiculing recently married women in his employ, Bloomberg asked plaintiff, “How’s married life? You married?” Plaintiff responded that her marriage was great and was going to get better in a few months: that she was pregnant, and the baby was due the following September. He responded to her “Kill it!” Plaintiff asked Bloomberg to repeat himself, and again he said, “Kill it!” and muttered, “Great! Number 16!” suggesting to plaintiff his unhappiness that sixteen women in the Company had maternity-related status. Then he walked away.

Kill it! He is definitely not pro-Life, FWIW.

In the most high-profile example, a top saleswoman, Sekiko Sakai Garrison, alleged that Bloomberg told female salespeople about a male colleague getting married: “All of you girls line up to give him [oral sex] as a wedding present.” And, the lawsuit said, when Bloomberg saw certain women, he said, “I’d f--- that in a second.”

Will he get endorsed by Bill Clinton?  

Garrison alleged that Bloomberg berated female employees who got pregnant. “What the hell did you do a thing like that for?” Bloomberg allegedly told one pregnant employee. On another occasion, the lawsuit said, Bloomberg berated a female employee who had trouble finding a nanny. “It’s a f------ baby! . . . All you need is some black who doesn’t have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building.”

After Olszewski allegedly was raped by a supervisor in a Chicago hotel room, Bloomberg was informed. He later described his response in a deposition, an excerpt of which was first published by the Village Voice in 2001. The full deposition has never been made public. Olszewski could not be reached for comment.

Bloomberg was asked in the deposition what would constitute “satisfactory proof” that one of his employees had been raped by another.

“I guess an unimpeachable third-party witness,” he responded.

The lawyer seemed stunned. In what kind of rape, he asked Bloomberg, would there be a third-party witness?

“There are times when three people are together,” Bloomberg responded.

But, Bloomberg said, if there were only two people present, and they gave conflicting accounts, there would be no way to know who is telling the truth and “all we can do is provide separate working environments for the two.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/the-portable-bloomberg-the-wit-wisdom-of-michael-bloomberg/ba5281b4-886d-42dc-a28d-e67eceb60719/
The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit & Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg
https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/724c2901-a509-4ae8-ac09-58e6f8ac025e/note/1ed4db4a-0c8b-49e7-a6b9-eee5e090584c.pdf#page=1

Some journos think that Mike leaked Hillary VP to move focus from this article!

NyT journo:
https://twitter.com/adamnagourney/status/1228755378122285056
Nate Silver (538) calls this strategy Trumpian!
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1228710121821347842

This is just preposterous.

[The Other Castro]

Bloomberg should name Michelle Obama his running mate.

[Shadows]

Sekiko Sakai Garrison, a former sales representative at Bloomberg LP, alleged in a 1997 lawsuit (one of four separate lawsuits in a two-year period) that when then-CEO Mike Bloomberg found out she was pregnant, he told her, “Kill it!” and “Great! Number 16!”—an apparent reference to the number of pregnant women or women on maternity leave at his company. She also alleged that when Bloomberg saw her engagement ring, he commented, “What is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?” and that he once pointed to another female employee and told Garrison, “If you looked like that, I’d do you in a second.” Bloomberg denied having said most of those things, but reportedly left Garrison a voicemail saying that if he did say them, he “didn’t mean it.”

Bloomberg once described his life as a single billionaire bachelor in New York City to a reporter as being a “wet dream.” "I like theater, dining and chasing women," he said. On a radio show in 2003, he said that he would “really want to have” Jennifer Lopez, which he later explained away as wanting to “have dinner” with her. A top aide said Bloomberg frequently remarked “nice tits” upon seeing attractive women. Employees of his in 1990 put together an entire booklet of his some of his more egregious comments, including, "If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they'd go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale's,” and, of the computer terminal that made him a billionaire, “It will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business."

More recently, Bloomberg defended his longtime close pal Charlie Rose, who was fired from CBS and PBS in 2017 after multiple women alleged that he made unwanted sexual advances on his female colleagues and subordinates. "The stuff I read about is disgraceful—I don't know how true all of it is," Bloomberg told the New York Times. “I never saw anything and we have no record, we've checked very carefully.” Rose, coincidentally, had once described his constant banter with Bloomberg about women in the office (which they shared in the 90s) as “a locker room thing”—the same defense Trump used to excuse his having boasted about “grabbing” women “by the pussy.”

https://www.gq.com/story/bloomberg-sexism

[John Dule]

You know, I'm warming up to ol' Bloomie. If the Democrats pick him, I'm sure the American people will see that it's due to genuine conviction and not a shameless attempt to find a left-wing version of Trump. After Democrats spent four years b!tching nonstop about Trump doing all of these things, I'm sure it won't look at all hypocritical when they nominate someone who has an almost identical profile. I mean, at least they wouldn't be picking Sanders. THAT would be electoral suicide!

[Beet]

You know, I'm warming up to ol' Bloomie. If the Democrats pick him, I'm sure the American people will see that it's due to genuine conviction and not a shameless attempt to find a left-wing version of Trump. After Democrats spent four years b!tching nonstop about Trump doing all of these things, I'm sure it won't look at all hypocritical when they nominate someone who has an almost identical profile. I mean, at least they wouldn't be picking Sanders. THAT would be electoral suicide!

You realize that the Sanders crowd savaged Yang to death, right?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Bloomberg Endorses Republican in Heated Massachusetts Senate Race

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, one of the most outspoken defenders of Wall Street, has sided against one of the financial industry’s biggest critics in a hotly contested Senate race in his native Massachusetts.

Mr. Bloomberg has agreed to host a fund-raiser at his Upper East Side town house for the re-election campaign of Senator Scott P. Brown, a Republican, who is being challenged by a fiery consumer advocate, Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who is also a professor at Harvard Law School.

bErNiE's NoT a ReAl DeMoCrAt

[John Dule]

You know, I'm warming up to ol' Bloomie. If the Democrats pick him, I'm sure the American people will see that it's due to genuine conviction and not a shameless attempt to find a left-wing version of Trump. After Democrats spent four years b!tching nonstop about Trump doing all of these things, I'm sure it won't look at all hypocritical when they nominate someone who has an almost identical profile. I mean, at least they wouldn't be picking Sanders. THAT would be electoral suicide!

You realize that the Sanders crowd savaged Yang to death, right?

Damn, I knew there was a reason Yang didn't win this primary. Turns out it was those pesky BernieBros on Twitter!

[GeneralMacArthur]

This WaPo story might torpedo his campaign before it even starts.  I've defended Bloomberg from a lot of the out-of-context attacks and straight-up smears being launched at him this week from the left, but a few of these comments are totally disgusting and indefensible.  If they are indicative of his character then I don't want him anywhere near the presidency.  "Just get some black?" seriously?  And repeated instances of discrimination against pregnant employees?  Even if these aren't true, they're so easy to attack him over on stage and in the press that I'm honestly curious how he survived his mayoral elections given that this was known at the time.  Furthermore the fact that his campaign has let this story run all day with no good response indicates that they may not be as ruthlessly competent as they've been selling.

[Badger]

Not surprising. Trump is a better person than Bloomberg & is more liberal on issues on a personal level. Bloomberg is an oligarch who hates poor people & is racist to his bone.

Most Dem voters would stay home if this guy gets nominated. Bloomberg will get destroyed in the Industrial Midwest. As bad as Biden or Pete is, they are way better than Bloomberg. Can't wait to see Trump call out the Dems for nominating a racist.

Bloomberg is my last choice for the nomination, but your first paragraph is such complete bullsh**t it doesn't even warrant a snarky "citation needed".

[Annatar]

I think it might be time for democrats to embrace the fact they are a globalist technocratic party that likes the way things are and go with Bloomberg. Nominating Bloomberg would complete the party's transition to being a globalist corporate party that is willing to defend the interests of the establishment as they currently exist. A Trump vs Bloomberg race than would be fascinating with Trump running once again as the populist vs the corporatist Bloomberg, a reprise of 2016 but with a different character on the dems side.

Also, I have to say the latest story about Bloomberg's comments is hilarious, if the democrats really do nominate someone who is on record saying "All you need is some black who doesn't even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building" than we will know once and for all the democrats don't really care about racial equality or anything else like that, they just care about preserving the current structures and establishment.  

On a side-note, Bloomberg seems to be copying the Hillary strategy on ads, his latest ad on Trump reminded me of this, youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA&feature=youtu.be

[Fuzzy Bear]

A picture is worth a thousand words.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Not surprising. Trump is a better person than Bloomberg & is more liberal on issues on a personal level. Bloomberg is an oligarch who hates poor people & is racist to his bone.

Most Dem voters would stay home if this guy gets nominated. Bloomberg will get destroyed in the Industrial Midwest. As bad as Biden or Pete is, they are way better than Bloomberg. Can't wait to see Trump call out the Dems for nominating a racist.

Bloomberg is my last choice for the nomination, but your first paragraph is such complete bullsh**t it doesn't even warrant a snarky "citation needed".

You're a Republican.  You can't vote in the Democratic Primary. 

[jaichind]

All this talk of Bloomberg-Clinton reminds me of the photo in

"Donald Trump Still Has a Photo of the Clintons on Display at Home"

https://time.com/4169503/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-wedding-photo/

which has Clinton, Trump, Bloomberg and Giuliani in the same photo

[Fuzzy Bear]

That was then . . .

Wow, what an entitled prick. Hope he goes down in flames, but the mainstream media will probably prop him up so we'll see about that...

This is now!

Dem voters don't give a damn. As long as he can beat Trump...

I don't know about that.

Not all Dem voters, obviously, but the ones who are backing him don't really care what he's said in the past or what policies he used to back. It's like how Trump used to give money to Hillary and other Democrats, his voters didn't give a crap about that.

ElectionsGuy is one of the sharper folks here on elections and strategy, so I'd ask him how we got from "there" to "here" in a mere 3 months?  It is kind of strange that this guy, Bloomberg, is the leading candidate in terms of Vegas odds as we speak when he hasn't even had a primary.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Bloomberg is increasingly looking like a Ronald Hump candidate:

[randomusername]

Mike Bloomberg for years has battled women’s allegations of profane, sexist comments

As Mike Bloomberg celebrated his 48th birthday in 1990, a top aide at the company he founded presented him with a booklet of profane, sexist quotes she attributed to him.

A good salesperson is like a man who tries to pick up women at a bar by saying, “Do you want to f---? He gets turned down a lot — but he gets f----- a lot, too!” Bloomberg was quoted in the booklet as saying. Bloomberg also allegedly said that his company’s financial information computers “will do everything, including give you [oral sex]. I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business.”

At the time, some Bloomberg staffers said, they laughed off the comments in the 32-page booklet, “The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg,” as a macho side of one of the nerdiest men on Wall Street.

Garrison complaint

89. On April 11, 1995 at approximately 11:20 a.m., Bloomberg was having a photograph taken with two female Company salespeople and a group of N.Y.U. Business School students, in the company snack area. When Bloomberg noticed Garrison standing nearby, he asked, “Why didn’t they ask you to be in the picture? I guess they saw your face.” Continuing his penchant for ridiculing recently married women in his employ, Bloomberg asked plaintiff, “How’s married life? You married?” Plaintiff responded that her marriage was great and was going to get better in a few months: that she was pregnant, and the baby was due the following September. He responded to her “Kill it!” Plaintiff asked Bloomberg to repeat himself, and again he said, “Kill it!” and muttered, “Great! Number 16!” suggesting to plaintiff his unhappiness that sixteen women in the Company had maternity-related status. Then he walked away.

Kill it! He is definitely not pro-Life, FWIW.

In the most high-profile example, a top saleswoman, Sekiko Sakai Garrison, alleged that Bloomberg told female salespeople about a male colleague getting married: “All of you girls line up to give him [oral sex] as a wedding present.” And, the lawsuit said, when Bloomberg saw certain women, he said, “I’d f--- that in a second.”

Will he get endorsed by Bill Clinton?  

Garrison alleged that Bloomberg berated female employees who got pregnant. “What the hell did you do a thing like that for?” Bloomberg allegedly told one pregnant employee. On another occasion, the lawsuit said, Bloomberg berated a female employee who had trouble finding a nanny. “It’s a f------ baby! . . . All you need is some black who doesn’t have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building.”

After Olszewski allegedly was raped by a supervisor in a Chicago hotel room, Bloomberg was informed. He later described his response in a deposition, an excerpt of which was first published by the Village Voice in 2001. The full deposition has never been made public. Olszewski could not be reached for comment.

Bloomberg was asked in the deposition what would constitute “satisfactory proof” that one of his employees had been raped by another.

“I guess an unimpeachable third-party witness,” he responded.

The lawyer seemed stunned. In what kind of rape, he asked Bloomberg, would there be a third-party witness?

“There are times when three people are together,” Bloomberg responded.

But, Bloomberg said, if there were only two people present, and they gave conflicting accounts, there would be no way to know who is telling the truth and “all we can do is provide separate working environments for the two.”

The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit & Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg

Some journos think that Mike leaked Hillary VP to move focus from this article!

NyT journo:

Nate Silver (538) calls this strategy Trumpian!

If true that's even worse. He literally views women as tools to accomplish whatever goals he has for himself. The guy is pure lip-service.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

https://twitter.com/BenjaminPDixon/status/1228734357889785856

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

These people are mental...
https://twitter.com/mattbruenig/status/1228520278944309248?s=21

[Tender Branson]

This new Bloomberg ad is actually pretty good:

[win win]

I remember in late 2019 people mocking Mayor Mike, saying he would be lucky if he got more than 2-4% nationally. What did these people get wrong?