US Politics XIX: Just an Echo Chamber Living In Your Heads

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Headache in a Suitcase said:
I don't think the pardons were meant to distract from anything. I think that's just how things go now with a post accountability Congress.
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Yeah I guess it's do what you please 24/7.

Is Susan Collins deeply troubled yet or still just concerned?
 
anitram said:
Money is not Biden's problem. I mean, his poor fundraising will catch up to him eventually but that's just a symptom of the larger problem - he's a bad campaigner, he seems half senile and doesn't appear to be exciting or motivating large swaths of any constituency. The mere fact that his famed AA firewall has given way to a billionaire who pushed Stop & Frisk but who has managed to get into better AA polling numbers than the other candidates by running on gun control tells you all you need to know about Biden.

The fundamental problem on the Democratic side is that despite what any one of us think about Bernie, it's undeniable that he has been a HARD SELL for more than 50% of the left, nevermind the right. And on the other side of the divide you have Biden who is basically in the process of a historic collapse, followed by Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar who are polling in the single digits nationally, do not have the infrastructure needed to keep competing (like say, Warren), much less win and cannot compete with Bloomberg on the money front either. Therefore something has to give - either the centrist Democrats unite behind Bloomberg because statistically/mathematically I believe that there are more of them and he makes it through. OR they get comfortable really quickly with the idea of Bernie Sanders being the nominee and cross over to vote for him. Bernie's hardcore voters are in a way irrelevant - they simply do not have the numbers on their own to dictate the outcome of the primaries.

A reasonable compromise, or so I thought, would have been Elizabeth Warren, but apparently she's unpalatable to the Bernie crowd, and the centrists have too many candidates that are courting them as it is. Plus you know, women have to be 10x as good as men at basically everything to succeed to the same level. Lather, rinse, repeat, the ladies here know what I'm talking about.
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Well, I agree with you on Warren. But i don't think that Warren would have taken the offer from Bloomberg to back and fund her advertising.
Warren is the right mix for me. Big fundamental change, with flexibility and the know how to get it done.

I think your point on Biden's AA support is moot. If Bloomberg hadn't gotten in and run 400 million worth of ads making it sound like Obama was backing him, then Biden would have never lost that support.

So you would have had Biden, a mediocre debater, but a great speech giver and probably the best retail, hand-shaking, back-slappin', face to face politician of the bunch (maybe besides Warren), and by far the most experienced candidate on stage, from legislating to foreign policy, and being half of the most beloved Democratic administration in our lifetime - Backed by a billionaire, who by all accounts is not a good debater, or speech giver, and is not a good face to face retail politician.
You pair Biden with a VP like Abrams, and have unlimited money for advertising.
If you can argue that wouldn't be a landslide victory over Trump you are lying to yourself.

Now onto reality.
You are right that a quick consolidation has to happen. But it looks doubtful. Lets be honest, if Warren, Pete and Amy finish 3/4/5 in NV, and 4/5/6 in NC. They NEED TO GET OUT BEFORE SUPER TUESDAY!!!
If Biden finishes 3rd in NV and anything less than first in SC. He NEEDS to get out as well.

But I'm guessing at least Biden and Warren and possibly Pete will stay on. Amy not sure. And Steyer, well if that's a whole other story. That means that super tuesday will be so fragmented that unless Bernie pulls big victories, it will be a brokered convention. If Sanders does pull big victories, it's a done deal.

The only hope for the 60% moderate voters to be represented over the 40% progressive voices is for a mass drop out.
 
I get the feeling we'll see at least one person drop out after Nevada, possibly two. Sanders is likely to win Nevada... at least one of the three remaining moderates will tank. So maybe a moderate plus Liz Warren calls it a day.

If all of them stay in through Super Tuesday they're pretty much handing things to Sanders, regardless of Bloomberg.

I also wonder if we'll see anyone Chris Christie another candidate tonight.
 
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It seems like there are three parties and two of them are fighting to elect the the Democratic nominee, if that makes any sense.
 
womanfish said:
I surely hope we do. On both counts.

I would wager if Amy finishes 5th in NV she may drop. Who were you thinking?
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Same. She had money issues before New Hampshire and really doesn't have any infrastructure set up for super Tuesday. She needs a good finish here or she's toast.

I'm tempted to add Biden to that list as well as a wild card drop out candidate as well. If it starts to look like South Carolina isn't a lock for him anymore, which is entirely possible if tonight and Nevada goes poorly for him, I think they'll call it a day before being totally embarrassed by losing the state that they always pointed to.

Flip side there is that if Joe comes out swinging tonight and outperforms in Nevada, it could be the Joe and Bernie shoe by Super Tuesday. I just don't expect that anymore.
 
Hollow Island said:
It seems like there are three parties and two of them are fighting to elect the the Democratic nominee, if that makes any sense.
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This is 100% correct.

The GOP has condensed around Trumpism. It's pushed everyone else to the Democratic Party, which is now so big and so broad that it's near impossible to actually choose a candidate that everyone will be happy with.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
This is 100% correct.

The GOP has condensed around Trumpism. It's pushed everyone else to the Democratic Party, which is now so big and so broad that it's near impossible to actually choose a candidate that everyone will be happy with.
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God this is killing me.

Steve Schmidt was just on. He's a pretty extraordinary speaker. He sort of always gives an eloquent set up and then a hard truth.

So he went on about election night 2016, and how millions marched in the streets, and how every norm, every rule, has been thrown out, corruption is seeping out of every pore of the White House. And 3 and a half years later, the Democrats answer to this is a 78 year old socialist from Vermont, that champions some of the most unpopular policies among the broader electorate, and is currently garnering about 25% of Democratic support.

It is really quite startling when you lay it out that starkly.
 
Argument could be made that it's been centrists that have had their shot at the GOP and White House forever, now it's time for a Progressive to try.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
Same. She had money issues before New Hampshire and really doesn't have any infrastructure set up for super Tuesday. She needs a good finish here or she's toast.

I'm tempted to add Biden to that list as well as a wild card drop out candidate as well. If it starts to look like South Carolina isn't a lock for him anymore, which is entirely possible if tonight and Nevada goes poorly for him, I think they'll call it a day before being totally embarrassed by losing the state that they always pointed to.

Flip side there is that if Joe comes out swinging tonight and outperforms in Nevada, it could be the Joe and Bernie shoe by Super Tuesday. I just don't expect that anymore.
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Add in a third option... that Mike goes nuclear on Bernie and they both wipe themselves out tonight, opening up a lane for Warren and/or Joe Klobigieg.
 
I really wish Booker and/or Harris were still around. Very regrettable.

Although I probably regret more that Booker wasn’t HRC’s VP.
 
but, also, this shit should be a cakewalk:
Exclusive: Ahead of 2020 election, a 'Blue Wave' is rising in the cities, polling analysis shows

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As Republican President Donald Trump seeks a second term in November, Americans’ interest in voting is growing faster in large cities dominated by Democrats than in conservative rural areas, according to an analysis of Reuters/Ipsos national opinion polls.

If the trend lasts until Election Day on Nov. 3, it would be a reversal from the 2016 election when rural turnout outpaced voting in urban areas, helping Trump narrowly win the White House.

The finding, based on responses from more than 88,000 U.S. adults who took the online poll from August to December 2015 or from August to December 2019, suggests that the “Blue Wave,” a swell of anti-Trump activism that followed his entry into the White House in 2017, is still rolling across the country’s largest population centers.

Even as Trump commands rock-solid support among Republicans, voters’ interest in going to the polls appears to be growing faster among those who disapprove of Trump than among those who approve of him, according to experts who reviewed the data.

The advantage in urban political engagement extends deep into the most competitive battleground states that Trump won by razor-thin margins four years ago, the data shows.

In large urban areas of the upper Midwest, a region that includes swing states Michigan and Wisconsin, for example, the number of people who said they were “certain” to vote in the upcoming presidential election rose by 10 percentage points to 67% compared with survey responses from 2015.

In smaller upper Midwest communities, the number of people similarly dedicated to voting rose by only about 1 point to 60% in that same four-year period.

Overall, the number of “certain” voters rose by 7 percentage points nationally from 2015 to 2019. It increased by more than that in the largest metropolitan areas, rising by 9 points in communities with between 1 million and 5 million people and 8 points in metros with at least 5 million people.

Smaller and rural communities lagged behind. The number of “certain” voters rose by 5 points in sparsely populated, Republican-dominated “non-metro” areas.
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.

I Was the Judge in the Stop-and-Frisk Case. I Don’t Think Bloomberg Is Racist.

By Shira A. Scheindlin

In 2013, I ruled in Floyd vs. City of New York that the tactics underlying the city’s stop-and-frisk program violated the constitutional rights of people of color. While Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York, black and Latino people were disproportionately stopped, and often frisked, millions of times, peaking at 690,000 in 2011. After my ruling, the number of stops plummeted to 11,000 in 2018. And crime did not rise.

Despite this, Mayor Bloomberg continued to zealously defend stop-and-frisk, including in eyebrow-raising comments at the Aspen Institute in 2015 which recently resurfaced. He apologized for the policy only days before jumping into the presidential race. Many people are wondering — is he a racist? I don’t think so. Not if you look at many other valuable things he has done for minorities. I don’t believe he ever understood the human toll of stopping black and Latino men, 90 percent of which did not result in a summons or arrest. But the stops were frightening, humiliating and unwarranted invasions of black and brown people’s bodies.

At the time of the Floyd trial, and still today, I am convinced that Mayor Bloomberg believed that the stop-and-frisk policy — which began under Rudy Giuliani, his immediate predecessor, but grew dramatically during Mr. Bloomberg’s tenure — was protecting African-Americans, who were disproportionately the victims of crime. Although it has been widely disproved, he believed in the “broken windows” theory of policing, where stopping small infractions would prevent an escalation of crime. He believed his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, who told him that young black men would leave their guns at home if they thought they would be stopped. This was misguided because a stop based on racial profiling instead of reasonable suspicion is unconstitutional. But this does not mean he hates black people. The most I can say is he had a pure heart but an empty head; the stop-and-frisk program was very poorly executed.

It is easy to write in general terms about the humiliation of being stopped and frisked. So consider two examples which reveal the impact on the victims and the futility of the policy.


In August 2008, a black man in his 30s stood in front of a chain-link fence near his house and talked to a friend on his cellphone. He held the phone in one hand and the mouthpiece on a cord in the other. Two white plainclothes officers approached him. One officer said it looked like he was smoking weed and shoved him against the fence. The man explained that he was talking on his phone, not smoking marijuana and that he is a drug counselor. Without asking permission, the officers patted him down and reached into his pockets. No contraband was found.

In March 2010, a boy, 13, was stopped on his way home by two white officers in plain clothes who were responding to 911 calls about a group of rowdy men. They pulled up alongside the boy, pushed him down on the hood of the police car, handcuffed him and patted him down as he cried. The officers recovered only a cellphone and a few dollars. Yet they took him to the precinct and wrote a false report stating that he was in criminal possession of a weapon. The reason for the stop was listed as “fits description” and “furtive movements.”

There were many other stops described by the victims in painstaking detail during the Floyd trial. But the point should be obvious: Mayor Bloomberg, and so many others who were born and raised into what is now known as white privilege, don’t put themselves in the shoes of these victims. As an older white woman, I will never be stopped and thrown up against a wall. I know that. And Mayor Bloomberg does too.

No one is perfect. But there is another side to Mr. Bloomberg that may not be as well known: His achievements in creating opportunities for many minority New Yorkers while mayor and his commitment to good works in his post-mayoral years.




In 2005, he started the WeCare initiative, which provided job opportunities to low-income people. The next year, he created a citywide antipoverty program around a new Center for Economic Opportunity, which received half of its $100 million initial funding from the city. This program, too, focused on job creation. In 2009, he spearheaded an agreement with the Building Trades Employers’ Association to ensure more construction job opportunities for women and minority-owned businesses and ensured that 45 percent of apprenticeship slots would be filled from underrepresented groups. Two years later, he launched the Corporate Alliance Program which was dedicated to increasing the value of public contracts to women and minority businesses, with a 47 percent increase in contracts in 2010 to these groups. In 2006, just 379 businesses were certified to do business with the city. By Mr. Bloomberg’s final year in office, that number grew to 3,700. The Bloomberg administration placed job-recruitment centers in many city Housing Authority buildings.

When these achievements are viewed in combination with his post-mayoral advocacy in support of immigrants rights, environmental protections, abortion rights and gun regulation, I am convinced that he has done much to atone for his unforgivable overuse of stop and frisk. He should now be evaluated on his entire record.
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I’m not convinced Bloomberg is a racist either. At least, not in the intentional sense. I do believe his rhetoric is clearly that of one who must atone for his words.

A lot of his policy seems like it was aimed at rationalism, not racism. Unfortunately, sometimes those two can clash, because feelings aren’t rational. Nor are subordinates. Sometimes, they’re racist. Also, systematic racism is real. Also... If you maybe sound racist, you probably should reconsider what you’re about to say, because it’ll be perceived that way even if that’s not the intention.
 
Warren 10x better than Bernie in the open, and it gives me a sad.
 
bernie doesn't have to go after bloomberg like that though. warren needs those viral zinger moments a lot more than he does.
 
Bloomberg looks like he hasn't slept in a month.

And I don't know what is going on with Klobuchar's make up today, but girl, yikes.
 
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