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On March 05 2020 01:06 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 01:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
Bloomberg endorsed Biden after dropping out. Bright side is that now Warren's endorsement can be choreographed better for maximum impact, but still risks Obama coming in and shutting down progressives altogether. I don't think Obama will come out publicly before the convention, although apparently him and Harry Reid made a few phone call to help Biden to get his flux of endorsement.
I mean he can wait till a contested convention as long as Joe can avoid stumbling so terribly he can't be propped up until then. Also not even a certainty that Warren endorses Bernie so there's that.
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On March 05 2020 01:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 01:06 Nakajin wrote:On March 05 2020 01:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
Bloomberg endorsed Biden after dropping out. Bright side is that now Warren's endorsement can be choreographed better for maximum impact, but still risks Obama coming in and shutting down progressives altogether. I don't think Obama will come out publicly before the convention, although apparently him and Harry Reid made a few phone call to help Biden to get his flux of endorsement. I mean he can wait till a contested convention as long as Joe can avoid stumbling so terribly he can't be propped up until then. Also not even a certainty that Warren endorses Bernie so there's that.
And on top of that, it seems more and more likely that Biden may just flat-out get a majority of the delegates, with no brokered convention requiring the superdelegates to weigh in.
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Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing.
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Northern Ireland27477 Posts
On March 05 2020 01:39 vult wrote:
Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing.
It’s embarrassing not just because it was such a failure but that individuals such as Bloomberg can so casually throw away half a billion dollars for almost nothing.
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On March 05 2020 01:32 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 01:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 05 2020 01:06 Nakajin wrote:On March 05 2020 01:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
Bloomberg endorsed Biden after dropping out. Bright side is that now Warren's endorsement can be choreographed better for maximum impact, but still risks Obama coming in and shutting down progressives altogether. I don't think Obama will come out publicly before the convention, although apparently him and Harry Reid made a few phone call to help Biden to get his flux of endorsement. I mean he can wait till a contested convention as long as Joe can avoid stumbling so terribly he can't be propped up until then. Also not even a certainty that Warren endorses Bernie so there's that. And on top of that, it seems more and more likely that Biden may just flat-out get a majority of the delegates, with no brokered convention requiring the superdelegates to weigh in.
I feel like Joe Biden avoided the implosion virtually everyone predicted before this all started in large part because he's managed to avoid the attention despite his time as front runner. I don't know how he'll hold up to hours of debating and daily coverage of him actually talking to people without so many other distractions.
There's basically going to be a "Joe challenges Dem voter to push-up contest after calling him fat" and a "Joe Biden mistakes his wife for his sister" type event/headline a minimum of once a week if he's lucky.
So I don't think he's that likely to get it before the convention, but the fall-in-line types might just switch to Biden to avoid a contested convention despite aligning with Bernie more.
On March 05 2020 01:42 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 01:39 vult wrote:
Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing. It’s embarrassing not just because it was such a failure but that individuals such as Bloomberg can so casually throw away half a billion dollars for almost nothing.
He basically made more money while flying between campaign stops than his whole campaign cost.
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Canada8991 Posts
On March 05 2020 01:42 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 01:39 vult wrote:
Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing. It’s embarrassing not just because it was such a failure but that individuals such as Bloomberg can so casually throw away half a billion dollars for almost nothing.
Stayer is actually way worst he spend 250 million, second most in history behind Bloomberg, pretty much all in South Carolina, and got jack shit out of it.
He, however, seems to have no regret about it and honestly it looked like he had a blast. I guess when you have to much money spending a quarter of a billion for the chance to run for president is a worthwhile treat...
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On March 05 2020 01:39 vult wrote:
Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing.
Absolutely. *Unless* you count money spent as percentage of total assets. Then he spent the equivalent of a median income family $800 vacation.
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On March 05 2020 01:50 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 01:39 vult wrote:
Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing. Absolutely. *Unless* you count money spent as percentage of total assets. Then he spent the equivalent of a median income family $800 vacation.
Which should be shameful, but for somewhat different reasons.
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Bloomer is a clean example of how many votes out there can be "bought" with little more than money. Few people wanted him to run, and yet the $500 million he spent got him a good 10-20% of the votes on Super Tuesday. I suppose his name recognition would help, though it's not exactly a good kind of name recognition. Being able to so cleanly buy 10-20% of the vote for a candidate like Biden would do wonders to lift up an otherwise unremarkable candidate.
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On March 05 2020 02:01 LegalLord wrote:
Bloomer is a clean example of how many votes out there can be "bought" with little more than money. Few people wanted him to run, and yet the $500 million he spent got him a good 10-20% of the votes on Super Tuesday. I suppose his name recognition would help, though it's not exactly a good kind of name recognition. Being able to so cleanly buy 10-20% of the vote for a candidate like Biden would do wonders to lift up an otherwise unremarkable candidate.
Apparently not that many actually.
If anything his complete failure proves that votes cannot be just bought with money, at least not enough of them. He had an endless purse, a fairly favorable conjuncture for him with the very weak/divided moderate democrat lane (til the last second), and a surging progressive counter-candidate to scare the public with and... it did nothing, he got nothing. Literally not a single state, not a single second place in any state. (He won the american Samoa territory, i guess that's something, Tulsi came in 2nd there...).
And it would be unfair to say all his votes are just bribes, some people might legitimately appreciate how much money he made in his life, or be a long time fan of his media outlets or really appreciated his stop-n-frisk policies, and think that stuff was great... people like that exist, and even so, even with hundreds of millions spent, best he could do was third place, even failed the viability threshold in most states.
A very expensive test of his theory that the nomination can be bought with money / won with prime-time ads. The result is clear.
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On March 05 2020 01:44 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 01:32 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 05 2020 01:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 05 2020 01:06 Nakajin wrote:On March 05 2020 01:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
Bloomberg endorsed Biden after dropping out. Bright side is that now Warren's endorsement can be choreographed better for maximum impact, but still risks Obama coming in and shutting down progressives altogether. I don't think Obama will come out publicly before the convention, although apparently him and Harry Reid made a few phone call to help Biden to get his flux of endorsement. I mean he can wait till a contested convention as long as Joe can avoid stumbling so terribly he can't be propped up until then. Also not even a certainty that Warren endorses Bernie so there's that. And on top of that, it seems more and more likely that Biden may just flat-out get a majority of the delegates, with no brokered convention requiring the superdelegates to weigh in. I feel like Joe Biden avoided the implosion virtually everyone predicted before this all started in large part because he's managed to avoid the attention despite his time as front runner. I don't know how he'll hold up to hours of debating and daily coverage of him actually talking to people without so many other distractions. There's basically going to be a "Joe challenges Dem voter to push-up contest after calling him fat" and a "Joe Biden mistakes his wife for his sister" type event/headline a minimum of once a week if he's lucky. 4 years ago I would have agreed with you. But we live in a post Trump era. Maybe people simply don't give a shit that he is somewhat senile.
Time will tell.
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Canada8991 Posts
On March 05 2020 02:17 Geo.Rion wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 02:01 LegalLord wrote:
Bloomer is a clean example of how many votes out there can be "bought" with little more than money. Few people wanted him to run, and yet the $500 million he spent got him a good 10-20% of the votes on Super Tuesday. I suppose his name recognition would help, though it's not exactly a good kind of name recognition. Being able to so cleanly buy 10-20% of the vote for a candidate like Biden would do wonders to lift up an otherwise unremarkable candidate. Apparently not that many actually. If anything his complete failure proves that votes cannot be just bought with money, at least not enough of them. He had an endless purse, a fairly favorable conjuncture for him with the very weak/divided moderate democrat lane, and a surging progressive counter-candidate to scare the public with and... it did nothing, he got nothing. Liteally not a single state, not a single second place in any state. (He won the american Samoa territory, i guess that's something, Tulsi came in 2nd there...). And it's unfair to say all his votes are just bribes, some people might legitimately appreciate how much money he made in his life, or be a long time fan of his media outlets or really appreciated his stop-n-frisk policies, and think that stuff was great... people like that exist, and even so, even with hundreds of millions spent, best he could do was third place, even failed the viability threshold in most states. A very expensive test of his theory that the nomination can be bought with money / won with prime-time ads. The result is clear.
Yep, here the comparison with Stayer is apt as he really was a purely money based candidate, he spend about 20 millions on tv add in South Carolina (Bloomber spend about 35 million in California, a state 8 time more populous where the add space is more expensive) and in the end he will finish the race behind Tulsi.
Bloomberg at least had name recognition, political contact and precedent political experience, pure money doesn't seem to cut it in those presidential election with national tv attention.
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On March 05 2020 01:39 vult wrote:
Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing.
How much would you suffer if you spent 0.83% of your net worth?
Let's assume someone has $5,000 in their bank account. This is like that person spending $42. So imagine yourself going out for a night of drinks with friends. That is what Bloomberg spent. It is truly nothing.
If I may have the podium for a moment:
1. This is why I believe billionaires simply existing means they are committing extreme crimes against humanity. Bloomberg showed the world he could have just spent $500M building medical centers. He didn't. He chose to campaign instead. He has too much power and can't be trusted with it. Humanity has too much work to do to let fuckbags like Bloomberg piss his money away on Instagram influencers.
2. With all available data, we can directly correlate premature death with insufficient health availability for the poor.
3. Bloomberg and others could dedicate enormous amounts of money to just building as many low income medical centers as possible and know they are saving thousands of lives. They would still live a life of luxury.
4. They choose not to do these things.
5. I advocate for this crime to be considered "extreme depraved indifference" and for it to carry a sentence similar to mass murder. Anyone with a total wealth above $5B should be charged with extreme depraved indifference. Why $5B? Because it is hard to find exactly where the cutoff should be. But $5B is well beyond what that limit would maybe be.
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Northern Ireland27477 Posts
Money is far better spent lobbying and doing quid pro quo deals with existing politicians than trying to run for election yourself.
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On March 05 2020 02:01 LegalLord wrote:
Bloomer is a clean example of how many votes out there can be "bought" with little more than money. Few people wanted him to run, and yet the $500 million he spent got him a good 10-20% of the votes on Super Tuesday. I suppose his name recognition would help, though it's not exactly a good kind of name recognition. Being able to so cleanly buy 10-20% of the vote for a candidate like Biden would do wonders to lift up an otherwise unremarkable candidate.
My cynical take based on prior media narratives in 2016 is that he should've spent $100,000 on a barely literate Russian facebook ad team. One heard nonstop at the major impact Russia had on the electorate going that route.
But $620+ million dollars on staff and ads FOCUSED ON SUPER TUESDAY STATES and he only got 46 total. ~$13 mil per delegate (heavy +/- since I've only heard low end on non-ad spending, could be much greater). 5.1% of the delegates awarded on Super Tuesday. Good riddance. Go ban some more sodas.
Also, the DNC should've eaten so much more flak for eliminating the grassroots support requirement for debates before the Nevada debates. Bloomberg should've never been up there. Shame on them. Everyone in previous debates were forced to have both polling and bulk # of individual donors and Bloomberg enters conveniently aligned with new debate requirement rules. DNC deserves to be replaced.
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On March 05 2020 02:32 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 01:39 vult wrote:
Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing. How much would you suffer if you spent 0.83% of your net worth? Let's assume someone has $5,000 in their bank account. This is like that person spending $42. So imagine yourself going out for a night of drinks with friends. That is what Bloomberg spent. It is truly nothing. If I may have the podium for a moment: 1. This is why I believe billionaires simply existing means they are committing extreme crimes against humanity. Bloomberg showed the world he could have just spent $500M building medical centers. He didn't. He chose to campaign instead. He has too much power and can't be trusted with it. Humanity has too much work to do to let fuckbags like Bloomberg piss his money away on Instagram influencers. 2. With all available data, we can directly correlate premature death with insufficient health availability for the poor. 3. Bloomberg and others could dedicate enormous amounts of money to just building as many low income medical centers as possible and know they are saving thousands of lives. They would still live a life of luxury. 4. They choose not to do these things. 5. I advocate for this crime to be considered "extreme depraved indifference" and for it to carry a sentence similar to mass murder. Anyone with a total wealth above $5B should be charged with extreme depraved indifference. Why $5B? Because it is hard to find exactly where the cutoff should be. But $5B is well beyond what that limit would maybe be.
I absolutely agree with this. Billionaires as a concept are obscene, and basically the modern version of an aristocracy. And in the same way that we don't need an aristocracy, we also don't need people owning that much stuff that they might as well be dukes.
Note that this is not me saying that one should get rid of the people who are billionaires. Just stop them from being billionaires. The people are probably roughly as fine as most other people.
I still think that the most palatable way of dealing with this stuff are inheritance taxes, and possibly wealth taxes. Inheritance taxes are especially charming because no one has to pay them. The person who pays is dead. Their children still inherit lots of stuff, just not ALL the stuff.
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On March 05 2020 02:55 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 02:32 Mohdoo wrote:On March 05 2020 01:39 vult wrote:
Bloomberg's campaign has to be the most expensive and shortest campaign in the history of US politics. Truly embarrassing. How much would you suffer if you spent 0.83% of your net worth? Let's assume someone has $5,000 in their bank account. This is like that person spending $42. So imagine yourself going out for a night of drinks with friends. That is what Bloomberg spent. It is truly nothing. If I may have the podium for a moment: 1. This is why I believe billionaires simply existing means they are committing extreme crimes against humanity. Bloomberg showed the world he could have just spent $500M building medical centers. He didn't. He chose to campaign instead. He has too much power and can't be trusted with it. Humanity has too much work to do to let fuckbags like Bloomberg piss his money away on Instagram influencers. 2. With all available data, we can directly correlate premature death with insufficient health availability for the poor. 3. Bloomberg and others could dedicate enormous amounts of money to just building as many low income medical centers as possible and know they are saving thousands of lives. They would still live a life of luxury. 4. They choose not to do these things. 5. I advocate for this crime to be considered "extreme depraved indifference" and for it to carry a sentence similar to mass murder. Anyone with a total wealth above $5B should be charged with extreme depraved indifference. Why $5B? Because it is hard to find exactly where the cutoff should be. But $5B is well beyond what that limit would maybe be. I absolutely agree with this. Billionaires as a concept are obscene, and basically the modern version of an aristocracy. And in the same way that we don't need an aristocracy, we also don't need people owning that much stuff that they might as well be dukes. Note that this is not me saying that one should get rid of the people who are billionaires. Just stop them from being billionaires. The people are probably roughly as fine as most other people. I still think that the most palatable way of dealing with this stuff are inheritance taxes, and possibly wealth taxes. Inheritance taxes are especially charming because no one has to pay them. The person who pays is dead. Their children still inherit lots of stuff, just not ALL the stuff.
Imagining we could stop people from circumventing such inheritance taxes (by moving the wealth but not the ability to spend it ahead of time) that would take decades. During which the billionaires could lobby to stop it, at some point it stops being 'pragmatic' to keep fighting for and gets compromised away.
We like to think a lot of our problems are brand new, but a lot of them are remakes of classics.
The wealthy vs the oppressed is basically "Dracula" (some other incidental parallels there) in that way.
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On March 05 2020 02:36 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2020 02:01 LegalLord wrote:
Bloomer is a clean example of how many votes out there can be "bought" with little more than money. Few people wanted him to run, and yet the $500 million he spent got him a good 10-20% of the votes on Super Tuesday. I suppose his name recognition would help, though it's not exactly a good kind of name recognition. Being able to so cleanly buy 10-20% of the vote for a candidate like Biden would do wonders to lift up an otherwise unremarkable candidate. My cynical take based on prior media narratives in 2016 is that he should've spent $100,000 on a barely literate Russian facebook ad team. One heard nonstop at the major impact Russia had on the electorate going that route. But $620+ million dollars on staff and ads FOCUSED ON SUPER TUESDAY STATES and he only got 46 total. ~$13 mil per delegate (heavy +/- since I've only heard low end on non-ad spending, could be much greater). 5.1% of the delegates awarded on Super Tuesday. Good riddance. Go ban some more sodas.
Also, the DNC should've eaten so much more flak for eliminating the grassroots support requirement for debates before the Nevada debates. Bloomberg should've never been up there. Shame on them. Everyone in previous debates were forced to have both polling and bulk # of individual donors and Bloomberg enters conveniently aligned with new debate requirement rules. DNC deserves to be replaced.
I think it is good that they allowed Bloomberg to debate. It showed a lot of people how he, himself, was far from a good pick. He might have had a chance otherwise.
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Bloomberg debating was a good thing. He got hammed by it. He was doing better before he had to debate.
Also, Bloomberg was publicly shamed for his sexual transgressions. That's a win no matter what.
Apparently Bloomberg's entire staff will be paid through November and will now shift gears towards helping Biden. But it is basically being done as a super pac since it would be way over legal donation. So essentially there are 2 concurrent Biden campaigns. Crazy.
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On March 05 2020 03:34 Mohdoo wrote:
Bloomberg debating was a good thing. He got hammed by it. He was doing better before he had to debate.
Also, Bloomberg was publicly shamed for his sexual transgressions. That's a win no matter what.
Apparently Bloomberg's entire staff will be paid through November and will now shift gears towards helping Biden. But it is basically being done as a super pac since it would be way over legal donation. So essentially there are 2 concurrent Biden campaigns. Crazy.
Well 1 really lol
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EPT
